Idiot Traveler

[Pauline]

We leave for our trip on Tuesday (driving from UK to Germany, then Switzerland for 5 weeks) and I checked our passports today. Steve’s Irish passport expires the end of June! Since Brexit we travel on the Irish passports because it makes it a bit easier. So we will travel on our British passports but his expires in November. I checked the regulations and your passport has to be valid for at least 3 months from the end of your trip. I worried it was 6 months, but it’s not. So we are okay. And we have valid US passports which I will bring.

It would be nice to blame Steve for this but I’m the one who keeps track of these things.

Is there an app that tells you when things are about to expire? Passports, driving licence, all the insurances you have. It’s a lot to keep track of.

Note to self. Check passports every New Years Day.

 

[Ian Sutton]

phew!

Back in the days of paper temporary passports (yes they were a thing, IIRC lasting a year), I recall a friend spotted his passport had expired the night before leaving. After a frantic phone call in the morning, he was told it would be ok, and he indeed got waived through. Very different times now!

 

[BryanS]

Is there an app that tells you when things are about to expire? Passports, driving licence, all the insurances you have. It’s a lot to keep track of.

I find the calendars connected to my email accounts (Outlook, Gmail) helpful to remember all the dates for birthdays, car tax, bills, etc.

 

[PatrickLondon]

I find the calendars connected to my email accounts (Outlook, Gmail) helpful to remember all the dates for birthdays, car tax, bills, etc.

I use a phone app called ColorNote to set up reminder alerts, but no doubt there are lots of alternatives.

 

[Eleanor]

Have a wonderful trip Pauline and enjoy yourselves!

 

[VictoriaJZ]

Is there an app that tells you when things are about to expire? Passports, driving licence, all the insurances you have. It’s a lot to keep track of.

Note to self. Check passports every New Years Day.

I use the app Award Wallet to keep track of my various cards and other such. I also use Trackmysubs which is a website and maybe an app which you specifically create entries for subscriptions and note whether they are lifetime, trial, and how often they renew. I think your idea of checking every New Year’s Day is a pretty good one. I tend to use the end of the year to do all sorts of cleanup of my emails and other such.

 

[NoSpin]

So Pauline, let me get this straight. You have Irish passports, British passports, and US passports and you are having trouble keeping track of all their expiration dates?

Is this the definition of first world problems?!

 

[Pauline]

We are three weeks into this trip now. We are traveling on our UK passports because of the expired Irish passport.

On July 1 we realised that the Post Office Travel Card that we depend on when traveling expired June 30. We were saved because I got our house minder to open our mail with the new credit card and take a photo of the front and back. From that we could update our Apple Wallets without having the valid card.

Nice of the Post Office (UK) to mail out the new cards just a week before they expire! These are prepaid cards where you move different currencies onto the card with an app. That way we don’t use our regular credit cards.

Since trouble seems to come in threes, I’m waiting for the next thing.