The season for summer travels will soon be upon us! If you have travel plans this summer, follow these tips to help your vacations go smoothly.

• Scan your passports, boarding passes, and IDs, and email them to yourself.

Digital copies of important documents can be a lifesaver should the originals become lost or stolen.

• Put notes on your debit and credit card accounts.

This is especially important if you are travelling far from home. If you don’t put travel notes on your cards, your financial institution may flag your account for suspicious activity. Not having access to your funds could certainly put a damper on your vacation!

If you have the Goldenwest Credit Union mobile app, you can use Card Controls to enable and disable your Visa cards, mark your cards as lost or stolen, and even set-up travel notifications to ensure you have complete control of your funds at all times and from any place.

• When searching for flights and vacation packages online, enable your browser’s “private” feature.

Many travel websites will look at your browser history and then increase their prices based on what you seem most interested in. You can also clear your cache and browser history to help prevent rate hikes.

• Don’t settle on bundle packages.

Retailers have been telling us for years that groups of items bundled together is a better deal, but this is not always the case! However, some online travel websites will charge more for a package deal than each item would cost had you booked them individually. Make sure you are looking at itemized pricing as well, so you are not paying more than needed.

• Bring an empty water bottle to the airport that you can fill up after the security line.

No more airport-priced water bottles. Need we say more?

• When packing your clothes in a suitcase, roll them instead of folding them.

Rolling your clothes not only saves space, but also reduces wrinkles.

• If you are headed to the beach, stick your phone in a sealable plastic bag.

Your touchscreen will still work through the plastic, and it will be much more protected from the sand and the surf.

• You can check Google for your flight status.

Enter your airline name along with your flight number on Google, and you will be able to see if your flight is on-time or delayed.

• Put necklaces between two sheets of Press N’ Seal before packing.

No more tangles!

• Pack a dryer sheet in your suitcase.

This will keep your clothes smelling fresh all vacation long.

• Place plastic cling wrap on the tops of your bottles of liquids to keep them from spilling.

Simply put a little piece of cling wrap on top of the bottle opening, and then seal that on there with the bottle’s cap. Voila! No more spilling an entire bottle of shampoo on all your clean clothes.

• If possible, book your flights on weekdays.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are usually slower days for airlines, so you may find some discounted tickets on these days. It is also easier to get to your departure gate in a timely manner in a less crowded airport.