Managing bills and mail

[sowwaninii]

Curious how cruisers manage their mail and bills while on extended cruises. Planning to spend next winter in the Bahamas.

[Four Coconuts]

We cruise full time and use Parcel Room out of Portsmouth, NH. For $25 a month they discard the junk and scan all our important mail and put it in a dropbox. if we need anything forwarded they follow pur direction. We love it so much we'll be keeping their service after we come back.

[Jimmyd60051]

We have all our bills on autopay to our credit card company and collect the flyer miles too. Or pre pay your creditors.

[Seman]

For the past 8 years in Asia / Africa I have been using Hotsnail mail redirection in Australia.
They scan the mail and put it in a dropbox, where I can recover it any time anywhere.

Been working without a hitch.
Cheers

[zeehag]

i abuse my family. my brother receives my bank statements and those are all i pay attention to, as i no longer have a physical presence in sin diego...
no bills, no obligations, no taxes. no physical presence anywhere. mail to family and poof! i begone
i used to abuse my boat caretaker in sin diego, but, as i have become rid of that obligation, i am free.
whoooot
but, then , i abandoned these 4 years ago, when i left sin diego, so...my caretaker now needs to make his own rent...oops sorry, pal....

[Dennis.G]

One respected service provider:
Mail Forwarding Services at St Brendan's Isle

We have a friend handling our mail for us, but a professional service might be better for you. Note that there are several outfits doing this - full time RVers (those land cruising in motor homes) use these services a lot, so several providers around if you look.

Almost all our bills and such are paperless and handled online, so actual paperwork by regular mail is really minimal.

[chuckr]

Originally Posted by Dennis.G

One respected service provider:
Mail Forwarding Services at St Brendan's Isle

We have a friend handling our mail for us, but a professional service might be better for you. Note that there are several outfits doing this - full time RVers (those land cruising in motor homes) use these services a lot, so several providers around if you look.

Almost all our bills and such are paperless and handled online, so actual paperwork by regular mail is really minimal.

Having been out going on 8 years now we started with my son handling the mail and bills and after a couple of years that simply did not work. We went with St Brendan's Isle for our mail they ship world wide. As for our bills we try to pay cash for as much as possible and then we set up auto pay with Bank of America to manage our bill paying on line.

My son is happier and i am happier and it really works well.

[model 10]

Figure out a way to get things like replacement ATM cards sent to you. They will not fwd them to you and they won't fedx them either. For us it was changing our home address to our mail handler every 6 months for our cruising. Then the bank can send the stuff directly to your mail service and your mail service can fedx mail to you.
Another option for one bank was to have a signed release so they could send stuff directly to our mail service if we asked.

[chuckr]

Originally Posted by Guy

Figure out a way to get things like replacement ATM cards sent to you. They will not fwd them to you and they won't fedx them either. For us it was changing our home address to our mail handler every 6 months for our cruising. Then the bank can send the stuff directly to your mail service and your mail service can fedx mail to you.
Another option for one bank was to have a signed release so they could send stuff directly to our mail service if we asked.

We are in Tunisia and our bank is Bank of America. My atm card and credit card with them were both due to expire Dec of this year. I called them on Skype and explained to them where I am and they sent them both via UPS to me and i got them in 4-5 days from the date they sent them.

By the way we have called Bank of America on Skype a couple of times to up date them on our travels and in Belgrade Serbia a bank atm ate my card and the bank refused to give me the card back until they got a call and email from BOA and I called them and all i can say is BOA bent over backwards helping me get my card back. It really seemed that the guy at Piraeus Bank wanted my card or make me get a new one as he would not let me talk to his supervisor, when the American Embassy got involved would denyed that they offered to send him an email to verify who i was even though i know for a fact they did make the offer, said BOA did not send him an email and they sent a couple to me - but BOA just kept at it and i eventually got my card back.

So keep you bank informed where you are and where you are going and we do it via Skype.

[cruiser_wannabe]

Check out US global mail. We have used them for 8 years, they offer easy scanning of all mail and send mail wherever you need. They also get rid of the junk mail. Very reasonably priced.


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[FSMike]

St. Brendans Isle (Green Cove Springs, Fl.) is great. You can customize which services you want from them.
One service I really appreciate is they will automatically renew your vessel documentation when the time comes.
They will also electronically scan your mail so you can see what it is, and even open pieces of mail you select so you can read them.
Great folks to deal with.

[jcapo]

Autopay and SBI in Green Cove Springs.

Originally Posted by FSMike

One service I really appreciate is they will automatically renew your vessel documentation when the time comes.

Unfortunately now the USCG is charging for renewals . Maybe SBI can just add that fee to our bill.

[FSMike]

That's what they do.

[rwidman]

Originally Posted by sowwaninii

Curious how cruisers manage their mail and bills while on extended cruises. Planning to spend next winter in the Bahamas.

As you can see, there are many different situations so there are many different solutions. People cruising full time have different needs than people cruising for a month or two and returning home between cruises.

I use the Internet to find out how much I owe and pay through my bank. If I was cruising more or for longer periods I would probably go to automatic payment. My neighbor gets my mail and takes care of the property.

[boating2go]

Originally Posted by chuckr

Having been out going on 8 years now we started with my son handling the mail and bills and after a couple of years that simply did not work. We went with St Brendan's Isle for our mail they ship world wide. As for our bills we try to pay cash for as much as possible and then we set up auto pay with Bank of America to manage our bill paying on line.

My son is happier and i am happier and it really works well.

We do the same, very happy with their service.


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