What about mail??

[Connorsmom]

Hey y'all,
I was wondering....when I go into my Monty full time in June, what do I do about mail?? When I'm at the campground as a seasonal, I can just forward my mail there. But how do I handle it in the winter when I don't know where I'll be except south? Thanks...:-) Jan

[jretz]

This is a discussion that seems to come up regularly. I have my mail set up through a service in Emery South Dakota, My Home Address, Inc. They will either send my mail to me on a set schedule or hold it until I request it. I also got my drivers license in So. Dakota and registered my vehicales there. No state tax, no inspections, low reg fees. When I am out traveling I can have them forward my mail to General Delivery of a town I will be in. I prefer small towns and I check with the Postmaster to let them know to expect it. This has worked quite well.

Many other fulltimers have other services that work well for them so check them all out and see what will work for you.

Good Luck in your fulltiming.

[stiles watson]

If you are going fulltime and not have a stick house, you need to extablish a "domicile", a place with a street address. Since you are in Mich., South Dakota is your best deal. There are services that help you do that. The service will provide a domicile address. Then they have an associated mail service or you can sellect one of many other mail services. The cost will be according to the sophistication of that service. In any case, someone with a domicile in SD will come along and tell you were to start. Happy fulltiming.....

[lasater]

Well, that is what I did when I retired from Omaha last year. I have spent a lot of time in Rapid City, so, I decided to go with services there. I also registered my Monty, etc. in Rapid City. The outfit I use for mail forwarding is:

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

They automatically forward my mail to my stick house in Arizona. When I am on the road, I e-mail them instructions for holding or forwarding to whatever address I give them. For instance, if I know that next week I will be at the Lazy J Campground in Phoenix, then I give that address to forward my mail to. They have been very responsive and I have been very satisfied with their service.

[Joyce H]

Jan,
We do the same as many others using a mail service in Cleveland, TN, Mail Call USA. They send our mail on a set schedule or hold it until we request it. We also have drivers license in TN and registered our vehicles there. No state tax, no inspections, low registration fees. During the winter we have our mail forwarded once a week as we stay put in one campground. When we are enroute between stops we have the mail held until we notify them where to send it. We pay an annual fee plus postage. If we have planned to stay in one place for four days to a week we call the campgrouund, get a mailing address, and advise them we will be having our mail sent. If the mail arrives before we do the campground will hold it. After clearing it with the campground we then call our mail service with the info needed and date to send our mail. When we first started traveling we depended on family or friends but have found this works much better for us.

[Montana Rog]

We fulltime. Most of the mail you normally get when owning a home is gone. No water, taxes, gas, telephone etc are all gone. I pay my cell phone and credit card with my laptop. My insurance is paid semi-annually, and that's about all I have. My banking is done online. I use my kids address as my domisile. They forward anything that is important to me wherever we are. Works for us!

[patodonn]

Connorsmom, you might want to check out the various threads re "residency" or "legal residency" or "State of Residence" in conjunction with your question here. If you are no longer tied down to a "stick" house, there is no reason to remain a resident of your present "home" state. In our case, "leaving" California and becoming SD residents (at our mail forwarding service address) saves about 15% of our retirement income annually due to no State income tax, low insurance rates, no vehicle inspections, low vehicle registration fees. Many full timers have elected to establish residency in SD, TN, TX, or FL for these reasons. You can become a resident of whatever State you choose if you take the proper steps. No reason to pay Michigan taxes if you don't live there anymore.

Best,

[bob n pam]

I agree with patodonn. We, too, left California and became SD residents. We use Alternative Resources in Sioux Falls for mail, registered vehicles in SD, got drivers' licenses, voters' registration, local bank and redid our wills. Have been very satisfied with Alternative's service.

[sreigle]

Same as Patodonn and Bob n Pam. We became South Dakota residents. And use Alternative Resources for mail. We kept our bank in Topeka, KS, though. You can check out Alternative Resources at www.alternativeresources.net

[Parrothead]

We are planning on using Alternative Resources - a lot because of Steve's recommendation. I have called them a couple of times with questions and they are very nice and helpful. Plus they know the answers!
Happy trails.........................

[gkbutler]

We use the Postal service for our mail. Right now we are only going between Illinois and Florida so it isn't that difficult. We submit a temporary change of address every six months and have had no problems yet. We use the internet for our bill paying (what there is)and our checks are direct deposited, so we really don't get that much snail mail. When we begin to travel around the country in a couple of years, we will need to select one of the mail services. Alternative Resourses seems to be a very popular mail service. Escapees also offers mail forwarding and there are a couple of others that I can't remember right now.

[rvfirefighter]

We use MyRVMail, owned and operated by Passport America. They are out of Florida. Price is in line with everyone else. I am new to their company, have used Passport America for years. No problems yet, I have used residency in Fl. for about 5 years now. Had to dance around the increases in insurance, changed to Geico from Progressive. Cut my premiums in half.

[sreigle]

I didn't answer one of your questions, whether you can have your mail forwarded to the campground. You need to ask the campground about that. In almost four years we've only twice been where they would not accept our mail. In those places we had our mail sent to General Delivery and just went to the post office once per week to pick it up. Most campgrounds will accept your mail. Some even have bins where they put your mail. Others stack it on a table and you sort through it. In one we had our own lockable box and in one we had a mailbox at the end of our site for both pickup and delivery.

[gkbutler]

I agree with Steve, the campground where we stay in Illinois will not accept our mail so we have a PO Box in town. Down here in FL our mail is delivered to the CG and put in a bin. Packages are listed on a sheet next to the mail bin.

[patodonn]

A lot depends on whether or not you are traveling a lot wihile in the "full time" mode. Either way, if you are going to be "full time", it is almost imperative that you have either a REALLY reliable relative who is willing to be your mail forwarding service 52 weeks a year, or get a good mail service like the ones mentioned above. I cannot imagine going through the hassle of doing a "Change of Address" more than once with the various folks I get mail from on a weekly/monthly basis. Even then, it took me months to get them all to do it correctly.

Once you get the "mail forwarding service" part worked out, the rest is fairly easy. Some CG's will accept mail for you...just ask, and plan ahead if you are traveling. Alternatively, you may want have your mail sent to you c/o a trusted friend or relative in the area you are visiting. Finally, you may want to use the General Delivery service at the main Post Office for the ZIP code you are visiting. Make sure you know which Post Office will be the one receiving your mail and their operating hours.

While traveling, you need to keep lead times and locations in mind. Our week's worth of mail leaves S. Dakota every Wednesday. It usually gets to the destination on Fridays, sometimes on Saturdays. Holiday Season take an additional day, which makes it Monday.

That all requires you to know your correct mailing address a week ahead of time when you are on the road, so as to give it to the mailing service correctly. That also requires some planning and maybe some phone calls ahead of time to get it all organized. Once you get into the mind-set, it isn't at all that difficult. We have not had any "failure" of the mail forwarding system in almost 4 years.

Hope all of this is of some help...it has worked for us.