Before You Leave: 15 Things to Do Before You Go (2026 Nomad Checklist)
The first week in a new city should feel like arrival. For a lot of people it feels like damage control.
The adapter they packed doesn't fit the local sockets. Their bank blocked the card as suspicious activity. The travel insurance they bought covers 90 days — they're staying five months. The café wifi they connected to turned out to be a spoofed hotspot.
These aren't bad luck. They're the predictable cost of doing things in the wrong order. This checklist is the right order.
What Should You Actually Pack for a Digital Nomad Life That Involves Real Work?
The 15 Items That Earn Their Space in Your Bag
Your gear list isn't about looking the part. It's about being able to work a full eight-hour day from a city you've never been to, on wifi you don't control, in a space that wasn't designed for productivity. These are the 15 things worth packing:
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Universal travel adapter — one that covers your destinations and handles voltage variation automatically, not the single-country version from the airport kiosk. The 1109 covers 183 countries with dual USB and auto-switching between 110–250V.
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Surge protector — power instability is real in plenty of nomad hubs; one spike can end your hardware.
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Compact power strip — most guestrooms have one socket; you have four devices.
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Power bank with laptop charging capacity — for the six-hour café day when the only outlet is across the room.
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External hard drive or USB stick — insurance replaces the machine; it doesn't replace the data. Cloud handles daily sync; the physical drive handles the day everything else fails.
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Ethernet cable (1m) — coworking spaces should have them; having your own means not waiting.
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Noise-filtering earplugs — for deep work in cafés, shared offices, and thin-walled apartments. The 1106 filters disruptive frequencies without cutting everything; you can still hear your name called.
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Ergonomic laptop stand — your neck will remind you if you skip this after month two. The 1103 weighs 80g, sets up in one second, sits 2.5mm flat in your bag.
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Silent wireless mouse — the 1107 folds flat, runs 80 hours on a charge, and doesn't announce every click in a quiet room.
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Spare USB cables and a backup laptop charger — leads break; your specific charger is harder to source than you'd expect outside major cities.
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Unlocked phone with dual SIM — wifi is never guaranteed; a local SIM keeps you connected when it fails.
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USB-C hub with HDMI, USB-A, and SD card slots — one cable in, everything out.
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3-in-1 crossbody bag — for daily movement when you don't need your full pack. The 9903 converts between chest bag, crossbody, and waist pack, clips onto your main straps, and weighs 106g.
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A physical notebook — for planning, mapping out problems, and the thinking that doesn't happen on a screen.
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Your backpack itself — built to hold all of this without destroying your back or making you look like a tourist at a coworking space.
If you want to see how we've thought through the gear problem from a carry-on-only perspective, the Work From Anywhere collection was built around exactly this list.
The money: two accounts and one rule
Most financial problems on the road aren't about not having enough money — they're about accessing it badly. Two accounts and one withdrawal rule cover most of what goes wrong.
Open a low-fee travel card before you leave — Revolut, Wise, or equivalent. Standard bank cards charge 1.5–3% on every overseas transaction. Over six months that adds up, and the alternative takes twenty minutes to set up. When you need cash, withdraw larger amounts less often — repeated small ATM withdrawals mean repeated fixed fees. Keep cash in a money pouch against your body, not a back pocket.
Separately: keep a small reserve in USD, GBP, or EUR, stored somewhere other than your main wallet. This isn't an emergency fund — it's specifically for the afternoon the power goes out, the bank app stops responding, and the ATM down the street has been broken for three days. It's not dramatic. It happens.
On tax: most countries consider you a tax resident after 183 days in a calendar year. If you're moving frequently, you may fall below that threshold everywhere — which creates its own questions. US citizens are a specific exception: the IRS requires reporting worldwide income regardless of where you live or how long you've been gone. Before you leave, have one conversation with an accountant who understands location-independent work. The right structure is significantly easier to set up before departure than to fix retroactively.
The insurance: not travel insurance — nomad insurance
The coverage gap is specific and common: standard policies stop at 90 days, but most people who make nomad life work are gone for longer. Knowing this before you buy saves a difficult conversation with an insurer when you actually need to claim.
SafetyWing, World Nomads, and True Traveller all offer rolling coverage designed for people without fixed return dates. Before you buy any of them, check three things specifically: whether your laptop needs to be individually listed to be covered for theft or damage; whether medical evacuation is included, not just treatment; and whether there's a cap on how often you can return home during the coverage period. Some policies have one. Read the details before you pay, not after you need to claim.
Digital security: three things
The exposure here is specific: when you work from public networks, you're sharing infrastructure with strangers. That's manageable if you account for it, and genuinely costly if you don't.
A VPN adds encryption between your device and the internet and takes about five minutes to configure — it's the minimum protection for anyone handling financial work over networks they don't control. One specific risk to know: spoofed hotspots, where someone sets up a network with a name nearly identical to the legitimate one to intercept unencrypted traffic. Confirm the network name with staff before connecting anywhere new.
Beyond that: cloud backup plus a physical backup kept separate from your device. The cloud is for convenience; the hard drive is for when the cloud isn't accessible. And different passwords for different accounts, managed through a password manager. This is not advanced security practice. It's the current baseline.
The visa situation: know which side of the line you're on
Most people don't research this until they're already somewhere, which is the wrong time. Two minutes of clarity before you book saves a complicated situation at the border.
Most digital nomads work on tourist visas for clients outside the country they're visiting — a legal grey area, but one with low practical risk as long as you're not working for local employers. Working for local businesses on a tourist visa carries genuinely serious consequences, including deportation and blacklisting.
Two details that catch people at the wrong moment. First: most countries require your passport to have at least six months of validity beyond your entry date — if yours is close to expiry, renew it before you leave. People discover this at check-in. Second: some border officials ask for an onward ticket as proof you intend to leave. If you're traveling on a one-way ticket, buying a cheap refundable flight to a nearby destination and canceling it after entry is a common and functional approach. Expedia's US site allows free cancellation within 24 hours.
These aren't the things that make nomad life good. They're the things that, left unhandled, make it harder than it needs to be.
Deal with them a month before you leave, while you have time and a stable connection and nothing urgent competing for your attention. By the time you land, your brain is free for the actual work.
