Are you getting ready to go on a vacation and leave town? If you think you can leave town and forget about your financial life and other matters for a while, sorry, you can’t. And for good reason. Especially if you have a family, you need to make sure your finances are in order and someone can get to them either to help you or manage things if something were to happen to you. I’m also a firm believer of unplugging on vacation. I think people are better as an employee and parent if they can rest and not be distracted with all the responsiblities at home while vacationing.
I recently left for about a week on vacation with my wife. In our case, we traveled out of the country and left the kids with both sets of grandparents who alternated watching over them. While it would have been nice to just disappear and relinquish all responsibilities, it’s not realistic. In fact, I spent much of the prior week preparing to insure things would be in order and I could sit back and relax in the sun with a nice ocean breeze.
Get these matters in order and you can unplug and get the rest and relaxation you deserve to get on your vacation.
Work
- Identify your back up. One thing I’ve learned is to always make sure you have someone who can be the point of contact in your abscense. Otherwise, they’ll track you down.
- Change your voice mail and set up email out of office. This is just a no brainer to set communication expectations.
- Send out emails with instructions and when you’ll return. Let your customers and team members know when you’ll be back and reply to their voice mails and emails.
Family
- Insure you have a medical release written for care of your children in case they need to see a doctor or other medical professional.
- Provide doctor and hospital contact information.
- Provide contact numbers for neighbors or nearby friends for family should they need help or assistance with your house.
Financial
- Create a cheat sheet of all major accounts (retirement, checking, etc.) with account numbers and customer service phone numbers and tell your family where it’s located.
- Update your favorite financial softwaret to get everything tracked and allocated prior to leaving. I like to leave town with a clean slate. I don’t want a pile of bills to pay or expenses to track when I return on top of what will be there from the vacation.
- If you’re going out of the country, go to the bank and get at least $50 in cash in the foreign currency in case of an emergency. Don’t wait until you go the airport as their are up-charges for such services.
- Leave copies of your wills and other legal documents for family members. Make sure they can find them if needed.
- Provide contact information for your employer HR department, financial advisor and lawyer. Hopefully they don’t need this information, but make it as straight forward and as easy as possible if these important people need to be contacted.
This may seem like a lot to take care of, but it’s not when you use a checklist and carve out some time to get it done. You’ll feel relieved and like you can really enjoy your vacation with matters in order at home while away.
Would you add anything else to this list or do you have any tips to share based on your experience?
Photo by 19melissa68
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
One of the items on my pre-vacation list is arranging care for our cat and dog. The cat stays home with someone coming in and the dog goes to a kennel.
This is a great checklist for people on the go, not just for those who would like to go on vacation. It’s better to get everything ready and in order, than have the world going upside down when something unexpected comes along.