Things to do before travel

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• Better pre-departure management = better trip — Gift yourself with peace-of-mind. The more you can arrange your affairs at home before you travel, the less hassle you’ll have dealing with them while traveling.
• Manage online and on the go — Many issues, such as banking and management of financial assets, can be managed online during your trip.
• Keep your friends and family happy — Find a way to reassure the people who care about you without creating onerous communications commitments.
• Take care of your stuff back home — For longer trips, your possessions, including your home, vehicle and all the stuff you’ve accumulated, need to be secured, sold, rented, lent or stored.
• Recruit someone to handle your important affairs — You may need a “trusted agent” to take care of serious commitments (legal, money matters, property rental…) or to be an emergency contact. He or she can be a family member, a close friend or a hired professional.
• Figure out how to take time away from your employment — Explore the options to manage, suspend or quit your job or business.

If your life at home is simple, it should be easy to leave everything behind. But most of us have obligations and responsibilities that cannot be abandoned — the more complicated our lives, the more arrangements must be made. Longer trips just compound management of the “home front.”

Yet, with very few exceptions, it should be possible for you to organize most or all of your affairs before you travel. Your arrangements could include:

• Auto-payments — You probably make most of your recurrent payments this way already, so any that remain after you leave on your trip can continue.
• Internet management — An increasing number of personal management tasks, notably banking, can be done online. Proper online security is mandatory while traveling to avoid getting hacked.
• Friends & relatives — For minor tasks, it could be possible to request the help of friend or relatives. Depending upon your relationships, don’t ask for too much. Your friends and relatives will also be concerned for your welfare while you’re gone and interested to hear about your travels.
• Trusted contact — This person could also be a friend or relative, or it could be a professional, such as a lawyer or accountant. One major role is emergency contact, in case something serious happens to you while traveling. Another is power of attorney, if any of your affairs require delegation of responsibility.
• Hired specialists — You can hire a financial manager, home rental manager, yard maintenance company, pet hotel or any number of other services to keep things in order back home.

It’s important for your enjoyment and peace-of-mind while traveling that your affairs at home are reduced, managed and stable.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And to know the place for the first time.

— T.S. Eliot

People

What do your relatives and friends think of your proposed trip?

Maybe you don’t care what they think — it’s your life. But close friends a relatives could worry needlessly unless you put them at ease. Most of that anxiety is entirely unwarranted, unless you plan to go to a destination that your government is warning you about.

If you’re a veteran traveler, your relatives and friends should be okay with your trip. But if you’re 19, inexperienced and planning to go solo, people back home will be concerned about you. That goes double if you’re female, unfortunately.

You can assuage fears hugely if you travel with a companion, especially if you’re young and inexperienced. Again (sorry) that goes double for women. You can be a confident 19 year-old woman, but your parents are going to agonize if they see you head off to travel solo, especially in less-secure countries.

Before you travel, you need to reassure relatives and friends that you’re competent and in control. Show them your travel insurance, your vaccination book and your list of contacts for your embassy in the countries you’ll be visiting. Tell them about how you’ll ensure your rooms are secure. Let them see that you’re confident and in control.

The other thing you can do is promise to be in contact. That said, do your best to dampen expectations about how often you’ll call, email or blog. If you have to keep the folks at home informed every day, it’ll drive you nuts. After all, you’re traveling to get a little liberation.

• Post to Facebook — The easiest way to keep everyone in the loop is to update your Facebook page. Make sure that you’re friended to everyone who matters, even if you have to help someone sign-up to FB. That way, posting to Facebook is all you really have to do. You may want to post fairly often when you’re in a worry-inducing destination.
• Make video calls — If people close to you need it, promise to call via Skype, FaceTime or other calling service. Keep in mind that you can’t guarantee that the WiFi will be good enough for a video signal. Set up calls on short notice via e-mail when you can be confident you’ll be able to make the connection. 
• Don’t commit to a schedule  — Relatives and friends might press you to set up a regular schedule of FB posts or calls. Avoid this commitment — you might find yourself somewhere without WiFi or mobile signal and then they’ll go into panic mode back home.
• Have a back-up plan — If you miss your scheduled call for any reason, send a text or e-mail as soon as possible, so that the folks at home know that you’re alright.

