Mail

[charley1947]

I will be moving to CM in ninety days. Does anyone have suggestions on the best way to handle mail? I want to keep a U S address but I don't want any more junk mail. I could use a friend, family member or one of those mailboxes that the shipping stores offer. What else? What's best?

[noise]

I used my sister (who has a computer and printer/scanner). Trusted her to toss the junk and send me pdf files via email of everything else. That way I got it and could act on it quickly when required. And she had no mailing expenses.

And it gave me that real address in the U.S. when I need one.

[FolkGuitar]

I've maintained a US mailing address for 25 years. Two of them, actually. (One is better for parcel forwarding than the other) Both are the commercial shipping places that you see on every other block. Just pick one that has a long history of being in business.

My letter mail address has instructions to only forward 1st class mail, and only send it once a month. If I'm expecting something that is 'time sensitive' such as some sort of license renewal, I just tell them to forward daily until I get it, then go back to the once-a-month forwarding.

My parcel address has instruction never to send ANYTHING unless I contact them first with details to be written on the customs form.

This has worked perfectly for me, at a cost of just a couple of hundred US per year.

Edited January 30, 2010 by FolkGuitar

[rfukata]

check with your local US Postal service, they should have mail forward services available. (usps.com)

[vagabond48]

I used my sister (who has a computer and printer/scanner). Trusted her to toss the junk and send me pdf files via email of everything else. That way I got it and could act on it quickly when required. And she had no mailing expenses.

And it gave me that real address in the U.S. when I need one.

I don't know if you are doing this now but I would strongly recommend that you have your sister encrypt any docs that contain sensitive information (bank acc't#s, SS# etc.) she sends you via email.

I use the following free encryption software.

I also have the sender rename the file without the file suffix before sending, to eliminate the identification of the program needed to decrypt the docs, then upon receiving the docs, rename them with the program identifying suffix.

[NancyL]

Consider the state you'll use for your "permanent" U.S. postal address. You could end up paying state income taxes.

We didn't want to burden any friends or family members with handling our mail, so we selected a commercial mail forwarding address, USABox. For a monthly fee, they receive our mail, scan the front of each item and email us that image. We indicate if the item should be discarded or held and when we want, we ask them to bundle up our mail and send it. They use DHL (which has a great tracking system), buit we could select other options for shipping. It's especially good for receiving mailorder packages and consolidating multiple orders into one box.

It would be great to have someone scan and email the contents of each envelope, but we couldn't find a commercial service that offered this option. Besides, I'd think you'd only want a trusted friend or family member to do this. We've moved most financial statements into paperless e-statements, so the USABox is mainly for mailorder shipments and to receive our magazines.

[noise]

quoting NancyL:

Consider the state you'll use for your "permanent" U.S. postal address. You could end up paying state income taxes.

quoting vagabond48:

I don't know if you are doing this now but I would strongly recommend that you have your sister encrypt any docs that contain sensitive information (bank acc't#s, SS# etc.) she sends you via email.

NancyL -- That is what I thought but, at least for me, it did not prove to be the case. I used my sister's address in Calif and keep my Colorado address for absentee voting. I just file as living overseas, got my state tax refund with no argument from the 2 states the first year, have had no state taxes withheld in subsequent years.

vagabond48: Good point, I should have thought of that but didn't. It is over come by events now or I would implement your suggestion today.

[NancyL]

I've heard stories about some states, especially California being aggressive in trying to collect state income taxes from "residents" living overseas. I haven't had first-hand experience, just heard the stories. In every case, these were people who actually lived in California before coming here, but I would never use a California address for mail even if I'd never set foot in the state.