Five Things to do Before You go on Vacation
Travel is wonderful, when done well.
Five things that will help you feel secure when you travel.
Welcome to Summer. Where Wednesdays start feeling like Fridays and the inside of your car begins to rival the temperature of a sauna. Here are five things to do before you hit the road or board your flight to your long anticipated escape.
ID check: Make sure your documents will be good-to-go for the entirety of your trip. I know this seems like an obvious step, but expiration dates can sneak up on us all and even the most focused of us can push off these kind of deadlines because we have higher priority items to handle in the moment.
Heads up: Your passport might “expire” before the actual expiration date, many countries have the “6 Month Rule”
Insurance refresh: Make sure your insurance policies are all up to date. If you live where I live (New Orleans), you might find your city in the “the cone” during hurricane season, hopefully you have or are in the process of making sure your flood and homeowner’s policies are where they need to be should a storm approach. Other part of the country have their own hazards and you should make sure you have adequate coverage. Also double check to make sure you have enough auto and umbrella coverage if you intend to hit the road (ever), but especially on a long road trip.
Heads up: Many homeowner insurance policies have a 5% of limit deductible for named storm coverage. Meaning if you have a $500,000 limit, you should be ready to write a check for $25,000 to get repairs underway if you have a named storm damage your house.
Medication & Allergy List: We might this as something just for grandparents, but in reality, anyone on medication or who has an allergy should have this information handy. Today we can put this in our iPhone health portal and other digital places. Please also don’t forget to get your meds refilled before you travel.
Heads up: TSA has a video about traveling with medication here.
Security: Not all places are as safe as your hometown, use luggage locks (yes, even if you are traveling domestically or road tripping it). They are cheap and can stop a theft of opportunity. I’ll never forget the feeling after realizing someone had unzipped my backpack WHILE I WAS WEARING IT in the Florence train station while trying to find my train to Rome….and no, I was not on my phone. Luckily, all that was in that compartment was a CFA textbook and it did not get stolen, my laptop was safe in a locked compartment. If you are going to Europe, you might want to consider a slash proof bag. Pickpockets are very common in Europe, more on what to do about it here. You will also what to make sure your home has cameras that record and a perimeter alarm that rings a central station, which is a service that will call the police for you if the alarm goes off. Very valuable items should go in a professional safe facility or your bank’s safe deposit box (yes, they still exist).
Heads up: Depending on how paranoid you are and where you are traveling to, you might want to consider having your luggage wrapped. Also, don’t forget AirTags are great to keep track of things.
Cyber: Are you an instagram junkie? Do you want your friends to have FOMO for not going on vacation with you? While it’s cool to show your friends what you are doing, make sure you have your security settings tight as hell. Personally, I rarely post while I’m on vacation. Consider a three day delay or privately sending updates to a limited group of friends. You can do this by only sending insta updates/stories to close friends instead of your general follower base. I personally will only text or send pictures/updates to select friends until I get back, and when I get home, I’ll only post things where you really can’t tell where I stayed. Mainly remember that vacations are for you to unplug.
Additional cyber security measures you can take are:
Have a screen time passcode different from your phone passcode. This prevents someone who watched you put in your iPhone passcode, steal your phone and lock you out of iCloud. Here is how to do it.
Powerful screen privacy filter on all phones and computers. This is the one I use.
Have printed backup codes with your luggage or left in a safe place back home in case you need to call someone to get them for you.
Two-factor authentication (app based when possible) and make the 2FA app code (code needed to unlock the 2FA app to get the One Time Code needed to satisfy your 2FA requirement) different from your iPhone passcode or screen time passcode. I’m not revealing which one I use, but there are several available for free. Google it.
VPN for when you use public wifi. There is some debate on if this really helps, but many pros use it to mask my web traffic in hotels, airbnbs, and on public wifi. I personally use PIA VPN as it has no logs.
Don’t post your boarding pass on social, with that info, someone can actually go and change your reservation. There is a whole article on it here.
What is your pre-trip routine?