The Travel Leap Blog

I looked at my email inbox the other day and thought Whoa! The contents and what comes into that inbox each day are a lot different today than they were a year ago.  A year ago there were many emails from places I had shopped (although I’m not a shopper), professional associations and sites about information management, project management and government and public affairs news.  Today there are many travel blog updates, travel deals, airlines and accommodation providers I’d never heard of a year ago.

Before I left Australia on the first part of my travel leap, I decided to clean out my inbox, just as I had cleaned out my house, and just as I had been removed from many hard copy mailing lists in order to limit the amount of mail my long-suffering mother would have to deal with in my absence.  I unsubscribed from everything I didn’t need or want anymore (let’s face it, you don’t need to know your local Canberra shopping centre is having an event when you’re 12000 miles away), and starting subscribing to things that helped me make the leap into full-time travel.

I found the options in each of my bank accounts to change from hard copy statements to e-statements delivered online.  These simple things help change your outlook on life and living, they help you realise that you don’t need all that paper.  I used to be a paper fiend, loved hard copy books and had to read most things in hard copy.  Over the months before I knew I was going to be moving and travelling, I changed the printing habit, and now I don’t even like to write things down, I much prefer to type.  I find ways to remember to revisit things instead of using post-its, such as a notpad file on the desktop with links I want to revisit (dated).  Once they’re done they’re bookmarked or deleted.

I also scanned in my important documents: passports, birth certificate, last year’s tax information (I may need to do my next year’s return from the road), academic transcript (if required in the process of applying for jobs – hopefully it won’t come to that!).  In addition, I have mum and dad’s important documents too, in case I should ever have to deal with something from far away.  These are all things you’d hope you never need, but it’s better and easier to have them with you even electronically, than to have someone sift through boxes at home or have to grapple with a bank/telephone company/utility provider from the other side of the world.  Because I had sold my house, I also scanned all my final zero balance accounts from utilities, phone and internet companies, just in case any queries arose.

If you’ve got your stuff in storage, and you have an automatic payment deducted each month, check in every now and again to make sure that it’s still working fine.

Notify your credit card companies before you travel overseas, or if you extend your stay so they don’t stop your card at an inconvenient moment.