Last week we asked if there was anything else you’d like to know about our 5 year road trip for when I prepare our FAQs section. Jon asked a few questions which are all tied in to each other:
Do you have an “official” address for things like taxes, car insurance/registration, etc? How do you make that work and how did you choose that state?
Do you have your mail forwarded? If so, what service to you use and how well does it work?
They’re great questions because this is something I had to research before we set off on our road trip because there were a few different ways of doing things. Here’s what we decided and how it’s worked out now that we’ve been on the road for almost 2.5 years.
Setting Up A “Home” Address
My first thought was to get a PO Box and have Shae’s mom forward the mail on to us. This didn’t seem ideal though because there are some companies that won’t allow you to use a PO Box as your address.
When researching this further online, I came across a couple of really useful blog posts that explained how other people set up residency and get mail on the road. They’re in a slightly different position as they’re RVers whereas we travel in our car and stay in hotels and Airbnbs, but it’s essentially the same thing for address and mailing purposes.
It seems like a lot of people that travel full-time in the US set up Florida, Texas or South Dakota as their state of domicile. That’s because none of these states have a state income tax, so that reduces their tax liability each year.
All of these states have their pros and cons along with mail forwarding companies, but ultimately we decided to set up domicile in Florida. Based on everything I’d read, this seemed to be our best option. Based on the second post I linked to above, it looked like it would be the easiest to organize too.
About 6 weeks before setting off on the road trip, we took a trip from Virginia down to Florida to change our residency. In theory this should’ve been straightforward, but I managed to make the first mistake of our road trip before it had even begun! Despite thinking I had all our paperwork together, I’d left our car’s title behind.
Our second state of the road trip was Georgia, so during our time there we took a quick trip back down to Florida to sort out our state of domicile and that, thankfully, was second time lucky.
How We Get Mail On The Road
Although it took longer to sort out our residency than expected, we’d sorted out our mail before that. Our 5 year, 50 state road trip officially started on January 1, 2018, but we were effectively homeless from mid-November 2017 as that’s when we moved out of our apartment and started living in hotels.
We therefore needed a mailing solution in place before that, plus I knew we’d need mail addressed to us in Florida before we could change our state of domicile there. Florida has a number of companies that offer mail forwarding services and after looking at our options, I picked St Brendan’s Isle (SBI).
They offer a few types of packages with add-ons which are priced differently. We use the Traveler’s Special which costs $11.99 per month. SBI offers an add-on called Mail Scan Pro which costs $7.99. With that add-on, they’ll scan all the envelopes you receive. You can then choose to have them Hold, Send, Shred, Scan Content or Archive. It didn’t seem worth paying an extra $95.88 per year for Mail Scan Pro because we get such little mail in the first place. As much as possible, we deal with everything online and get paperless delivery of bank and credit card statements as that all comes via email.
In addition to the $11.99 per month we pay for the mail service, we have to pay to have the mail forwarded on to us. You can have it forwarded as frequently – or infrequently – as you like. Seeing as we don’t get much mail, we tend to only request it every couple of months unless we know there’s a piece of mail we need sooner (e.g. tax documents, a new credit card, etc.).
SBI offers different shipping methods too:
When I know that we need to have our mail forwarded, I’ll tend to request that SBI send it to our next hotel a couple of days before we’re due to arrive. I usually pick USPS Priority Mail which means it gets there in 2-3 days. That way, if there’s a delay for some reason, it’ll still hopefully arrive before we check out at the end of our stay.
We’ve only had a problem one time so far, but that wasn’t a huge problem. While staying at the Hyatt Place Tucson-Central last month, I arranged for our mail to be forwarded to us there. It didn’t arrive on time and I was concerned because this was a rare occasion I’d had it forwarded by First Class mail because of how long we were staying there. The downside is that this meant it didn’t have tracking on it, so I had no clue where it was.
I eventually received an email from SBI advising that it had been returned to them, so that was a relief. I therefore had it re-sent via Priority Mail and we got it safe and sound.
Alternative Mailing Address
The address you receive from St Brendan’s Isle is supposed to work as a residential address for tax purposes, businesses, etc. However, not all banks accept it because they still regard it as a PO Box address.
