Debriefing Your Finances After a Vacation

Today is my first day back in the office after a ten day vacation. I wish I could say I'm relaxed and refreshed from the trip, but the huge amounts of email sorting and luggage unpacking have quickly brought me back down to earth. When you return from a vacation, especially an international trip, there are a few important things to do for your finances: 

1. Look at your credit card and bank statements - Quickly take a look online at your recent card activity from the trip. Are there any suspicious charges you don't remember making? Any charges that are higher than you authorized? It is common to encounter a bit of credit card fraud while traveling. If you do find something, immediately notify your financial institution about the fraud and check your credit reports.

2. Check your mail - Hopefully, you placed an online mail hold before you left on vacation so that your personal mail wasn't left vulnerable to thieves. Once your held mail is delivered, go through it to see if there are any bills or other financial mail that require your attention. Shake out catalogs and magazines that might have bills crammed in their pages. If you are missing a bill, check your account and watch the mailbox. A missing bill could be a sign of an identity thief.

3. Pay your bills - Any bills that came while you were on vacation should be paid and sent off right away. You wouldn't want a late payment damaging your credit scores. If you paid for your vacation expenses with a credit card (a good idea for the extra fraud protection), create a plan for paying off the debt balances as soon as possible. Carrying high balances on your credit cards can also damage your scores.

Ahk! I still have 300+ emails to get through today. Time to stop blogging and get back to deleting!

Comments

[credit card oner]

Many of us do not realise that, when we use a credit card abroad the card issuer adds on a foreign usage loading.It is the fact that 67% of credit card users don't know the charges for using their card abroad.