How To Set Up Your Finances Before Long-Term Travel: A UK Family's Checklist

Step 1: Sort your everyday spending card

If you currently use a standard high-street bank account (Barclays, NatWest, HSBC, Lloyds) as your primary spending card, that needs to change before you leave. Standard UK current accounts typically charge 2.75–2.99% on every foreign transaction, plus a flat ATM withdrawal fee on top. On a family spending £3,000–4,000 a month abroad, that’s £80–120 a month in charges that simply didn’t need to happen, over £1,000 a year before you’ve made a single avoidable mistake.

Starling Bank is what we use and what we’d recommend to most UK long-term travellers. It’s a full UK current account (sort code, account number, FSCS protection up to £85,000) and it charges zero foreign transaction fees and zero ATM withdrawal fees abroad. The Mastercard exchange rate it uses tracks closely to the mid-market rate. For a family, this one switch is probably the single highest-return financial decision you make before you leave.

Opening a Starling account is straightforward and usually done within a day, but it requires a UK address and a working UK mobile number for verification. Do it while you still have both.

For a full comparison of Starling against Wise and Revolut, including the trade-offs of each and which we’d recommend for different situations, see our Starling vs Wise vs Revolut verdict.

Step 2: Open a multi-currency account

Starling holds GBP and converts at the point of transaction. That works well for day-to-day spending, but it doesn’t help you when you want to hold a foreign currency in advance, send a rental payment to a landlord’s local bank account, or transfer money internationally.

That’s what Wise is for. Wise (formerly TransferWise) lets you hold money in dozens of currencies, convert between them at close to the mid-market rate with a small transparent fee, and send money directly to bank accounts in other countries.

In practice, we use it for three things.

Direct accommodation payments. We regularly book apartments and guesthouses directly with landlords rather than through platforms like Airbnb or Booking.com. Direct bookings typically save 10–15% because platforms take a significant cut from both the guest and the host. Sending a deposit directly to a local bank account via Wise is fast and cheap, and Wise shows you the exact fee before you confirm. So far, we’ve saved around £500 in 5 months worth of travelling.

Currency conversion timing. When sterling is strong against a currency we’re about to spend in, we convert in advance and hold it in our Wise account. This isn’t sophisticated currency speculation. It’s just not being forced to convert at whatever rate happens to apply on the day we need cash.

General international transfers. Visa services, deposits, sending money home or receiving it: Wise handles all of these cleanly, with full tracking in the app.

One thing worth understanding: Wise is not a UK bank and your balance is not FSCS protected. It’s an e-money institution that safeguards funds separately from its own finances. That’s meaningful protection, but it’s different from deposit protection. We don’t hold large sums in Wise for extended periods. It’s a working account, not a savings account.

For our full assessment, see the Wise travel card review.

Open a Wise account

Step 3: Get a travel credit card

Debit cards cover most situations. But there are three reasons a dedicated travel credit card earns its place in the wallet.

First, some merchants (particularly budget airlines in Southeast Asia) require a credit card rather than a debit card. When flying with AirAsia from Penang, Malaysia to Bangkok, Thailand we weren’t able to use our Starling card to pay for some water but thankfully we had our Halifax Clarity credit card handy to save the day. Without a credit card in this scenario, you’re either stuck or needing to pay in local cash you may not have.

Second, Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act gives you a legal claim against your card provider for purchases between £100 and £30,000 if something goes wrong: a fraudulent rental, a service not delivered, a company that folds after you’ve paid. That protection does not exist with a debit card.

Third, a credit card gives you a short float on larger purchases, a rental deposit, equipment you need to replace on the road, anything in the hundreds, without immediately drawing down your savings.

The Halifax Clarity is the card we carry for this purpose. It charges no foreign transaction fees, which is rare for a UK credit card and is the reason it consistently tops recommended travel credit card lists in UK personal finance. Pay the balance in full each month and it costs nothing to hold.

Step 4: Sort your insurance before anything else

If you’re leaving the UK for an extended trip, standard annual travel insurance policies won’t cover you. Most cap individual trips at 31 or 45 days. For anything longer, you need a backpacker or long-stay policy, and this is not an area where leaving it to the week before departure works in your favour.

The policies we compared seriously before our trip were SafetyWing, True Traveller, and World Nomads. We went with True Traveller for our family of four. Our policy for 11 months of travel cost just under £1800, which is more expensive than SafetyWing however comes with higher cover limits which we felt was worth the extra cost.

SafetyWing is worth considering if you want the flexibility of a monthly rolling subscription rather than committing the full premium upfront, which is useful if your timeline is still evolving. The trade-off is lower medical limits.

For a full breakdown of what each policy costs and covers, see our guide to the average cost of travel insurance for a family of four and our complete long-term family travel insurance guide.

