 |
| Destination (Photo credit: _Pixelmaniac_) |
House Sitting
If you own a home, or even rent a house, you need to worry about who will take care of it in your absence. If you rent, you may be able to work out something with your landlord while you are gone. If you own, there is a bit more involved with making sure that your home is safe while you are gone. Such as someone who comes in to make sure the furnace is still working or there is no water leak. Check into how often someone needs to come by for insurance purposes before you leave.
Banking
While you may not think your banking is something you need to worry about while you are gone, that may not be the truth, especially depending on how long you are gone. Years ago I was gone for three months and I thought I had set up my credit card to auto withdraw the payment but something happened and it did not work. Before I left, I had added my dad to my bank account so a quick call home to him and he was able to deal with it for me.
Don’t forget to let your bank and credit card companies know you are going and what time frame you are gone. The last thing you want to happen while you are gone is to have everything frozen as they think the transactions are suspicious!
Mail and Bills
For many of us, a lot of what we get in the mail is bills. Unless you have your bills all set up to email to you and pay themselves, you need to get someone to take care of them while you are gone. One option would be to overpay them before you go so that you have some room and do not need to worry about it. You can also leave post-dated cheques or see what types of arrangements your utility companies would prefer. If you don’t think you can make arrangements for payment while you are gone, definitely tell your utility company so that they do not shut down your services.
Pets
One of the biggest challenges I had on my most recent trip was my pets. I live with two cats and I knew there was no way I could leave them that long. Even though cats could care less about humans sometimes, they still keep us around for food and litter box duty. My preference was to have someone stay at my house to take care of them but at the same time, I didn’t just want some stranger living in my home. Thankfully, there was a friend of my family who was temporarily homeless so it worked out well that he was able to stay at my home and keep my cats company.
There are likely other things that you may need to consider when you are gone for a while. Maybe you need to deal with a vehicle while you are gone, maybe there are some other financial issues that need to be considered or it could be something related to your job.