The banks that we’ve been able to use our SBI address with include:
- Chase
- Barclays
- Wells Fargo
- US Bank
The banks which don’t accept our SBI address include:
- American Express
- Bank of America
- Citi
Discover is a slight anomaly. I think we were able to change our address on one of our accounts, but not on the other – I’m not entirely sure why.
With American Express, Bank of America and Citi not accepting our Florida address, we had to find an alternative. With those banks, we use Shae’s mom’s address in Virginia as our home address. That enables us to maintain our existing accounts with those banks and apply for new cards.
Using Shae’s mom’s address works fine for regular mail, but it has been an issue at times when our mail has to be signed for. The apartment building where they live only signs for packages where the addressee is on the apartment’s lease. We’re not on the lease, so we’ve had a couple of letters/packages returned to sender before.
Voting
I’m originally from the UK and have Permanent Residency. That basically means I have a Green card and can live and work here. Although I pay taxes in the US, I’m not eligible to vote – I’m only able to do that if I become a citizen.
Shae on the other hand is a US citizen. As part of changing our domicile to Florida, she registered to vote there. With us living on the road, she’s set up to vote by mail. That means we’ll be requesting our mail frequently this fall to ensure she gets her forms so that she can return them in time for the elections in November.
Other Mail
There are times we get packages sent to us which aren’t sent to our Florida address or to Shae’s mom, such as when we order items on Amazon. When possible, we’ll have it sent to the hotel we’re at or will be staying at next.
We spend a reasonable amount of time in Airbnbs which makes receiving mail and packages a little harder as we usually can’t have them sent there. That gives us a couple of options.
With Amazon orders, we’ll sometimes have the package(s) sent to an Amazon Locker. These are secure lockers you can find in different places like outside a 7-Eleven, inside a grocery store or mall, etc. After placing an order, Amazon will send you an email with the details you need to open the locker. The email includes a barcode you can scan or a code you can enter. Once it’s been delivered, you have a few days to pick it up. If you don’t pick it up within that time, it gets returned to Amazon and you receive a refund.
That latter point was helpful for us about 18 months ago. We’d ordered some phone cases as we’d just bought new phones and had them sent to an Amazon locker in El Paso. They arrived late which was inconvenient because it meant they didn’t arrive until after we left El Paso. It wasn’t so bad though; because we weren’t able to pick them up, they automatically got returned to Amazon and we received a refund. If we’d had it sent to our hotel, we’d have had to rely on them returning the package.
Final Thoughts
Not having a home and traveling full-time makes receiving mail a little harder. By taking advantage of a mail forwarding service, we’ve been able to make that process a little easier which also enabled us to change our state of domicile now that we don’t live anywhere permanently.
Thanks! This is very helpful!
Great, I’m glad it’s been useful 🙂
Hi Stephen, since this article was written, have there been any updates to the list of banks that will or will not accept an SBI address? Thank you.
Here’s where we seem to be at the moment:
1) Amex – will accept as a mailing address, but insist on a physical address too, so we’ve had to use Shae’s mom’s address.
2) Citi – I think they were fine with it being our mailing address too, but when applying for new cards they wouldn’t accept it, so again Shae’s mom’s address is used.
3) Chase – this had always been fine in the past and we’d been able to get new cards at that address. However, when applying for a new card a couple of weeks ago, Chase wanted proof of our residential address, such as a utility bill or copy of our driver’s license. Florida DMV insisted on having our car’s license plate be the first line of our address on our driver’s license, so we can’t provide that proof. They seem fine with our existing accounts for now though.
4) Discover – I think they’ve been mixed. If I’m remembering correctly, we had to change our address to Shae’s mom’s address on one of our accounts, but not the other for some reason.
5) Wells Fargo – they’ve been fine with our mailing address
6) Capital One – they’ve been fine with our mailing address.
7) US Bank – it’s hard to tell. They closed one or two of our cards after supposedly sending us mail even though that was never received, so I don’t know if that was anything to do with our mailing service or not.
8 ) SoFI – would only open accounts at Shae’s mom’s address rather than our mailing address.
9) Bank of America – I think we had to give Shae’s mom’s address for them too.