It’s no secret that moving can be incredibly stressful. It also often means handing over your most valuable possessions to moving companies. Leaving your personal possessions with a moving company can exponentially increase stress during the moving process.
From electronic devices to extremely sensitive personal documents, you need to know how to handle your most valuable possessions during a move.
Steps You Can Take to Protect Your Personal Information
There are some simple ways to protect your private and sensitive data throughout the moving process. It’s important that during a move, you consider and take steps to protect anything that is personally identifying.
Personally identifying items include anything with your name accompanied by sensitive information like social security numbers or important account numbers. This page will give you a checklist of items for before you hand over your most important items for a move.
Collect Sensitive Personal Documents
The first way to protect your personal information during a move is to collect all sensitive personal documents. Many people have one spot where they keep these documents, so it may be as easy as grabbing everything from that one spot.
Documents that should be included in your collection include:
- Birth certificate
- Bank or credit card statements
- Social security card
- Insurance information
- Credit reports
- Diplomas / certificates of education
- Passport
- Investment statements
This list is not exhaustive and should be used as a starting point. Some movers might not have all of this information, and some may need to include more documents than listed above. Use your best judgement and collect anything that you feel is important.
Social Security Numbers & Account Numbers
Your most sensitive information is also the information that could compromise your identity and credit. Documents like your social security card and your bank account numbers are items that you should ideally keep under lock and key.
Getting a small locked box is a good way to make sure these documents do not fall into the wrong hands during the moving process. If a lockbox is not available or in the budget, it’s a good idea to keep these documents with you at all times or give these documents to a trusted relative or friend.
Insurance Company Documents
Just as important as the documents above, but less sensitive, insurance documents are important to keep in mind during a move. Insurance statements and coverage descriptions should still be kept on hand even with steady internet access.
By including insurance documents in your checklist, you’re also ensuring that no lapses in coverage occur during the moving process. Insurance companies will also need to be notified of a change of address once the move is complete.
Electronic Devices
In today’s world, electronics move everything. Especially if you have young children, keeping electronics safe and secure during a move could be the difference between a meltdown and a smooth journey. Laptops, televisions, smart devices like Amazon’s Alexa, streaming devices, and others might be included in your electronic checklist.
As these are some of the most expensive individual items that you will move, you should consider how you or your moving company is going to transport them. If you still have the boxes and packing materials, it’s a good idea to use those during transport. If not, using a combination of soft materials like blankets and large totes, you should be covered when it comes to protecting your electronic devices.
Friend or Family Member Information
If you’re like most people, you also have documents with potentially sensitive information about friends or family members. Things like addresses on birthday or holiday cards should be kept private, and while not something you need to put in a lockbox, these items should be handled with care.
Giving these documents to a trusted family member or friend is a good way to protect these often overlooked documents during a move.
Safety First for Busy Bee Customers
As a Busy Bee customer, we prioritize safety for both you and your most precious items. We’ll help you protect your information in a way that makes sense, and will take the utmost care to ensure proper delivery. Making your move go as smoothly as possible is what keeps us going. You can trust us to take care of your items like they were our own.
