HELP what to do w/our mail ?????

We have only been full-timers for 6 months now and I have one big problem.

Just not sure what to do with our daily mail.

We have sold our home and so the 5er is our "home". No problem with that. It is a Big Horn 3670 RL, 2010. We love it.

But----what do we do with our mail.

We will be traveling all over our beautiful country and need to have our mail follow us.

We have been setting up with the on-line services as much as possible. But it still seems that some bills get thru this system. As much as I try to express of going 100% paperless, some companies will send their billing/statements, etc. on-line and then insist on also mailing their paper-work. It's driving me crazy.

So it looks like, at least for a while, that I will need a mailing service.

I have had some suggest "Mail Boxes etc". (this company is also affiliated with UPS.

Anyone with experience with Mail Boxes and/or any other "mail" businesses that maybe I could try.

I need help. Thanks. Cheri

pick one

http://www.escapees.com/MailForwardingService.asp

http://www.americas-mailbox.com/

I use both.

Have you determined what state you want to claim as your "state of residence"? This must be done to satisfy the IRS, and you will need to decide before deciding on a mailing service.

We are legal residents of South Dakota and use My Home Address in Emery, SD as our mailing service and legal address...http://www.myhomeaddressinc.com/

We have our mailed forwarded from the Postal Service to a private 'Mail Box' company. Periodically we have the latter forward our mail to the RV Park where we are nesting.

Eh!

Lots of things to consider when selecting your State of Residency. Do research on the subject before you select which State you will use. There are books on the subject. In my view... the Internet is a very good source for doing the Research.
The decision needs to be thought out well.

Here's a few selected sites I found using Google.

http://www.myprimeyears.com/rv/yeaw_homebase1.htm

http://www.rv-dreams.com/home-base-selection.html

http://www.rversonline.org/FTHomeState.html

http://www.your-rv-lifestyle.com/rv-home-base.html

One issue we have to deal with is the renewal of our South Dakota driving License. With different birth dates for both Karen and I... we will need to be in South Dakota by May 20, 2010.

South Dakota allows the license to be renewed as much as 180 days before the expiration date... it also allows it to be renewed up to, but not beyond 30 days after that expiration date. It's not a Problem... except that time of year I would rather not be that far north... Burrrrr....

Some states allow driving license to be renewed by mail or through the Internet... some do not. Most states allow vehicle license plates to be renewed or acquired through the Mail with the plates being sent through the postal service.

Some States have vehicle emission testing, Texas does BUT if your a Texas Resident and not in the state when it needs testes... the state allows you to delay the test until you return.

Insurance rates are quite different from State to State. While we were in Florida last winter I checked their rates compared to South Dakota. Quickly I found in my case I was better off keeping SD for our home state.

Have FUN with the research...

We are fortunate enough to have a Son living in the state we're registered in. We provide him with envelopes and postage and he screens and forwards our mail to wherever we may be. We also use his address for our "residence".

We have mail sent to our parents homes and then forward it to us, as we are too young to have kids living on their own. Heck we don't have any kids yet, so the "rents" have to take care of us. When we get to a campground we are going the be at for a month or more we get 90% of the mail sent there, but some will always get sent to the old address.

As a side note. Before we went full-time, my parents had their RV registered to my address, because I lived in the country and had lower taxes and no emissions testing. After we moved out, dad forgot to change it back to his address and did not receive any renewal notice and has been driving around the county with expired plates for several months.

Moral of the story....Keep a permanent address somewhere at all times.

SmokeyBare said:

...

Insurance rates are quite different from State to State...

Click to expand...

Very true...when I switched to SD from OK, I saved @ $6000 a year on my vehicle insurance. RV, truck, Harley, wife's Escort, daughter's Neon and another daughter's Stratus.

I also use America's Mailbox in Rapid City for my address and mail. Easy to set up and no problems at all.

We too moved our residency from OK to SD. Saved a lot on insurance and liscense fees. We use http.www.mydakotaaddress.com. Good mail service and they help with all the papers for transfer of residency.You do have to go there to get your driver's liscense.

Don--your link to the South Dakota Address site won't work. It should be www.mydakotaaddress.com. There was a missing A.
Van

As far as getting residency established... it's so very simple. Most mail forwarding services can walk you through the process.

