Official documents to take on the road

What documents shall you bring on the road with us, just in case you need them? Which other ones should be scanned? If you are going on the road for more than a month or two, or if you are packing the house into a storage shed this question has most certainly popped in your mind.

As we have gone through the exercise here is some info that could help future fellow roadtrippers.

Original hard copies we are taking

• Passeports
• Birth certificates
• Marriage certificate
• Driver’s license
• RACQ and CIL (caravan insurance) roadside cards
• Medicare card
• Private insurance card

We have also made 2x certified copies of each one of these documents to take with us. We made a 3rd certified copy that we have left with Warrick’s parents.

Note: some jobs may require you to change your drivers license to the state the job is in. To do so both the original of your birth certificate and marriage certificate are required.

Digital documents (scanned) we are taking

• Immunisation records for the kids
• Notices of assessment for the past 7 years
• Resumes (ensure your LinkedIn profile is up to date as well)
• Caravan insurance certificate
• House insurance certificate
• Car insurance certificate
• Certificate of medical fitness (required for Warrick’s job)
• Passeports
• Drivers licenses
• Birth and marriage certificates
• Wills
• Private health statement (for tax, if required)
• Health records
• Bank statements (already in soft copy)

Best way to store digital documents when travelling

We use Dropbox as a file server for both our personal and Fabienne’s office. This means that instead of saving documents simply on the computers, we save it in the dropbox folder of the computer. So it automatically gets copied to the cloud and backed up.

Scanning documents

Fab being the digital mind that she is, she is always be on the lookout for the best digital solutions! We currently use the Genius Scan + app on our iPhones. Basically it takes a photo of your document and turns it in to a PDF. You can append more than one page to a document.

Apart from allowing you instantly emailing the ‘scanned documents, this app lets you send the document to different apps such as Dropbox, Google drive, Evernote etc.

Other important information you may require

There is definitely a lot of ‘other’ information you will need to access on the road. Like us, you may not want to take all your membership cards – such as your frequent flyer card –  with you, nor the little booklet the bank gives you with your bank account numbers.

The best way to store all this information is to use a digital solution… It doesn’t take any room, is super secure and synchronises to all your devices. Fabie has been using the program called 1Password for her business for the past 5 years and couldn’t live without it. It stores everything from:

• All logins
• Secure notes
• Credit card numbers
• Identies
• Sofware licenses
• Reward programs
• Bank account details.

As the app requires the user to enter your ONE master password every time the app is used no one else can access your 1Password program – even if your computer is stolen.

And guess what, it synchronises to our different devices via Dropbox so the password file is also backed up at all times, in the Cloud. Et voila!