Preparing for your holiday

If you can check in online, check in so it’s one less thing to do when you get to the airport. If you have printed your boarding passes out, ensure those, your passport (check it’s in date), hotel confirmation and visa are together in a safe place. I also take a photocopy of Lucas’ birth certificate because we have different surnames.

This is a big one, it isn’t worth risking not having travel insurance, especially when there are plenty of affordable options now including Bupa worldwide travel insurance. It can cover your trip being cancelled, flight delays, lost luggage and the most important, if any of you are injured on holiday. If you are travelling within Europe, also remember your European Health Insurance Card.

Have you pre booked your airport transfer once you arrive at the destination? This can make your holiday start a lot more smoothly than looking for a taxi one you land and not knowing exactly how much you should be charged. If you have hired a car, have you double checked all the details? We recently went to France and originally booked the car in D’s name then changed it to mine. This change wasn’t communicated by the online booking company and the car hire which resulted in us having to make various phone calls once we arrived rather than getting on with our holiday. Also make sure you have your car hire confirmation, credit/debit card and driving license.

Check the exchange rates in various shops before going to change your money and if you don’t fancy carrying enough cash on you for the full holiday, you can get a travel money card. We use TransferWise to convert out currency. It is a borderless bank account that you get a debit card with. They use the real time exchange rate like you’ll find on independent source is like Google, XE, and Yahoo Finance. (Their fees are as low as 0.35%.) You can hold and manage money in more than 50 currencies. This lets you avoid exchange rate movements and prep for future transfers.

I also use Revolut. They don’t believe in financial borders, so they let you spend abroad in over 150 currencies with the interbank exchange rate, with a small 0.5% fee for anything above £6,000 each month.

You might like these posts too…