Mail forwarding services and registering our boat

[Kansassailors]

We are currently in the process of selling our possessions and finishing up our careers. We have also put a down payment on a boat that we plan to live aboard. I am looking for suggestions as to how to handle our mail since we will not have a permanent address. Also does anyone have any suggestions of the best state to register our boat and also choose as residency if necessary? Thank you for your help!

[Freedom45]

I use St. Brendan's isle in Florida. They will email you when mail is received giving you the option of forwarding or shredding. They will also open and scan mail on request.
You can set this up as your permanent address a well, and Florida has no state income tax.

Cheers

[Paul L]

Check these guys for excellent mail forwarding service https://www.sbimailservice.com

[flyingfin]

Originally Posted by Freedom45

I use St. Brendan's isle in Florida. They will email you when mail is received giving you the option of forwarding or shredding. They will also open and scan mail on request.
You can set this up as your permanent address a well, and Florida has no state income tax.

Cheers

I second this advice. St Brendans is great for parking a long term mail box, both financial and institutional (registrations, licenses, etc) purposes

[a64pilot]

We also went with St Brendan’s isle and used them to establish State Residency. If your in Fl for more than 90 days with the Boat, legally you have to register it anyway, so why not from the beginning, they are not expensive.

However be careful, after doing this we opened an account for my wife with USAA, and they got nasty about it, since 911 banking laws have changed and they needed to see proof that we lived at 411 Walnut Street, wanted to see power bills, tax bills etc. Which since we don’t live there, we couldn’t prove.
Finally they settled with her voter registration card, which says 1 clay street. But it was getting pretty stupid, which is strange, cause USAA is never like that, but they kept saying federal law, patriot act etc required it to be done.
USAA couldn’t take the statement of domicile that we filled out and had filed at the County clerks office.

So when you do the paperwork they recommend, do ALL of it and keep a copy.

[Kansassailors]

Thank you so much for your help!

[john61ct]

IMO there is no point using any commercial service for legal residence domicile address purposes, they cannot guarantee it will work for **your** intended purpose, and certainly not wrt the future.

Has nothing to do with the service provider, the value of the address they provide not in their control.

It is up to the organization you are asking to believe you reside at that address, and the database lookup services they employ to maintain their "address blackball" list.

And those factors will change over time, most organizations' rules and methods getting more stringent, never more accepting.

You should use a trusted friend or family member's address.

That is the most secure way, ideally someone stable and trustworthy.

If you are diligent about using your separate **mailing** address wherever possible, they should hardly ever be bothered by receiving your stuff, once you've established your DL / reg and financial providers there.

[dwedeking2]

I use a service out of Las Vegas (similar to the one in Florida I just happened to be in Vegas at the time). Set up all banking/investment accounts beforehand to get around residence requirements, then just change to your mailing address afterwords and it gets around the stupid 911 stuff. Though the last investment account i set up jist used the marina address for residence even though i dont get mail there.

Also there is a company in South Dakota specifically set up to create residency there. Used by a lot of nomads/expats in Mexico because car registration renewals are all online (no need for in-person safety/smog inspections)

[barbjgladney]

We use Texas Home Base. Here are the rates and services. https://www.texashomebase.com/mail-scanning/
After using two different family members the first few years of our cruising, who just got overwhelmed and dropped the ball on us we switched to Texas Home Base. They have been handling our mail for years now. We are very happy.

[mvmojo]

We've been using Traveling Mailboxes (https://travelingmailbox.com/) for years and have been very happy with their service. You get a street address and a box number (apt. #, suite #, whatever you want to call it, they don't care). Don't know if it can be used as a legal address or not since we also own property in Florida that is our "official" address, but for mail handling it's great. When mail comes to your Traveling Mailbox address, the front of the envelope is scanned and e-mailed to you daily. You have the choice of having it held for forwarding, forwarded immediately, shredded, or open and scanned. We use the $15/month basic plan that gives us scans of up to 40 envelopes each month and up to 35 scanned pages/month. We've never gone over. Forwarding is $2 + postage for each batch of mail that you forward. They also have check depositing service, etc. Last time I checked it was cheaper than St Brendan's Isle. Works great for us!

[chouliha]

Originally Posted by Paul L

Check these guys for excellent mail forwarding service https://www.sbimailservice.com

We also give two thumbs up for SBI. Have been using them for the past 14 years and never an issue or complaint. They process our USCG documentation renewal automatically.

Letters come in and they scan the envelope. You receive an email stating there is mail available for you. Logon to their website and put your password in. You have the option of having them open and scan the letter, shred it, move it to hold for future delivery.

I also took advantage of the service to help me setup domicile in Florida. Recently banks will not accept your address with SBI even with proof of domicile. Banking regulations require a physical home address. But if you already have a bank account you can just do a address change with no problem.

Good luck with your choice

Chuck
Jacaranda
Mo’orea, French Polynesia

[john61ct]

Originally Posted by mvmojo

Don't know if it can be used as a legal address or not

Again, this is not within the control of the service provider.

It is up to each organization you are asking to believe you actually reside at that address, and the database-blackball service they contract with.

And standards are always tightening up, never getting more permissive.

[PPLepew]

I second SBI services. I became a permanent live-aboard 6 years ago. I "moved" to Green Cove Springs, Florida. Going to their DMV (GCS one is a must, they now the deal), I got my boat, dinghy, driver license and Voter card in 45 minutes. Try that in NY. I'm still using my NY bank account I've been using for 30 years, everything is done online anyway.
Go SBI.

[TwoLoose]

I also give SBI a huge thumbs up. We started using them 10-11 years ago after a couple of years of full time cruising and trying other methods of mail handling. They have an excellent set of processes to professionally handle your mail. Go to their website and I think you'll easily determine that they have what you need. I never used their boat/state registration services but know of others who did and they seemed happy with the Florida domicile benefits.
Pete
S/V TwoLoose IP45

[Carriage Boy]

..."since 911 banking laws have changed and they needed to see proof that we lived at 411 Walnut Street, wanted to see power bills, tax bills etc. Which since we don’t live there, we couldn’t prove."


I've been a full time RV'er for 17 years and the law has been a subject of lots of discussions on those forums. The law quoted is CFR-2010-title31-vol1-sec103-121 and it's purpose is to require banks to establish a specific plan to "know your customers" in an attempt to cut down on money laundering and the potential funding of terrorism.



It requires the banks to have a valid "sticks and bricks" address for every one of their customers. It allows, but does not require, banks to accept a "next of kin" sticks and bricks address of their customers if the bank chooses to add that feature into their identity documentation system. It's been our experience that some banks have set up those additional allowable documentation features and some banks apparently don't feel it's worth the effort.



Here is the applicable portion of the text of the law (CIP is "Customer Identification Plan", the thing that the government is now requiring from the banks):



"(i) Customer information required—(A)
In general. The CIP must contain procedures
for opening an account that
specify the identifying information
that will be obtained from each customer.
Except as permitted by paragraphs
(b)(2)(i)(B) and (C) of this section,
the bank must obtain, at a minimum,
the following information from
the customer prior to opening an account:
(1) Name;
(2) Date of birth, for an individual;
(3) Address, which shall be:
(i) For an individual, a residential or
business street address;
(ii) For an individual who does not
have a residential or business street
address, an Army Post Office (APO) or
Fleet Post Office (FPO) box number, or
the residential or business street address
of next of kin or of another contact
individual.....