Before you travel, secure your life documents

When you travel, the last thing you want is to stress out about what’s happening at home. Still, what if you get sick on the road or there’s a household emergency – like a break-in or a flood – while you’re away? It’s helpful for both you and your trusted contacts to have quick access to what you need to address any issues that arise, whenever you need it.

Preparing for travel is busy enough without tracking down and creating copies of your insurance policies and family vaccine records – and then making sure your loved ones have copies, too. What’s more: you’re anticipating a great trip, not what could go wrong while you’re away.

When you use Prisidio as your digital vault, family and friends can access your digitized documents as easily as you can. And that helps ease and ensure the continuity of life tasks including:

• Paying bills, including your mortgage, car payments, and insurance.
• Managing child care.
• Taking care of your pets.

Here, we’ll cover why it’s helpful to secure your life documents before you travel so they can be accessed by anyone who is still at home or elsewhere while you’re away. (Streamlining the travel process itself by digitizing travel documents and storing them in your Prisidio vault is covered in another blog.)

Handle life events from afar

You may be traveling without your children, but what happens if they need a school program registration form signed in your absence? And what if your basement floods while you’re on a family trip? Or your dog needs a sliver of glass removed from his paw?

No matter where you are, having the following documentation easily accessible can help smooth out the situation – and help your trusted contacts help you if you’re suddenly unavailable:

Legal and Medical

• Residency and visitation records like green cards and visas
• Birth or adoption certificate
• Marriage license
• Social security card
• Vehicle title(s)
• Wills and trusts
• Powers of attorney
• Medical records
• Health insurance card
• HIPAA release form
• Life, disability, and / or long-term care insurance policies
• Medical orders (e.g., DNR or POLST forms)
• Temporary guardianship forms

Financial and Property

• Bank and credit card statements
• Brokerage statements
• Large purchase receipts and titles
• Loan documents
• Homeowners and auto insurance policies
• Tax returns
• Property deeds or leases
• Mortgage documents

Pets

• Registration
• Insurance
• Veterinary records and contact information

When adding these items to your vault, it’s helpful to include any corresponding documents for your spouse or partner and children, too. Think: your child comes down with pneumonia while you’re away. With access to your family’s health insurance information, a trusted contact can help your child receive the care they need to get better.

Eliminate the hassle of tracking down paper documents

When you digitize your documents as you use them at any time of the month or year, staying organized fits naturally into your daily life. Simply choose which digitization method is best for you:

• Taking a photo within Prisidio, or upload one you already have.
• Scan directly from Prisidio (iOS) or another scanning app on your phone.
• A flatbed scanner.

There are different benefits to each option – your phone may be more convenient, and a flatbed scanner is a higher-fidelity choice. The best choice is the one that’s most convenient for you (we’re focused on making things easier, after all). And with ease-of-use in mind, it’s helpful to store any scanned files in universally accessible file formats, like JPG.

Once your documents are in, take advantage of Prisidio’s preset categories — Documents, People, Places, or Things — and further fine-tune that organization with folders and personalized details. Link a birth certificate to its physical location in the Place section of Prisidio, such as the firebox or file cabinet where the original is stored, in case someone at home needs to access that as well.

After you’ve added documents to your vault, you can also designate the people you want to share them with. So whether you want to give specific item access to specific people – your pet insurance information to the pet sitter, for example – or grant full vault access with a single vault Co-owner — you can do either in a few screen taps or mouse clicks.

Share your most up-to-date information

As you upload, your documents and information get automatically organized as you place them in your vault. That way you’re already well equipped to share the items you need to, when you need to. Taking that step puts you ahead of the game. Still, you’ll want to keep your documents up to date.

Happily, updating information is as simple as opening Prisidio’s app.

Whether you want to upload a PDF of your new insurance policy or scan and save a JPEG of your new passport, simply upload what you have on hand directly to Prisidio to replace outdated items.

As you update your information, you can also update any context your family will need, like a new file name or agent contact details. And if it’s helpful to receive an automated reminder in advance of your passport’s next expiration date so you know to renew it in time, simply set up your reminder in Prisidio.

For peace of mind while you travel

Whether you’re accessing items to be able to manage life tasks while away, or asking your friends or relatives to, having it all in your Prisidio cloud-based vault means you can get more done with minimal hassle because everything you need is within reach of your phone.

Security features make everything you’ve placed in Prisidio safe to access, for you and the key people you designate. Travel lighter — and reduce away-from-home stress — knowing you can reference your personal and sensitive information no matter where you are.