One timing point that matters: some policies require you to purchase before you depart the UK. And if you’ve already had a claim, your renewal options narrow. Get this sorted well in advance.

Step 5: Handle the UK admin that trips people up

This is the section most financial checklists leave out, and it’s the one that causes the most real-world problems.

Keep a working UK mobile number. Your bank accounts, HMRC, and most financial services send verification codes by SMS to a UK number. If that number goes dormant or is reassigned after you leave, you can find yourself locked out of accounts at exactly the wrong moment. [INSERT: what you did, whether you kept the SIM active with top-ups or switched to a VOIP solution.] See our connectivity guide for the full approach to keeping a UK number active from abroad.

Update your contact address before you go. HMRC, your bank, your mortgage provider, DVLA where relevant: all of these should have a stable address, whether that’s a family member’s, a mail forwarding service, or a trusted friend’s. Correspondence going to an empty or rented property creates problems that can take months to untangle.

Notify your banks you’re travelling. Starling and Wise are generally good at recognising overseas transactions, but a quick heads-up reduces the risk of a fraud flag freezing your card at an inconvenient moment. If your primary account gets frozen in Vietnam at 10pm, you want to have already had that conversation.

Set up your accounts for remote management. Check the apps work on your phone, that two-factor authentication is configured correctly, and that you have backup access codes stored somewhere secure offline. Test all of this before you leave. Do not discover a problem at the departure airport.

Check your pension and tax situation. If you’re leaving employment, understand what happens to any workplace pension. If you’re self-employed or continuing to work remotely, understand your UK tax residency position. This isn’t the place for a full tax guide, but ignoring it isn’t an option. If in doubt, thirty minutes with an accountant before you leave is money well spent.

Step 6: Set up your emergency backup

Never travel with a single card. Cards get lost, accounts get frozen, machines reject specific cards without explanation. If your only card stops working in a country where alternatives aren’t immediately available, the situation gets difficult fast.

Our setup: Starling as the primary card for everyday spending and ATM withdrawals, Halifax Clarity credit card as the backup for emergencies and larger purchases, and Wise as a third option for anything requiring an international transfer or where we need more than the daily Starling ATM limit (£300) in one go. Cards are kept in separate bags, never all three in the same wallet or money belt.

If you have a second debit card from a legacy high-street account you don’t use day-to-day, keep it active and take it with you. Even with its foreign transaction fees, it costs almost nothing to hold and is cheap insurance against being completely stuck.

What we did, and when

We did our research on travel insurance providers around 4 months pre-departure, which we didn’t book straight away but were assured of the likely costs. It was then just a case of coming back to it closer to the time and making the payment. Next we got stuck into the banking side of things, and quickly found Starling was going to become our primary account, and that Wise was going to be a solid back up for spending/ATM withdrawals whilst playing it’s own leading role in the other aspects of money management whilst on the move. Finally, we looked at our connectivity and UK based admin ensuring our bank accounts were registered to my parent’s house.

The practical lesson from our experience: start the financial setup at least 3 months before departure, not because any single step is slow, but because problems compound when you’re trying to sort multiple things simultaneously while also handling the practical side of leaving the country. You want those last few weeks to be focused purely on the smaller things like buying bug spray and doing ‘dummy’ packing runs, not making major financial decisions.

For the broader planning timeline, covering when to start everything not just the financial setup, see our guide on how far in advance you should plan long-term travel.

The full pre-departure finance checklist

Accounts and cards

• Open a Starling Bank account (or equivalent zero-fee travel current account)
• Open a Wise multi-currency account and test with a small transfer
• Obtain a no-foreign-transaction-fee travel credit card (Halifax Clarity or equivalent)
• Confirm all three apps work correctly on your phone
• Store emergency backup access codes offline

Insurance

• Research and purchase a long-stay or backpacker travel insurance policy before departure
• Confirm your family configuration is covered, including ages, dependants, and pre-existing conditions declared
• Check your specific destinations and travel duration are covered
• Understand your excess, the claims process, and how to extend mid-trip if plans change

UK mobile and address

• Arrange to keep a working UK mobile number active for verification codes
• Update mailing address with HMRC, banks, and any other financial or government accounts
• Notify your bank(s) of your travel plans

Account access

• Set up two-factor authentication correctly across all accounts
• Test remote account access and transfers from a non-UK connection
• Confirm you can manage everything without needing to visit a UK branch

Financial admin

• Understand your tax residency position
• Make a note of your pension arrangements and contributions
• Arrange a mail forwarding service or trusted UK contact address

Emergency setup

• Keep at least two cards in separate bags at all times
• Carry a small amount of local cash on arrival at each new destination
• Know the process for replacing a frozen or lost card from abroad

For a broader look at what long-term travel actually costs a UK family month to month, see our guide on how much long-term travel actually costs.

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