The content of your communications will also help reassure them. Don’t tell them (till you’re back home) about those creeps who followed you around the streets at night or how you got ripped-off by a taxi driver. There’s nothing they can do about it, but they’ll worry about what trouble you’ll get into next. Be upbeat. Keep them amazed with all the cool stuff you’re doing.

 

Pets

Your dog or cat might stay with a friend who also has a dog or cat. Think twice about leaving your pet with a person who doesn’t have one or has no real affinity for animals.

Having your pet stay with a friend or relative for a couple of weeks may not be a big deal, but if you’re gone for months or a year, you’re asking a lot. Give yourself enough time to get this figured out. The last thing you need is an emotional crises on the eve of departure, leaving you no choice but an expensive pet hotel.

Make sure to give your pet’s caregiver:

• Instructions — Prepare written instructions about your pet so that your caregiver doesn’t have to find out by experience that your pooch will piddle on the floor if not let outside before 7 a.m. or that your cat will refuse all food except one type. Don’t write a manual. If it’s too much, your caregiver may back out.
• Equipment — Leash, litter box, toys etc.
• Veterinary records — Leave your pets veterinary records with whomever is taking care of him or her. Also leave the contacts for your vet, if you have one.
• Drugs — Leave a supply for the entire duration of your travel of any drugs your animal requires, along with written instructions (as above) and the prescription itself.
• Money — Provide funds for food and any other expenditures. If your pet is old or sickly and likely to need veterinary attention, leave money for that possibility, too. Alternatively, you can use Internet payment to provide funds agreed by e-mail while you’re traveling.

Other types of pets, be they rodents, ferrets, birds, tropical fish — whatever — will be harder to place with friends or relatives. You could find a local enthusiast who has this type of animal or you could (ahem!) part company with your pets by selling them or giving them away to a responsible new owner via Craigslist.

Trusted Agents (TAs)

In ancient times (before the Internet), it used to be that you’d have to arrange for someone to take care of all your affairs when you were gone, from collecting your mail to paying your bills and taxes, from boarding your pet to dealing with tenants in your home. This person, your “trusted agent” or “TA,” was often a family member or close friend. If you couldn’t get a willing friend or family member, you may have had to hire a lawyer or other professional, at least for the most critical tasks. 

And off you went, getting in touch by post with a month or more back and forth or making crackly overseas telephone calls. There was even the option of telex or telegram. While you could contact home, you were yourself impossible to reach except via Poste Restante (General Delivery) in some distant city. For all serious and time-bound issues, you were off the grid.

That was then and this is now. We have smart phones for voice and text, video apps like Skype, e-mail and online contact to your bank and other institutions through their web portals. Many travelers mourn their inability to disconnect from all that, but there’s no denying that it’s much easier to manage the “Home Front” with these tools. And keeping things under control back home will help you to enjoy your travels more.

Yet, you still need at least one TA. Unexpected problems could arise with your house, tenants and property. Your pet could require medical treatment. There are lots of possibilities that could require  the attention of someone back home.

Depending upon how complex your affairs are back home, you could have more than one TA — in fact, the division of tasks makes it likely. There are simple tasks that could easily be done by a friend or family member. Checking on your home, picking up the mail and maybe cutting the grass are examples. More complex tasks could still be done by a capable and willing friend or family member, or they could be passed to a professional. Suppose you want to rent your home. Would a family member be willing to manage the relationship with your tenants, or should you hire a management company? What happens if the tenants stop paying the rent or start to trash your home. You may need a lawyer. Who’s doing your taxes, if you’re not doing them yourself? An accountant?

A friend or family member could be willing to handle only so much. He or she is not going to do your taxes for you. On the other hand, a lawyer isn’t going to cut your grass or check your mail.

You may confer limited or lots of powers to this person, depending upon the tasks you’re asking him or her to do.

• Handle important mail — Forward your snail mail to your TA. If anything arrives that looks important, your TA can e-mail you and you could decide whether your TA should open it, read it and possibly scan it for you. If you can’t get a TA to do this for you, there are mail handling services you can hire, who will open mail at your direction and e-mail the scanned contents.
• Manage your home — Your TA could monitor your empty home, ensure that it doesn’t appear that you’re away, see to maintenance and repairs or even manage your tenants.
• Care for your pet(s) and plants — She or he could board your pet or monitor how your pet is doing at a commercial pet boarding facility. 
• Be your emergency contact — If you end up in trouble abroad, who do you call? If something urgent comes up back home, who do you call? This person should be sensible, reliable and on-call 24/7.

