Authored by Carla Abanes

When it comes to planning a holiday, most people aim to tick off the essentials – tickets, accommodation, and itinerary. However, in order to truly enjoy a smooth and carefree holiday, there’s a lot more prep work that needs to be done prior to the big departure.

Failing to plan is planning to fail. Nothing dampens the excitement of a vacation more than unwanted surprises you could’ve planned for.

To help you out, here are some tips for things you need to do while you’re packing and before you leave.

Share Your Itinerary

Share you itinerary only with trusted friends and immediate family. This is so they can keep track of your whereabouts while you travel.  For any reason that something happens back at home, they can contact you immediately.

Do not share your travel itinerary on social media. Lurkers may take advantage of this information and launch a scam during your absence, or may steal information shown on your itinerary. It also advertises to the world that your house will be empty while you’re away.

It’s easy to get excited in the lead up to a trip, and we all want to share that we are travelling somewhere exotic, but be cautious of the kind of information you share online. Just don’t post a photo of your hotel booking with your contact details or credit card.

Call Your Credit Card Company

Call and inform your credit card company that you will be travelling a couple of days before you leave, and make sure your credit card is ready for use in your destination. In case of an emergency abroad, make sure you have written down the hotline number for your card.

Putting a travel alert on your card also protects you against potential credit card scams. Ie if your credit card company knows you’re in Australia, they will know that anything from Texas is suspicious usage of your credit card.

Prepare a Photocopy of Your Travel Documents

This is for your safety in case you lose your travel documents that you have with you, at least you still have another set of photocopy sitting inside your luggage.

If the lodge or hotel offers safe or lockers make use of this to store your important travel and identification documents and valuables.

Hold Your Mail

If you will travelling for a long period of time, hold your mail and subscriptions at your local post office. Or maybe you can ask a trusted friend to drop by your house and clear the letterbox for you (give them permission to open any mail that may be important, such as car registration renewal).

This is so you avoid an overflowing mailbox and scattered subscription magazines at your doorstep. This attracts attention and says to would be thieves that no one is home.

Secure Your Locks

Secure your front door locks, window locks, back door locks and basement door locks. Make sure it’s bolted lock really tight and secure. It would be good if you some outdoor lights on timer or motion sensor night-lights. This is a big help to distract would be thieves. Double check your security alarms to make sure they are turned on and really working.

Arrange for house sitter if possible, especially if you will be travelling for a long period of time. There are great websites that offer this service, and it means your house will be more secure having someone living in it.

Hold Your Memberships

Hold your gym, carpool, zumba or any club memberships that you make monthly payments to. This is to avoid accumulating monthly payments when you come back from your long term travel. Imagine racking up 3 or 6 months of monthly payments for your club memberships that you didn’t use.  Ouch!

Infographic

More of a visual person? Here is everything we have listed above summarized into a handy infographic.

Carla is an oldie database geek based in Singapore who wants to save the world, one travel guide at a time.

You can connect with her through her blog ‘Just Travelling Solo‘ or on Facebook.

Photo credits: Letters by Charles Williams.