In our case we contracted with http://www.myhomeaddressinc.com/ before we had completely moved out of our House in Ohio. I wanted to test how the forwarding process worked... it was a breeze ! We waited till the next spring before we completed the other required changes... our Vehicle Plates and SD Titles. Transferring our Vehicle Insurance from our Ohio Agent to a SD agent... one of the main reasons I selected SD was the low cost Vehicle Insurance... and lastly a South Dakota Driver License. Taking care of these important issues only took us a short day, having arrived at the Insurance Agent... then acquiring our Driver Licsences... and lastly heading to the Hancock County Seat... the County where our Address is located... with a few short minutes we took care of the paperwork for the Vehicle Titles which was sent by mail to us at a later date... and getting our New South Dakota License Plates. Just a few hours time and we were Full Fledged South Dakota Residents.

Marv

There's one thing to watch out for when using a commercial mail forwarding service. We just found out about it because we settled in one place. Tried to send a change of address notification to USPS and they wouldn't accept it. Confirmed with mail forwarding service. When you're through with the mail forwarder, you're responsible for notifying all your correspondents. Once you terminate with the mail forwarder, nothing will be forwarded through them or the post office.

Earth Class Main

As far as I know, Earth Class Mail is the only one to scan your mail. Then you have immediate access to it and don't have to wait somewhere to get it. We love it. They have several PO boxes in different states that you can use, depending on where your residency is.

We chose My Home Address in Emery, SD in Feb. 2008 and have been very happy with the service. Our auto and RV insurance dropped significantly from rates we paid in AR!!! We love the "no state taxes thus no state tax return"!

There is a 3% fee paid to license auto and RV if purchased new and not yet titled. If auto and RV are already titled in another state, SD will accept proof of payment of state sales tax from that state and just charge a transfer fee. Renewal rates are very low in our opinion considering we paid annual r/n plus personal property assessment in AR.

Ron and the ladies at My Home Address are very accommodating. About once a month, we order mail to be forwarded to us wherever we are. I just send an email to them with instructions about 3-4 days prior to requested mailing date.

We were Texas residents before fulltiming.. So we kept our residents in Texas by goting through Escapees. We get our mail about every 6 weeks or so when we stay in one spot for a week or so.

Most of our bills are paid on line. The Cell phone, internet access and others that do not change from one month to another, I set up online to be debited from my bank automatically. Credit card is paid online each month. I know when the statement is sent out so I go online the day after and down load a PDF of the statement. They email me when the statement is ready. Only problem they send me a hard copy in the mail because they don't know their email notice is being sent.

I do as much as possible on line and have never had a problem. When I need cash I go to Wal-Mart or if I can find a Bank of America close by.

My Birthday is in December and I renew my license plate in Livingston for two years and my drivers license through the mail.

HappyKayakers said:

There's one thing to watch out for when using a commercial mail forwarding service. We just found out about it because we settled in one place. Tried to send a change of address notification to USPS and they wouldn't accept it. Confirmed with mail forwarding service. When you're through with the mail forwarder, you're responsible for notifying all your correspondents. Once you terminate with the mail forwarder, nothing will be forwarded through them or the post office.

Click to expand...

Not in our case for the past 3 years... when we set up the forwarding service with the Post Service we set it up with an end date. After that the Postal Service delivers to our regular box without further ado.

Eh!

Can get a little pricey

silverfox said:

As far as I know, Earth Class Mail is the only one to scan your mail. Then you have immediate access to it and don't have to wait somewhere to get it. We love it. They have several PO boxes in different states that you can use, depending on where your residency is.

Click to expand...

I looked at their pricing on their website, and noticed there is a scanning fee of $1.50 per document scanned, above the $25.00 personal monthly rate. Other fees apply also.

We use Good Sam forwarding from Pensacola, FL. They have been great to work with, we usually ask them to send our mail about every 3 weeks depending on where we are at the time. Almost all campgrounds will allow you to forward mail to their loscations, just need to call Good Sam in time for it to get to you before you leave the campground. When calling to forward they will ask if you want all mail, just first class, magazines, newspaper, etc. and how to ship.
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