You’ll have to equip your trusted contact:

• Keys — He or she will need a set of your house or condo keys. If there’s any chance your vehicle will be used or needs to be moved, you’ll have to leave car keys, too.
• Phone, e-mail and other contact points — Should you use roaming on your smart phone (generally a bad idea), leave the number. You also need to leave e-mail and the name used on any online video or messaging app you have agreed to use.
• Passport copies — Provide color copies of your passport ID page, in case your trusted contact has to contact your embassy or other institution.
• Travel insurance copies — Your trusted contact needs to know what’s covered, in case he or she needs to take action on your behalf.
• Itinerary — You may know your itinerary precisely or not at all, but it helps your TA to know where you’re supposed to be. If you’re making it up as you go, let your TA know at least what country you’re in.
• Next of kin — If your trusted contact is not a family member, you need to provide your next of kin, along with phone and e-mail.
• Float — Especially if you’ll be out of contact for a while during your travels, your trusted contact may need funds to deal with minor events, like a broken window or pet surgery. Amount is variable and you can top it up with Internet transfers from your bank account.
• Location of key documents — In unusual or extreme situations, documents such as your will, property titles, vehicle titles and financial accounts may be required. You may not have to give access to those documents to your TA, as long as she or he knows where they are.
• Power-of-attorney — Grant this only if legal affairs are likely to require action. Most often, they can be delayed.
• Emergency procedures — You’ll need to set a code word, so that any emergency call can be established as legitimate and not a variant on the “virtual kidnapping” scam. For that matter, a fake code word can signal a coerced call for help.

It’s a good idea to check-in with your TA from time to time, just to be sure nothing has come up back home and to reassure your TA that everything is fine on your travels.

Depending upon what you need from your trusted person and how long you’ll be gone, it’s a big ask and you’ll owe him or her big time. For a professional, that’s payment. For a friend or family member, bring back a fantastic gift or make a payment commensurate to the effort and responsibility you need from this person.

Your home

If you rent

Being a renter should easier than being an owner. Somehow, you have to exit your rental situation. You could find yourself in one of these scenarios:

• Locked-in to a lease — You could still have (many!) months left on a lease.
  • Terminate early with no penalty — Maybe it’s okay with your landlord if you terminate early and you won’t be hit with a penalty.  That works better in cities with low vacancy. Your landlord won’t have a vacant unit and may be able to increase the rent.
  • Sublet — Read your lease. Perhaps you’re permitted to sublet until lease termination, with the landlords permission. Don’t try to AirBnb your place unless your landlord is totally cool with it (highly doubtful!)
  • Terminate early with penalty — The worst case scenario is that you would have to pay a penalty to break the lease. Give as much notice as possible to prevent getting stuck with the largest penalty.
• Month-to-month rental — This should be easy. Just give the stipulated notice and prepare to vacate on the eave of travel.
• Keep the rental unit — If you’re living in a city with low vacancy, you have to think about where to live when you return. If you’ve got a sweet deal on the rent, you may have doubts about giving up the unit.
  • Sublet — Again, you have to find out whether that’s possible under the terms of your lease. Or maybe your landlord is super cool and will agree. In any event, you need to be sure you have proper legal documentation for a sublet, especially if you are leaving any of your possessions in the unit. You also need to ensure that rent is the only thing due to you — you don’t want to be responsible for utilities and services.
  • House sitting — If you are not permitted to sub-let, you could offer your unit to a trusted and reliable friend. This may be a bit dodgy with your landlord, but you’re still paying the rent yourself and your saintly friend is just visiting for a while. Make sure you have a plan in case your friend receives an eviction order. 
• Vacate early — It could be that your lease ends before you’re ready to depart on your trip and it’s not possible to stay on month-to-month until departure. You’ll have to find somewhere to stay in the interim.
• Store your stuff — You’ll have to store all or some of your possessions while you’re gone. Even if you sublet and plan to leave furniture and other stuff in the unit, you have to give maximum space to the new renters and protect your most personal and prized possessions. You can often get a discount from storage companies if you contract for a longer period (12 months plus) and another discount if you pay in advance. If you don’t pay in advance, set up the periodic payment as an automatic payment from your bank account. They have all the boxes, packing tape, bubble wrap and other stuff you could want, but be careful that they’re not over-charging for the convenience.

