As someone who spends the majority – or at least a significant portion – of your time traveling the world, storing your personal information, financial records, and other important documents can be a challenge. Security is obviously a top priority, but you need easy access as well. Your purse or back pocket generally isn’t the best place to store something like your birth certificate long-term; and, if you lose sight of your list of account names and passwords, you could be in for a world of misery for a long time to come.
So, what do you do? How do you keep your most important documents safe while keeping them with you at all times?
The answer is probably obvious: In most cases, you don’t—at least not in hardcopy. If you are traveling, even to relatively-safe locations, just like you should leave valuables at home it is generally best not to make a habit of taking your vital records on the go. However, you don’t need most of these documents that often anyway, and when you do, you have both online and offline options available.
Where to Keep Hardcopy Documents When You Travel
If You Don’t Need It, It Stays Home
Whether you have a house or apartment or are truly a digital nomad with no one place to call home, you should find a safe place to store important documents that you don’t need while you are traveling. A high-quality safe is a good option, and if you have a place of your own, a security system (or at least an apartment in a building with a callbox or doorman) can be a smart investment as well. If you don’t have your own place, ask your parents, a sibling, or your closest friend if they wouldn’t mind giving up a few square feet in a closet for you to store your things.
If you take this approach, you will need to decide if you want to give someone else access – just in case. If a situation comes up where you need something that you didn’t bring with you, documents can be mailed around the world in a couple of days. Of course, mailing brings up its own security concerns as well. Ask the sender to buy insurance (or, better yet, send them a few bucks with your phone), and make sure they double and triple-check where the package is supposed to go.
Buy a Portable Safe
A portable safe may sound like somewhat of an oxymoron; but, they’re real, and they’re a good idea. For not very much money, you can buy a safe that will fit in your luggage and that you can lock to something secure (like a sink pipe) in your hotel room. Of course, some hotel rooms come with safes – and you could research this in advance – but why take the chance? Keep your documents locked in a box while you’re traveling, and secure them in your room when it’s time to leave them behind.
Use Caution and Common Sense
If you absolutely must take sensitive documents with you out in public, the best advice is just to be smart about it. Keep them as secure and inconspicuous as possible, and return them to a safe location as soon as you are done with whatever it was that you needed to do.
Online Storage Options for Sensitive Documents and Information
Secure Document Storage Applications
As a digital nomad or someone who travels regularly for leisure, secure online storage can be your best friend. Aside from your birth certificate and passport, there are very few original documents you will need for your globetrotting lifestyle. From estate planning documents to business financials, there isn’t much that can’t be stored safely and securely for immediate access on the go.
These days, there are countless online storage solutions available. Our advice? It’s probably best to stick with the bigger, more-established names. Plus, you should be sure to carefully read the terms of service to make sure your chosen provider offers the level of security you are looking for.
Password Vaults
Of course, even the most secure storage platform won’t protect your documents if other people can get access to your password. To prevent this, you can download an app to your phone that stores all of your passwords in an encrypted vault. You memorize one complex password that opens the vault; then, as long as no one else has that one password, the rest of your passwords (and thus your online documents) should all be secure.
Jiah Kim & Associates | Legal Services for Expat Families and Global Entrepreneurs Worldwide
At Jiah Kim & Associates, we offer international estate planning and business law services to entrepreneurs, expats, and business owners worldwide. For more information about our services, please call (646) 389-5065 or schedule an appointment online today.
This blog post is written for educational and general information purposes only, and does not constitute specific legal advice. You understand that there is no attorney-client relationship between you and the blog publisher. This blog should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in your state.