Mailing address
Please note that some of the information on the page might not be compliant with the law or policies of certain banks and other institutions. Proceed at your own risk. The information on this website is by no means intended to be legal or accounting advice. Consult with your own attorney, accountant or financial advisors before doing any of this!
Start preparations at least 3- 6 months in advance
If pushed a minimum of 3 months is needed to put things in place so you have time to test and verify.
Don’t use your new foreign address!
American banks and investment firms like Fidelity or Charles Schab will close your account(s) and give you 30 days to move your money elsewhere. If you don’t have any alternative US based banks you have no options other then moving your funds to the account in
Assuming you will move out of your current home and someone else is going to live in it you need to change the mailing address that you can rely on to scan the incoming mail and if needed forward it to your new foreign address.
Mail options:
Trusted friend / family member
Mail service
Keeping taps on mail coming to your old address
Change your address at least 3 months in advance! Preferably half a year so you can verify mail is being send to the correct address and “the system” starts trusting this new address. Keep track of mail coming to your old address for at least one full year possibly even longer until the next elections. We have experienced that despite updating our address some important mail was still being send to the old address. For example the DMV send a new drivers license, the county send mail inn voting forms and a jury summons to the old address!
Sign up for “USPS Informed Delivery service”
This service will send you a scan of the envelopes. This will help you to be informed when some important mail still has been send to your old address. It’s kind of creepy to keep taps on the mail because you will see the envelopes addresses to the new occupants. But knowing timely that important mail has been send to the wrong address gives you the opportunity to contact the sender and correct their error.
Mail service not P.O. Box:
A mailing service gives you a real address. These services also offer to scan, discard, shred or forward mail to you so you don’t have to rely on a family member of friend to do this for you. You can use this address for almost everything unfortunately this is usually not accepted as the main address for a Bank. You can try to use it for a while but be prepared that they will find out and you have to ask a trusted friend or family member allow you to use their address. You can keep using the Mail service address for bank statements so that the person who you are using as the official mailing address want be bothered with the mail. Except when a new credit card is issued…
I recommend “https://ipostal1.com”. Before you select an address go and visit the place and see if you want to be associated with that location. Once you have signed up and start receiving the mail, collect the mail in person and establish a great relationship with the people working there. One day you might need to ask them a favor and its better that they know you and your voice rather then some unknown person receiving random mail.
Friend / Family:
Using a trusted friend / family member as your new address puts a burden on them. I suggest to use their help only for those accounts where you have no other option. If you are going to use them for all your mail. I suggest to purchase a great document scanner for them and store the scanned files in a cloud based file storage like Google Drive or DropBox. Make sure you own this account and share a folder with your willing friend / family member and not the other way around. Further give him/her a paper shredder so they can dispose of sensitive documents in a responsible manner.
Update your mailing addresses at least 3 months in advance:
Banks*
Credit card companies
DMV
Cellphone provider
Retirement funds, etc etc
Anyone you want to receive mail or packages from!
*Banks officially do not accept PO Box or mailing addresses like this. BUT, there is less (no) scrutiny for long established clients. As long as you don’t give them a reason to verify the address you will be ok….(you are just doing a ‘change of address’ within the existing system and it should be ok - you will receive all your end of year statements to the address. Ultimately you will have to use the address of a friend or family member!
Change of address
Do NOT use the change of address “service” by USPS. Once you have routed all the mail you want to receive to the virtual mailbox announcing the change of address via the postoffice will trigger not only a new flow of junk mail, but it could also alert the banks, etc.