If you own

Owning a home, even one more humble than this one, is more complicated.

• Carry a mortgage — Your mortgage might be a considerable monthly financial obligation. Even if you can rent your home and put the rental receipts towards your mortgage payment, will it be enough? What happens if your home is vacant for one or two or three or more months? Can you carry the mortgage payments from your savings or passive recurrent income?
• Rent your home — Depending upon how long your trip is, renting might be not only desirable but necessary.
  • Chances are you’ll have to rent to a stranger, but ask around to see if anyone you know is up for occupying your home. If he or she also knows how to fix a leaky faucet, you’ve got it made. The latter option might not bring in as much rent.
  • Give yourself enough time to find a good tenant. Be picky and ask for references. 
  • You’ll be lucky if your tenant’s desired occupancy dates match your trip dates. Be prepared to move out early, move back in late or maybe have a month or two of vacancy on either end.
  • Make sure your rental contract is airtight. You don’t want to carry the utilities and services month to month, but you don’t want the heat cut and pipes freezing in the middle of a snowy winter either.
  • Someone back home (friend, relative, trusted agent, rental agent) will have to keep track of your home and manage any issues that arise. A paid rental agent will have to figure into your budget, too.
• Home Exchange — You can register on a a home exchange site and swap homes with home owners in your destination countries. It’s a great way to spend extended periods in foreign locations inexpensively.
• AirBnb — If you can’t rent to a long-term tenant, you can put your home on AirBnb. The turnover of guests presents some additional risks and certainly you’ll need someone to manage the keys and cleaning. However, if your home is in a highly desirable location, you can make a lot of money on short-term rentals.
• Store your stuff — Even if you plan to leave furniture and other stuff in your home, you’ll have to store your personal and valuable possessions. That might be possible in a locked room of your home, if you think everything will be secure in there. Otherwise, it will have to go in secure storage somewhere else, possibly a commercial storage unit.

Leaving your home vacant

Whether you own or rent, if you plan to leave your home vacant for part or all of your trip, there’s a long preparations list. If you will be gone for months, you can “lock-and-go,” but there’s lots of preparation involved. At the very least, you’ll have to see to its maintenance by a friend, relative or rental agency. Here’s a partial list:

• Electrical appliances — Unplug them all at the wall to reduce consumption from stand-by mode and protect against voltage spikes.
• Water heater — Turn if off. If you’ll be gone a long time, drain the water out.
• Heat — Turn it off, unless your home is vulnerable to freezing. If so, leave heat set at minimum.
• Water taps — If your home is vulnerable to freezing, close water supply at the main entry to the home and open all the taps to drain the lines.
• Fireplace — Close the damper.
• Doors & windows — Lock them all. Don’t leave a spare key in an obvious place.
• Curtains or blinds — Do not close all of them, as this is a giveaway that you’re not home. Leave one or two strategically open or partly open, allowing indirect light from another room to be seen, giving the impression that the dwelling is occupied.
• Valuable items — Consider removing portable valuables to a secure location.
• House plants — It’s best if you can persuade someone to take them and keep them for you. Otherwise, you’ll have to let someone into your home to take care of them. Another option is to sell them.
• Burglar alarm — If you don’t have one, is it worth getting? If you do have one, notify the company of the time your home will be vacant.
• Timers for electrical devices — It’s a too old technique to put timers on a few lights and even a radio or TV. When they go on and off, it’s supposed to indicate that someone is home. Sophisticated burglars know this — when your lights go on at 7:14 and off at 11:37 two nights in a row, the burglars know you’re not there. If you live in a high risk area, consider more sophisticated timers that do not stick to an exact schedule. If you’ll be gone a long time, make sure you have long-life bulbs in the lights that will be on your timers.
• Notify neighbors — If you have a trusted neighbor or two, tell them how long you’ll be gone and ask them to keep an eye on your place.
• Outside maintenance — Arrange for someone to maintain the appearance of occupancy while you’re gone. This could include collecting the mail, clearing flyers and free newspapers from your mailbox or front door, keeping (at least the front) lawn and garden trim, and shoveling any snow soon after it falls.
• Garbage — Remove all (organic) garbage from the house.
• Subscriptions — Cancel goods and services that are delivered to your home, including digital services (TV, phone, Internet), telephone land line, newspapers and magazines. There are options if you need to maintain your phone.
• Postal mail — If your trip is short and nothing urgent is expected, have post office hold your mail. For longer trips, get the post office to forward your mail to someone who will handle it for you or to a commercial mail handling service. Unlike your bank and credit card companies, you do not have to tell the post office your travel dates — simply buy the hold or redirection service for a set amount of time.
• Computer — Back up your hard disk and store the disk in a secure location.

