Today I spent some time on Car hire/rental/lease/buy back for our 3 months in France. It seems there are a few tricks.The Travel Planning To Do List – still growing….
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
Today I feel the world is going by too fast. I am now realising how little time we have left to do a very large number of things to prepare to go away-and everyone wants a piece of us! We don’t have enough time to see everyone (weekends away, dinners, lunches, drinks…) let alone do all we have to do to be prepared to leave on time.
I am certain and have no doubt in my mind that the second time we do this-go away, live and work elsewhere for 6 months, it will be much easier. I have started to compile an ever growing "to do" list – both for personal items and in order to enable us to rent our home as a corporate executive rental. I am not sure at this point, which list is longer. The corporate rental of our property is priority at the moment to enable the rental agent to have time to list and find tenants for a minimum 3 month period.
We discussed the pros and cons of renting our apartment as a holiday rental and decided that, for the first time, we would go with the executive rental (I will write a post specifically on the pros and cons of this at a later date!). But despite the fact that we picked the easier option with a manager to assist (less work and money than holiday rental but more easily orchestrated!), there is still A LOT TO DO. And surprisingly, this list, the personal "to do" list , working and incidental last minute items are all mixed with friends wanting to see us ‘before we leave’!
We have less than 10 weeks left and we are both getting nervous: about the amount to do and little time left, about the adventure itself and about making it work well-not just ‘work’. The ‘to do’ list priority for this week is the apartment, to ensure we have that set up as soon as possible is fundamental at this point. The manager/agent requires a minimum of 6 weeks to let the apartment for the date we leave and most rentals are 3 months so we would need to be ready to leave at the beginning of September. They also need new photos of their own, despite the wonderful website we have set up with everything including a video, to ensure the look and feel of their website is maintained. They also have provided a list of things to ensure we have in the apartment for rental use. This means I need to buy some items which are either not in our apartment or which I have but don’t want to use for rental tenants. At least the inspection and some packing is done! Next is Landlord insurance….
The personal "to do" list grows by the minute with everything from Travel Insurance, to International SIM cards for our phones, to overseas bank account options, to UK travel cards, notifying the electoral roll (almost forgot this one!) and professional memberships, organising our cars, car insurance, landlord insurance….it seems endless! But it will be better next time (I seem to keep saying this to myself…) and will make the whole experience more enjoyable (I keep saying this to myself also….!). This is combined with more friends and family booking themselves in to stay with us at the various country venues…..I am having trouble keeping track!
But the main thing I realise and the most important is: KEEP FOCUSSED: on the goal, on the dream and on the job ahead. You can’t be distracted by everyone around you wanting something, including you. You need to keep your eye on the goal and ensure you don’t waiver from the path. You only get this chance once to make it happen right so do it right the first time! And everything else and everyone else will fall into place……:)
