How to Prepare Before Leaving for Your Travel Assignment

Preparing to leave home for your next travel assignment is exciting, but there are a few things you need to wrap up before you hit the road. 

Packing for your trip is undoubtedly another important part of preparing to leave for your travel assignment, but it deserves its own post. 

Move Essential Items Online

The more things you can move online the better. Here are the items I’ve moved online:

• Financial statements, bills, and documents
  • We will discuss how to receive mail while on assignment in the next section, but there are often delays in receiving mail and issues can arise. Long story made short, the more you can move online, the easier your life will be.
  • While you can certainly pay your bills without automation, I highly recommend setting up automatic bill pay while you’re at it. The nomad lifestyle comes with some additional things to remember such as paying rent for two different places (depending on your unique situation and taxes). With so many variables at play, I prefer to automate bill pay so that I don’t have to worry. This ensures I won’t forget and potentially hurt my credit. 
• Electronic copies of documents you might need
  • Work certifications– Even though your agency submits your certifications online, it’s helpful to have copies just in case something goes missing. I keep copies of everything in a photo album on my phone. This also makes it easy for submitting to new contracts if you decide to go with a different agency for the next one. 
  • Pet records– Many housing options, groomers, etc. require copies of rabies vaccines. If you travel with your pet, make sure you have access to the records online through the vet’s website (if available), or ask your vet to email you a copy of the records that you can save to your phone.
  • Insurance documents– while it is a good idea to have a hard copy of your health insurance, I also like to have an electronic copy saved on my phone. This really goes for everyone, regardless of nomad status, but it’s a good idea to have a photo of your health insurance in case you are in an accident or get sick suddenly. Just as I keep a photo album on my phone with work certifications, I also keep an album with important medical and other insurance documents. (Speaking of health insurance- if you want to know more about health insurance options as a travel nurse, I have a post about that here)

Mail Forwarding

Am I the only one who gets anxiety thinking about getting summoned for jury duty, but never actually receiving the notice in the mail? Sign up for informed delivery with USPS! It does not replace mail forwarding, but it emails you a photo of the envelopes you will be receiving. This gives a little peace of mind in regards to worries about not receiving important mail, and it’s completely free. Now, onto mail forwarding:

There are a few options for mail forwarding, but it can be a little complicated. In general, society isn’t set up for nomads, but this is slowly changing and getting easier. As previously mentioned, I recommend moving as much as you can to electronic mail. For the things that don’t have the option to send electronically, here are the options that currently exist:

• Have a trusted friend or family member collect your mail

I have used this option in a pinch, but I don’t prefer it. I don’t like feeling like a burden on someone else who has to take time out of their day to go check my mail. If there is something important, that friend then has to take more time to mail it to my current location or post office. 

•  USPS Temporary change of Address

I have also done a temporary address change to forward my mail with USPS, but this option has it’s drawbacks. The primary issue being speed. This is a government agency dealing with something that is already called “snail mail” after all. If you decide to go this route, expect a 2 week delay for each address change before you can expect to see your mail start showing up. 

While the process for setting up a temporary change of address is usually pretty easy, there are some roadblocks that can occur. For example, my husband and I sold our home and moved into an apartment nearby. We ran into trouble with ID verification from USPS because we had not yet changed the address on our drivers licenses. We were unable to forward our mail until we updated our licenses. This is when we ended up using a friend to help collect our mail instead. 

The USPS temporary change of address service is nearly free (there is a small fee of a little over $1 at the time of this post) and (usually) doesn’t leave you reliant on family/friends back at home. 

Note that it is only an option for up to a year. 

You still need an address to receive mail to, and some rental housing options do not allow you to forward mail there. If this is the case, you may also need to purchase a PO box or other mailbox in your new city. 

USPS does offer a “premium” mail forwarding service, but it’s too expensive for me to consider at over $20 per week. 

• Purchase a mail forwarding service or PO box

This last option is the most convenient, but it is also the most costly (still not bad in my opinion). There are several companies to choose from that offer mail forwarding such as iPostal1.com, travelingmailbox.com, or YourBestAddress.com. Several of them come with a PO box or mailbox as well which is needed if you want to be able to receive physical packages. 

I used iPostal for about 6 months. It requires a bit of work to set up (including using a notary online). iPostal will forward all of your mail to a location (such as a UPS store or something similar). You then have the option to pick up your mail in person (usually free, but depends on the location), trash junk mail, or to pay to have the contents opened and scanned. I ended the service after that contract, but I would consider signing up again if my housing option didn’t allow me to receive mail there. Other mail forwarding services function similarly with varying prices and inclusions (such as including a specified number of scanned pages). 

Prepare your vehicle and your home

Vehicle maintenance: I always make sure to have my vehicle up to date with an oil change and routine maintenance before leaving for an assignment that’s over 5 hours from home. The last thing you want is to break down in the middle of a long drive and miss your assignment start date. 

If you happen to have a second vehicle that will not be in use while you are gone, leave it with a friend or family member to crank every so often and drive a little so the pressure point on the tires is changed up. Better yet, rent out your vehicle with an app like Turo and make some money off of it!

Home maintenance: If you have a home with a yard, you’ll need to consider things like setting up lawn maintenance. If you are going to be gone during the winter, make sure your home is prepared in the event of a winter storm. 

Home security: Use an plug timer to turn a lamp off and on making it look like someone is home as a deterrent to burglars.

Visible video cameras or camera door bells (like Ring) also make great deterrents even if they are turned off.  

If you have a neighbor that you trust, ask them to keep an eye out for any suspicious activity while you are away. 

Take Care of Medical/Prescription Needs

This is dependent on your health and health insurance situation. I prefer to get my annual appointments taken care of while I’m home, but this might not be an option if your health insurance is tied to your contract. Prescriptions are usually easy enough to pick up at your contract destination, but this will be dependent on the medication and the location of your contract. The main point here is to think through your health needs before you leave. 

Set up a Back Up Resource at Home

In my experience, something always comes up during an assignment. For example, during one contract, freezing weather came through unexpectedly back at home. Luckily, family was available to drip the indoor faucets and winterize outdoor faucets. During another contract, there was the situation where I was unable to complete a temporary change of address. Fortunately, I had a friend that was able to check the mail for me. 

Hopefully you won’t need it, but it is a good idea to have a local trusted friend or family member with a key to your home just in case. 

Now that you know how to prepare before you leave, find out what to expect at your first travel nursing contract .