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The Backup Info Sheet
A photocopy of all your important travel documents is the message in a bottle you send to yourself in case you get into trouble and lose them
The first precaution you need to take in case you lose some or all of your vital documents and cards is not to lose them in the first place, which is why you carry everything but a day's spending money in your money-belt. 
Just to be on the safe side, however, you're also going to make a backup info sheet.
First, make a photocopy collage that includes the following:
- The information page of your passport (not the front cover!)
- Your driver’s license and International Driver's Permit
- Your student ID or teacher ID card
- Your health insurance card
Second, write on this sheet your credit card numbers ("code" them somehow—and don't forget that annoying little three digit extra code printed on the back), the serial numbers of your traveler’s checks, and the phone numbers (see below) for the issuers of your ATM bank cards, credit cards, and traveler’s checks—if you lose any of them on the road, you’ll need to call it in immediately.
It will also help to jot down the addresses and phone numbers of the local U.S. consulates (or whatever your home consulate would be) in the cities you expect to visit. (More on losing things.)
Calling in lost credit cards, ATM bank cards, and traveler's checks
About those card and check phone numbers. As you probably know, all credit cards, ATM cards, and such have printed on them a standard toll-free number (800, 888, or 877) you can call for customer service. This number will be useless to you when traveling in Italy—or anywhere outside the U.S. and Canada, for that matter—because you can't call an 800-number from aboard.
However, most cards will also have a non toll-free number with some local area code that you can call collect from abroad. If it's not written on the back of the card or somewhere on the card issuer's web site, call the toll-free number that is on there, navigate the annoying "push 1 for..." system until you get a live person, and ask her. Be sure this is the number you jot down on your backup info sheet. (More on dialing the U.S. from Italy.)
Keeping your backup info safe
Make as many copies of this backup sheet of paper as there are people traveling in your party plus two.
- Copy #1: Carry the main copy with you in a safe place—separate from the original documents! (Since I carry my passport, credit cards, etc. in my moneybelt, I keep the backup info sheet copy in my leather belt with the hidden zippered compartment.)
- Copy #2: Take one of the "plus-two" copies and tuck it away inside the lining of your bag, or somewhere else secure and not obvious (and, again, separate from both the original documents themselves and from the other copy you have with you).
- Copy #3: Leave the other "plus two" copy with a friend at home (along with a copy of your itinerary), so that, if call else fails, you can always call them for help.
- Copies #4-x: Give everyone in your party one of the other copies. Have them do the same to you with copies of their backup info sheets. That way, if one person loses theirs, the others will have a replacement.
Related pages
- On the fine art of losing things
- Moneybelts - Everyone's favorite travel accessory to hate
- Thieves and pickpockets
- Passports
- Dialing the U.S. from Italy
- Using traveler's checks
- Credit cards in Italy
- ATMs in Italy
- Health insurance abroad
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This material was last updated February 2011. All information was accurate at the time.
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