Why this resolution beats "travel more"
This is the season for resolutions, and travel resolutions are among the most popular — and the most quickly forgotten. Travel more. Finally see somewhere new. Take the big trip. They are lovely intentions, and they are also vague enough that there is nothing concrete to actually do on a Tuesday in January.
Here is a travel resolution built differently. It is small, it is specific, it takes about five minutes, and you can finish it entirely in one sitting: check your passport before you book anything in 2023. That is the whole resolution. It is not aspirational — it is a task, with a clear beginning and end, and it quietly protects every other travel plan you make all year.
The reason it matters this particular year is timing. Passport processing has run long throughout 2022, and a trip planned around an out-of-date assumption can lose weeks no one budgeted for. A resolution you can finish in January, and that prevents a crisis in May, is worth far more than another year of travel more. Keep the small one. The big trips get easier when the boring part is already done.
The five-minute, year-opening check
Here is the entire check, start to finish. Set aside five minutes and actually find your passport — every passport in the household, if you travel as a family.
Look at three things. First, the expiration date, with the six-month rule in mind: most countries require your passport to be valid for at least six months beyond your entry date, so count six months back from the printed date and treat that earlier date as your real deadline. Second, the blank pages — a number of countries require two consecutive empty pages, and a passport nearly full from past travel needs replacing before it needs using. Third, the physical condition: a passport that is torn, water-damaged, or has an unreadable photo page can be refused even when the dates are perfectly fine.
Then write down what you find. One short list — each traveler's name and passport expiration date — kept somewhere you will see it again. If you travel with children, their passports are valid only five years and run on a different cycle than the adults', so they belong on the list too. That list is the entire output of the resolution. Glance at it before you book any trip in 2023, and you will never be surprised by a passport again.
Start 2023 with the documents already handled
The goal of this resolution is a specific feeling: starting the year with the documents already handled, so that travel in 2023 is about where you are going rather than whether you can.
If your January check comes back clean — every passport valid well beyond the six-month mark, pages free, condition good — then you are genuinely done. Book with confidence all year. If the check turns up a problem, you have found it at the best possible moment: the start of the year, with no flight booked and no countdown running. A renewal handled in a quiet January is an errand. The same renewal in a panicked May is a scramble.
And if you do need to act — a renewal, a first-time passport, a visa for somewhere new — that is what we are here for. APVI has helped travelers prepare their documents since 2003; we are registered with the U.S. Department of State and more than 90 foreign embassies, and when a deadline is tight we can move quickly, in urgent cases within 24 hours. But the easiest year is the one that starts with a five-minute check and a short list. Make that your 2023 resolution, and call us at (800) 766-0452 if the list turns up something to fix. Here is to a year of travel that begins with the paperwork already behind you.