When Should You Renew Your Passport?

TTT - Passport Renewal
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Jenn: Hey everyone and welcome back to Travel Tip Tuesday with the Travel Mug Podcast. How are you today, Meggan?

Meggan: I'm lovely. Thanks for asking. How are you?

Jenn: I am good. So as usual, I was browsing my favorite travel Facebook groups and I noticed a lot of questions around passports and when to renew them, so I thought to myself, this would be a good travel tip Tuesday episode.

Meggan: How timely.

Jenn: I know. So when should you renew your passport? First of all, we need to consider the expiry date of your old passport if you have one.

So many countries require your passport to be valid for up to six months after your arrival date or your departure date. It depends on the country. There's no standard. So this rule exists to avoid having tourists getting stuck in their country if their passports expire and they, they have to like wait for an emergency travel document and blah, blah, blah.

So that's why it exists. I personally think six months is like a long time, but any who, that's not why we're.

Meggan: I don't think it's gonna be long once you give some of these timeframes here.

Jenn: Yeah, so I mean, just based on that, a passport, a 10 year passport is good for nine years and six months, right? It's annoying. So the issue right now is that renewing your passport is taking a long time, at least here in Canada, but also in the US. So, I kind of looked into it just to see what was going on.

So officially, the Government of Canada website says turnaround time is 10 business days if you apply in person and 20 business days, if you apply by mail, not including the mailing time, and Canada Post is not always fast. So, There's that. So with urgent pickup, you can have it by the next business day.

With express pickup, you can have it in two to nine business days. And obviously there are additional fees, if you need to do that. And you have to have documentation proving that you need the passport, , urgently. So you need like travel documents, in order to prove that you need it quickly. The pickup thing is great if you live in like a city, but for me, who lives like almost two hours away from the, from the office, it's kind of a pain in the butt.

So the US processing times according to the Department of State is 10 to 13 weeks for routine nine to seven weeks for expedited. And then they also note that it may take up to two weeks for applications to arrive by mail at the Passport Agency and up to two weeks for you to receive it. After they've completed it and sent it to you.

So that's another four weeks on top of the processing time of potentially 13 weeks.

Meggan: Our US pals better be thinking ahead.

Jenn: Well that's, I mean, the group that I'm in is a large portion, I think of American people and they're kind of like, oh my God, I applied a really long time ago and I still don't have it. And my trip's coming up and like, yikes. So.

Meggan: Yeah.

Jenn: Ooh, and then so I looked up Australia because Canada, US and Australia are our top countries, but we love all of you equally, I promise. Australia notes that you should allow six weeks to receive your new passport. So that's not as bad, I guess.

Meggan: I guess it's still long. It still takes a some forethought.

Jenn: Yeah. So all in all, it is taking a while no matter where you are. People, more people have been applying for passports, , in the last couple of years since travel opened back up again. So I think that's kind of why that might be going on. So if your passport is expiring in the next year or so, I would start the renewal process sooner rather than later, especially if you have set in stone travel plans. Uh, Meggan, had you heard about these, delays or long waits for passports?

Meggan: Oh, definitely. I mean, I, I certainly haven't heard about here in Canada as much, so I did figure things were better and honestly from the sounds, that kind of sounds back to normal-ish. In terms of our timeframes, I'm not sure like what historically it's been for the us. That seems a little long to me. But I know here it's definitely gotten better.

Luckily I do live close to the office. I probably would, even though going downtown doesn't sound fun, either, definitely probably do the in-person thing. But I remember hearing like a year plus ago, the lines were crazy. People were waiting, waiting a long time. But it seems like things have improved.

Jenn: Yeah, for sure. So my passport doesn't expire until September, 2025, but I am already keeping it in the back of my mind to renew probably the end of 2024, because if we wanna travel in spring 2025, my passport needs to be valid for six months. So if we, I. Ha want to travel before March

Meggan: Yep.

Jenn: or Yeah, after March, I guess.

But if we wanna travel , I gotta make sure that it's valid and I mean, that's a pain in the butt. Like it's basically a whole year, or at least nine months in advance that you need to be thinking about this. So

Meggan: Yeah, definitely.

Jenn: that is all we have for this week. I wanna know if you have had a long wait for a passport or if you're currently waiting and it's been a long time, let us know.

You can find us on Instagram and Facebook at Travel Mug Podcast, we're also on our website, travel mug podcast.com and share the show with the Travel Loving Pal so they know when to renew their passwords.

Meggan: I mean, save somebody some grief.

Jenn: Seriously, we'll chat with you again soon. Bye everyone.

Meggan: Bye Bye everybody.