Planning
Your Trip
1. Check the validity of your passports.
Be sure they’re good for 3 months after the day of your arrival home.
Many people make the mistake of thinking that as long as they’re back home
before their passports expire they’ll be fine. (It seems like common sense
doesn’t it?) But not so. Authorities will often demand that your passport be
good for several weeks — even several months for some countries — past the day
of your arrival home. Some airlines will not let you board the plane if there
is not enough extra time on your passport
2. Scan your passports and email
them to yourself, along with any other important documents — e.g. green
card, birth certificate, the visa pages of your passport. If you ever lose your
passports abroad, this will save you a ton of time and hassle when you have to
replace them.
3. Notify your credit card
companies before you leave. Banks are very careful about fraud nowadays —
and run algorithms on your billing history to spot any irregularities. A
charge from a country or city that you’ve never previously had a charge from
could easily get your credit card frozen. And unfreezing your account from a
foreign city in a different time zone, will be a lot harder than just calling
your bank before departure.
4. Take more than one credit or debit card.
Cards work differently in foreign countries, some will work at bank ATM but not
at a corner store ATM, others will work in restaurants but not at an ATM.
There are a number of complex rules and reasons but if you don’t work in the
banking industry you’ll never know all of them. The best remedy is to take
multiple cards
