Digitising Life to Maximise Mobility in Retirement

When I first started planning for retirement, I envisioned a life filled with travel – sailing in the Caribbean, year-long camper trips around Canada and US, spending summers in an old Tuscan villa (à la Under the Tuscan Sun), riding pillion behind my significant other while he meanders on a rickety Vespa to the village market for flowers and fresh produce for sun-soaked dinners with friends visiting from the other side of the world.

Romantic notions but is it all possible? How can I plan for a life of frequent travels being away for months or even a year or two while still being able to operate life on a business-as-usual mode, Maning our investment portfolio on-the-road.

Our retirement portfolio is largely composed of brick-and-mortar investment in real estate. For each of this property, I maintain a file where important documents and records are kept, such as title deeds, purchase documentation, taxes, insurance, lease agreements, renovation and maintenance etc. These files are bulky and inconvenient to lug around the world, let alone withstand rain and weather conditions. It is important however to keep and be able to access these records for lease renewals, tax records or when we need to sell a property.

What about medical records if we fall ill? And insurance policies, bank records, investment trackers, old photographs from before the time of digital cameras, books and  more books (yes I love reading)….the list runs long. How can I make my life portable for travel and being away for extended periods of time?

That was when I decided to digitise my life. So for 3 months after I quit work, I was clearing up and scanning paper documentation into soft copies and moving them to cloud storage. It was a tedious and slow process but liberating at the same time – shredding and discarding chunks of papers, journals, books. 

I opted for e-statements from banks, utility provider, share trading platforms, Central Provident Fund (my pension), insurance statements and applied for online access to all my accounts. And I downloaded Overdrive (freeware: app.overdrive.com available from Apple and Android) which allows borrowing of digital books for a specified duration as set by a library where one has membership. The App is offered as a free service by libraries around the world so all one needs is a library membership to access their digital content.

My life felt instantly lighter. I organised each digital file much like my paper files, using the same filing system and naming convention, including all important contacts and emails, making  for easy retrieval. Loads of papers were shredded.

And then there are books. Books from childhood, from literature classes, from my bookclub selection, from travels. Beloved sets by Enid Blyton – The Enchanted Wood, Magic Faraway Tree, Adventures of The Wishing Chair, the Famous Five series. Nancy Drew detective series by Carolyn Keene, Roald Dahl series, John Grisham, Patricia Cornwell, Jodi Picoult and of course, Lonely Planets travel guides. Throwing books away gives such a bad feeling but so few places accept used books nowadays. Not Community Centres, not Salvation Army, not even libraries.

After some research, I donated my books to The Hollandse Club simply because we had some Dutch books in our midst and it was just easier to donate the whole lot together. For those living in Singapore, this is a useful link for places that accept book donations. Except for a handful of books that I want to retain and my year books from my secondary schools through to junior college, everything else was given away. It was like closing a certain chapter of my life.

I stored everything in Google drive so I can share the files with my husband. To put it simply – it was a smarter and neater solution. Even if not planning for long periods of travel, digitising life is the way to go, with so many advantages:

• Ability to access your records whenever and wherever you are
• Set up and use search functions by date, topic, subject, keyword etc.
• Add comments or important data to each image without disfigurement
• Allow files to be shared and sent via emails or file transfers.
• Duplicate document for multiple folders as needed
• Save costs on printer, paper, ink cartridges, staplers, hole punchers, files
• Free up shelf/storage space especially limited in modern apartments
• No more printouts, save trees, more eco-friendly
• Prevent deterioration due to yellowing, fading or disintegration of papers over time. 
• Makes relocation easy

Many tools and Apps are available to assist with the digitising process. These paid Apps offer more fancy options but I opted to use free tools such as Google drive, my HP printer/scanner and scanning app on my iPhone.

As you go through the digitising process, you will start to think more about your life – taking stock of the past, selecting the memories you want to keep and more importantly, visualising the future you want. Instead of just hoarding stuff thinking you will use it again someday, you will need to think about what you want to let go of so that new, and hopefully better, things or adventures can come into you life.  It puts things into perspective and helps you set the framework for a better next act. It is definitely worth the while to get started.

Files, anyone?

Live free,

Savvy Maverick