How to Protect Your Valuables While on Vacation

The air is getting warmer and sunshine is lasting longer – summer is coming. Many of you have started to plan well-deserved summer vacations. You’re daydreaming about relaxation or adventure, perusing Pinterest for clothing ideas and already envisioning your social media overshares .

This week, we will not be reminding you to set a budget for vacation (and you thought you knew us so well). Instead of going on about how to keep cash in your wallet during your trip, we’d like to share some top tips on how to protect other valuables while on holiday. As your trip nears and you run through all the little things that must be done before checking out, take a minute to think about where to hide – or not to hide – your valuables.

If you’ve stashed valuables in the following places, know that most criminals are on to you:

Jewelry box

File cabinet

Nightstand

Underwear/sock drawer

Under the mattress

Cookie Jar

Freezer (yes, they’ve even figured this one out)

Toilet tank

Kids’ rooms (valuable techy toys make kids’ rooms prime for the picking)

Instead, think outside the freezer box and consider:

A hollowed book (if you have a big enough library)

False bottom of kitchen/bathroom trashcan

False or empty cleaning bottles

False electrical

Floor safe (many wall safes can be easily cut out and carried

Garage/attic boxes (marked with mundane labels such as “x-mas ornaments”)

Don’t forget to also hide your actual home. Say what? GPS has created an all-too-easy cookie trail for airport car thieves to find your home. If you have stored destinations in your GPS system, reset “home” to something other than your exact address from which you can still easily find your way home.

Bon Voyage!

Related: If You Love the Idea of Driving Into 2018 in a New Car but Dread the Car Buying Process