When On The Road for Months, how do you handle mail?

Fergie

We bought a 2015 T@B S Max this fall along with a 2009 Ford Expedition towing vehicle and are planning to take this outfit on an extended trip across the U.S. and to Alaska this year. We are actually moving to Palmer, AK to be near family. How do you RV'ers handle mail and mail forwarding for such a period of time? Also any ideas about paying bills, dealing with taxes, health care and any other business stuff most folks have to deal with even after retirement. Would be very interested to hear actual experiences, both good and bad, especially those involving the Alaska Highway.

Fergie from Minnesota

Nomad

The most common two ways are you have your mail sent to a friend/relative or a mail forwarding service. Then you have them forward it (on whatever type of schedule you'd like) to wherever you are in care of General Delivery at the Post Office. Or FedEx/UPS.
Since I'm doing this full-time,I set it all up in SD where they have specialty forwarding services - my legal residence is SD, they took care of everything. I have it set where I call them and see what I have and have them throw stuff and forward the rest on.
For regular billls, auto pay works well.

mickietucs

I will use a friend's address (will keep AZ as my domicile). All bills are done online (as PXL mentioned-auto pay). Am getting Original Medicare supplement as coverage is everywhere (no network).

jkjenn

If you do a web search for full time RV, you will find some of the services as well as some good advice on how to handle those things. The Technomadia blog us a really good resource. Taxes can be tricky if you are working while in different states. The other great place for resources and information on these topics is the Escapees club.

Sgtjohn

You can forward your mail to a UPS office that has "post office" boxes and they will xerox your envelopes and send it to you and then you can have them forward the mail that you deem important.   I think they told me it's $15 per month plus the forwarding business.

Nomad

My service in SD is $150/yr + mailing cost.
For the first year, that included handling my vehicle title registrations/transfers plus the establishment of residency.

mickietucs

I found it difficult to find a mail forwarding service in AZ like they offer in SD, FL and TX. I want to keep AZ as my residency and domicile so finally asked a good friend. Title/registration, etc., can be done through Service Arizona.

Nomad

I don't think you have to do the whole residency thing to use a mail forwarding service in SD - It just becomes your mailing address as far as the post office is concerned.

Mr_Mrs_Gnome

I talked to my UPS store owner and you would need to rent a box and then determine how often you want your mail forwarded. The nice thing about our store is that you get a street address that FedEx and UPS will deliver to.

Nomad

Same - street address with the SD places also.
As an aside - I've seen FedEx/UPS deliver within campgrounds, to a specific site or the hosts.

Fergie

Thanks for everyone's comments so far. We probably won't be changing our residency until we get settled in Alaska as that appears  complicated enough for our specific situation.  JKJenn recommended checking the ESCAPEEs organization. I looked it up and they are going to send me an information packet. It appears they have quite a number of benefits, especially their mail service. Their actual campgrounds appear to be in Texas and south central US. They show a map of the US with a slew of campgrounds around the country with which they apparently have deals to offer discounts to members. I would be interested to know what experiences RV'ers have had with this referral service. Especially we are interested in the SW, up the CA coast and to Alaska which is our most likely route, excepting a few detours depending how late in the year we are able to leave. If it is too late for pending winter on the ALCON highway, we will spend more time in the SW and on the CA coast until the weather changes in the spring.

Fergie in South Central MN

skwhee

@newell
The two of us have a fair amount of personal experience with having our mail forwarded while traveling for up to four months at a stretch. We have used UPS stores successfully. Currently we maintain a personal mailbox at a local pack and ship business as our permanent mailing address. Although they do not officially have a mail forwarding service, they are more than glad, when we call them from on the road, to package and ship our mail to the address we provide each time. We pay $120/year for the box rental and then the packaging and shipping fee each time, usually in the $15-20 range. Since we pay all our bills online we usually only have our mail shipped about once a month.

There are pitfalls to temporary forwarding. The post office has rules about certain items that they cannot forward and we've run into problems getting mail from government agencies and banks. And too we have had mail from physician's offices, insurance agencies, and even our AAA cards returned to sender. 

So our advice if you think this will be your only multi month trip you might just get a trusted friend or relative to collect your mail and periodically send it to you. If you think you want to do the long trips on at least a semi-regular basis, consider permanently changing your address to a personal mailbox (PMB) at a mailbox center near you. 

And then there is the question of where to receive your mail. We've had mail shipped to private homes when we are visiting family or friends, to UPS Stores, to campgrounds, and to General Delivery at the Post Office. With the exception of the post office, just be sure to advise the folks at the location that you are expecting a package and be sure to get and watch the package tracking.

Mandy Lea, who is a full timer, did a great video on General Delivery and Escapees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tznUlnbHBhc&index=12&list=PLeeYJ1qijRivzvzZ7fKOC6TAcE-u7n0-0

Hope this helps!

Fergie

To Skwhe:

We finished our trip (and move) to Alaska this past August. Starting in Minnesota at the end of June we journeyed across the country spending at least two nights at every stop to either visit friends and relatives or explore the locality. Our journey took us to North Dakota, Colorado, California, and Washington for visits and all the states in-between to camp and explore before heading up through Canada, dodging wildfires to get to the Alaska Highway on our way to our new home in the Mat-Su Valley of Alaska. We were on the road for over two months and enjoyed every minute of it! Our T@B was our home and a good one at that!

 

As far as mail goes, it gets very complicated for an actual move, rather than a vacation where you return home since your old address is no longer valid if you sell your home as we did. We ended up with the Good Sam Mail Service out of Florida. After going through the paperwork (that has to be notarized to make a legal change of physical address), we had the USPS forward our mail to them.  For the short term we had Good Sam send our mail to Marilyn's brother in Sacramento, CA until we got there to visit the first week of July.

 

After that we just had them hold it until we got to Alaska and got a temporary post office box there. Since they will tell you all the information on the mail you receive there that you authorize them to access, you can see without actually physically receiving the mail if there is any business you need to immediately address. All our critical banking and monthly bills were already converted to "paperless" internet accounts so we could handle these on the road with our computer and AT&T "hotspot" that worked well everyplace we stopped.

 

After renting a house, we had USPS change the forwarding and now most of our mail is coming to our regular home mailbox, but as one would suspect a few still get forwarded thru Good Sam! By the end of the year they all should be coming to us directly!

 

Moving in the modern era is complicated!

 

Cheers, Fergie