How to Keep Your Home Safe When You Travel Often

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When planning a trip away, the last thing you’re thinking about is your own home. However, when you leave for a vacation, whether it’s a long weekend or a month-long cruise, your home is susceptible to theft. Here’s how to make sure your home stays safe and in tact when you’re thousands of miles away.

1. Prepare for the worst to happen. Nobody wants their house to be robbed, but since you already know it’s a possibility, prepare for the worst case scenario. Double-check your insurance policies before embarking on your trip. Make sure you have the right protection and that all the information is up-to-date. Coverage should include accidents as well as robberies. To reduce the risk of important things being stolen, install safes for your home. You can put documents and other things in it. It will protect those items if ever you are not around and a fire breaks out.

2. Put your lamps on timers so it looks like people are home throughout the evening. Make sure that you’ve paid your Palmco bill for the time you’ll be away so that your electricity doesn’t get shut off. A house that’s dark night after night is a dead giveaway that it’s empty.

3. While you’ll want to leave your lights plugged in, unplug your other electronics. For example, when your garage door is active, a clever intruder can actually figure out how to open it electronically. Plus, keeping some of your bigger electronics unplugged will save you electricity and keep your bill as low as possible.

4. If you’re leaving your car at the airport, don’t leave the GPS in the car. Or, if the GPS is built in to the car, make sure to delete your home address. Some burglars will steal your car, set the GPS to “Home” and then find your empty house.

5. Don’t tell a lot of people that you’re traveling. If you’re having a trusted friend or family member check on your house while you’re away, that’s fine, but keep your trip to yourself otherwise. Don’t use social media check-in features or post photos of your vacation, both things that will make it obvious you’re in another state or country. Also, ask the post office to hold your mail. If you keep having it delivered and it starts to overflow in your mailbox, it’ll be obvious nobody’s home.

Every year, over two million homes are burgled in the U.S. Make sure to protect your privacy and home every time you leave town.