What about Snail Mail ? How do you deal with it when Cruising ?

[Alecadi]

Originally Posted by ReMetau

We have been using St. Brendan's for a few years now. The service is a little pricey is you use the scanning service, but they do a great job and we feel that is worth it. We got tired of mail forwarding and address change issues.

Thanks
Alec

[Kettlewell]

We have used SBI in the past (before mail scanning was available) and they were just as good as everyone says. However, in recent years it has become more and more possible to pare down to very little snail mail--we get almost everything of importance via email or on the Web. However, there are a few important things, like CG documentation, that still insist on using snail mail so you do need an address someplace for that to go. I personally have found it is worth it to keep a legitimate street address where all of my important stuff is registered, like credit cards, bank accounts, my driver's license, taxes, etc. It makes life a lot simpler if your documentation looks just like any ordinary landlubber when you're trying to deal with things. I have encountered some mailorder companies that will not ship to a PMB or even any street address other than where your credit card is registered. Yes, these are few, but for me they were critical (mainly high-end camera and electronic suppliers). The other thing is that every state now requires you to be able to prove your street address with documentation in order to get things like a driver's license. I believe SBI has worked this out with Green Cove Springs, Florida, but I know that some other places will not take anything other than a legitimate street address for this. As someone else pointed out, you may very well want to maintain residency someplace for various reasons, including health insurance, taxes, property ownership, because you like the place, whatever. In my case it was possible to use a relative for the very few pieces of important snail mail that arrived each year, while using email for almost everything else. Plus the relative had cosigning capability on various bank accounts which proved to be very handy when I just couldn't pay something online--I could email the relative and ask them to send a check from the U.S. A lot of banks have bill paying capabilities, which could possibly handle this, but there are a lot of places out there where you don't really want to be logging onto secure banking sites as your information is very likely to be stolen. With the relative I can just email and say pay so and so from such and such account, so much. I should also add, start looking carefully at your snail mail a year in advance of leaving and think about how you might be able to eliminate each piece. It is surprising how much you can move to email or get rid of entirely.