Pre-Travel Check List – June 2026 End of Month Update

One of the pleasures of retirement is the joy of travel and Slack Investor is about to head off to Brittany and the UK. He is fortunate that Ms Slack Investor has many skills in the travel booking department – and he doesn’t have to worry about accommodation, flights, or train and ferry tickets. However, there are some responsibilities that have landed on Slack Investor’s desk. Any products mentioned are not sponsored – but just things that he likes to use.

Insurance

Fortunately, Slack Investor has a Commonwealth Bank Ultimate Rewards credit card that offers free overseas travel insurance. This Cover-More policy requires a card spend of $500 on travel and has a $500 excess. Important Note: If you think you would like a credit card for retirement – get yourself sorted out while you are still working. Getting the card that you want is increasingly difficult when you are retired – and only relying on superannuation income.

Travel Money

The Commonwealth Bank Ultimate Rewards credit card has no international transaction fees and uses the Mastercard default rate in working out foreign exchange rates. So, he will use this card for most swipe transactions. His money cards are also loaded into his phone wallet.

For cash, he avoids the horrendous cash advance fees on credit cards by using his Macquarie Bank Debit Card. This exceptional card offers no international transaction fees and uses the Mastercard FX swap rate. Some overseas ATM’s will have a usage fee. However, by using only major banks in overseas countries, Slack Investor has mostly avoided these.

Slack Investor has much praise for his Macquarie Bank Transaction account. This account is the best that Slack investor has ever had. Features include:

• No Macquarie fees when using overseas.
• No Fees and 2.75% interest on your domestic transaction account.
• Great app and transaction control.
• Linked Savings account offers 5.0% interest.

Phones and Sims

One day there will be a time when you can just have just one sim in your phone and you can roam the world using that sim at a reasonable cost. It is not this day as yet. Currently, the best option is to get another sim for overseas travel. This can cause some complications with two factor authentication if finance institutions wanting to SMS your Australian sim. In most cases, you can work around this by communicating through the finance app. As a last resort, just swap back the Australian sim temporarily for any vital sms communication.

For older phones that can only use a physical sim, it is cheapest to pick up a local sim at the airport, or a convenience store, when you arrive. If you don’t want this hassle and have time for the Australian company TravelKon to post you a sim from Perth – they have 30 day 20GB physical Europe sims for $28.

If your phone can handle an e-sim, this is the best way to go. Slack Investor found the best deals for multiple country Europe/UK were through E-tel Mobile and TravelKon.

The cheapest e-sim options were for a data only plans – and any required phone calls can be made through a VOIP application like WhatsApp. Slack Investor would use Wi-Fi at his accommodation for any big data requirements. For maps and searches during the day, 10GB for 30 days would be plenty. E-tel has a 30 day 10GB Europe plan for $27.90 AUD. TravelKon have a sale on at the moment – a 30 day 10GB Europe plan for $20.30 AUD. These e-sims can be set up before leaving Australia – and will automatically activate on arrival in Europe.

Finding my phone

Slack Investor should be more vigilant … and will try to be better. However, he has a Samsung Android phone and is prone to leaving it on tables etc. He often finds his phone using his google account. Just put ‘find my phone’ in any browser to locate the google find hub. You can ring your phone or find it on a map or lock it from this site once you have signed in to this site.

It occurred to me that this would not be as easy in a far off land. For an extra layer of security, both Ms Slack Investor and myself have shared locations with the Samsung Find app. If either of us leaves our phones somewhere, we should be able to locate it.

For those in iPhone world, I am sure there are similar Apps. A company that Slack Investor recently bought, Life360, has a family location app with a free tier.

Other Travel Considerations

Slack Investor likes to travel light and tries to do a lot of walking on his breaks. His Osprey Farpoint 40-litre Travel Pack combined with packing cubes for internal organization has proved to be a reliable companion. The pack is sized for cabin baggage and can be found for $284.29 AUD. Ms Slack Investor uses the similar 38-litre Kathmandu Litehaul (On special at the moment for $179.98). Depending on the airline cabin bag policy, the weight varies between 7 and 10Kg.

A special mention to my compact travel power adapter available e-bay Australia for $20.98 AUD and my portable clothesline (available under $10). For the lightweight traveller, hand washing is crucial and a clothes line is essential. So is 4m of extra cord to help tie up the line in tricky layouts. For emergencies, a hotel hair dryer is a handy sock drying tool.

June 2026 – End of Month Update

The end of another Financial Year. Slack investor will summarize the year in the next post. The S&P 500 (-0.3%) and the FTSE 100 (+0.1%) took a well-earned ‘breather’. The ASX 200 returned a solid 1.5% for the month.

Slack Investor remains IN for all markets.

All Index pages and charts  have been updated to reflect the monthly changes – (ASX Index, UK Index, US Index).

The quarterly updates showing the current holdings and cash position of the Slack Portfolio have also been completed.