Getting Excited for an Upcoming Trip?

Vacation 🌅 Packing List 

Save time, stress less, and remember more!

Whenever we travel ✈, the running joke in my family👪, if we forget to pack something, is to ask each other: "was it on the list?"  Not that I am keeping track, but my husband forgets items a lot more frequently than I do. This is because I use a packing checklist. 

For every trip, I print this checklist and then add to it as I think of things I need to bring. When packing, I cross off items that I have already placed in the suitcase💼. I'm including a link to download the Vacation Packing List to help you with your next vacation! I recommend saving and customizing it for your needs. Enjoy!  

And let me know how it helped you when you use it on your next trip!  Email me at sarah@firm-focus.com

Traveling Internationally?

Time-Saving Tips for International Travel

Lately, I have heard multiple horror stories about the very stressful and inefficient passport renewal process. The normal 16 weeks to process a passport renewal is now an arbitrary time period. It is taking longer than that. Additionally, poor planning has led many to realize that their passports expire earlier than they had thought. Yikes. 

Contacting government officials, traveling to your local passport office, or visiting an embassy in an attempt to rectify the situation leads to leaked time and a very stressful experience. 

It doesn't have to be that way.

• Remember that passports expire every 10 years and 5 years for children.  

• Check your passports on a regular basis for expiration dates; not just when you have an upcoming trip.

• If you have a system in place for tracking deadlines, put a reminder in there now for all passport expiration dates. I've included details about what I do below.

In the event your passport is expiring, and you have an upcoming international trip, I recommend you pay the expedited processing fee. It is worth the cost of that now vs. the anxiety, stress, and cost of resolving it as you get closer to your vacation.

Tracking Passport Renewal Dates

Make it easy on yourself!

It's a terrible feeling to suddenly panic and think, "oh [fill in swear word of choice]! When do our passports expire?" That often leads to frantically looking for the passports and then checking them for the expiration date. Often it is associated with an upcoming travel date and leads to anxiety and stress.

It may not surprise you that I have an effective and easy system to track this. I use Microsoft Planner as my project management software. In my "Tetlow Household Misc." plan, I have a task called: "Passports: Expiration Dates" (see below). I simply put the expiration date of each of our passports and then move the deadline to the next date that I need to take action. Notice my son Keegan's passport expires 12/9/2023 and I have the deadline scheduled for 6/1/(2023) to schedule the appointment with the passport application center.

International Travel: Mobile Passport Control

Skip the Customs line!

When my husband and I were returning from an international trip recently, our flight came in just behind a large Boeing 777 at Atlanta Airport. As you can imagine, the customs line was extremely long. We were lucky we had plenty of time for our connecting flight; however, waiting in line at customs is never a fun use of time. As we were waiting, we learned of the Mobile Passport Control (link in the photo below).

While waiting in the regular line, I downloaded the app, filled out our travel information, and received a QR code for Mobile passport reentry. This saved us at least 45-minutes of waiting in the US Customs line. 

I recommend you download this app and use it on your upcoming trip. If you're curious about how it compares to global reentry, I will say that a colleague said her and her husband split up and tested it and it was a similar wait time for both.