Review your homeowner’s insurance. Your insurer may have an “away” clause that specifies what must be done if the policy is to remain valid during your absence. This usually includes a stipulation that someone must check the property at a given interval to ensure that everything (power, water, sewer, doors and windows…) is okay.

Your vehicle

If you have a vehicle, you can sell it, store it or lend it.

If your trip is short, you may not have to bother with maintenance. But if you’ll be gone more than 30 days, consider these procedures. You’ll need somebody to help.

• Insurance — Change the coverage to storage insurance, which covers theft and fire only. The cost is low.
• Electrical — Disconnect the negative battery post to prevent the battery from going flat. Alternatively, it may be possible for someone to start the car and run it once every few weeks.
• Fuel — Keep the tank full to prevent the seals from drying and moisture accumulating.
• Tires — To prevent flat spots on the tires from the vehicle standing for months, it’s good to either move the vehicle about once a month or even take the tires off and put the vehicle on blocks.
• Protection — Store the vehicle inside, if possible. Use a cover if storing it outside.

If someone else will be using the vehicle during your absence, make sure that full insurance coverage will be continued and that any scheduled maintenance is done.

Your other possessions

There’s an exotic breed of traveler who eliminates all material goods to finance his travels. There’s nothing left to store. 

Almost everyone else has stuff they’re leaving behind. It might be a little or a lot. You can sell or give away stuff, but there’s going to be something left and you have to decide what to do with it.

• Leave it — If you’re keeping a house, condo or apartment, you can leave most of your stuff in it. If you’re renting out the unit while you’re gone, you can leave furnishings and other stuff in place, but personal items (clothing, important papers, mementos and more) as well as valuables should be locked into a room, closet, cabinet or other secure storage.
• Store it — You can rent a storage unit at a commercial facility. Various sizes are available and you can pay more for climate control if necessary. If you have a lot of stuff, consider renting a 20 or even a 40 foot container. You can even stick a car with all your other stuff in a 40 foot container. Then there’s the cheap option — store your stuff with a relative or friend. Just make sure that they have the space and won’t be held responsible if something happens to your precious stuff while in their care. Consider insuring your stuff in storage. It won’t cost much.

Your financial assets

Most financial assets can be managed online. You are reminded to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) when doing online financials using WiFi in lodges, airports, coffee shops and Internet cafes. In fact, get in the habit of using a VPN all the time.

• Your bills — You’re probably paying most or all of your recurrent bills online already. For those that remain after you leave, simply continue. For any that you do not pay online already, see if you can arrange to do so. Automatic debit from your bank or credit card is easiest, as long as you trust the payee.
• Your bank — Does anyone not do their day-to-day banking online anymore? Be sure to notify your bank about your approximate travel itinerary or they may think your ATM card details have been stolen the first time you use the card in a foreign country.
• Your credit card issuers — These accounts can also be managed entirely online and they, too, you must notify about your approximate itinerary.
• Your online brokerage — For those who manage their investments themselves, it can be done from anywhere.
• Your financial advisor — You should be able to keep in touch by e-mail. As a non-travel bit of advice, never use a commission-based financial advisor. He or she is just a sales person, incentivized to suck fees from you regardless of the quality of the investments made on your behalf. Use a fee-based advisor only.
• Your trusted agent — You may need a trusted agent, even one with power-of-attorney, to take care of critical issues during your absence,.

Your taxes are a special case.

• Documents — You need to gather all the information required to do your taxes well before you leave. If some documents will arrive in the mail after you leave, make sure that whomever is handling your mail gets those documents with the ones you have already collected.
• Preparation & filing — You can hire a tax company or accountant to do your taxes for you while you’re traveling. Or, if things are not too complex, you can save money and do them yourself online while on the road. To do so, you will need to have all the relevant documents scanned and stored in your digital vault. 

Your job, career path or business

Employment, fear of an interrupted career path or “ball-and-chain” attachment to a small business are frequent inhibitors to travel. There are a few strategies to consider about employment left behind.