The Grown-Up's Guide to Running Away from Home, Second Edition: Making a New Life Abroad (23 page)

As soon as you know you’ll be moving, start a list of all your correspondents, jotting down the name and address for eventual change of address notifications. Begin this list at least three months in advance. That way you’ll catch communications and bills, such as insurance, that come only quarterly.

Magazines put the address for change-of-address notifications somewhere up front, near the masthead. Cut out your address label from each magazine as you receive it; then simply paste or tape the label to the post office’s change-of-address card when you’re ready to fill it out. Or change your address online at
https://moversguide.usps.com/
. Remember that magazines (second-class mail) will be forwarded for only sixty days; parcels and bulk mail (third class) won’t be forwarded at all. You may be glad to lose that junk bulk mail, but you’ll also lose your favorite magazines and specialty catalogs unless you notify the publishers of your new address as soon as possible. It takes several weeks for most magazines to put address changes into effect.

Allow most magazine subscriptions to run out. If you plan your escape far enough in advance (which I recommend), just don’t renew any magazines or newspapers that would continue after your estimated departure date. Otherwise a relative, friend, or mail service must mail the magazines to you, which is extremely expensive. Magazines are packed with paper—very heavy paper—and most of that is printed with advertising for things you won’t need overseas. Besides, with the time delay, you may not get the
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue until summer, when you’re seeing the real thing on the beach at Biarritz or the Costa Brava.

Your post office in the States will forward first-class mail free of charge for up to a year if it’s transferred within the United States. You can forward mail to a PO box or friend’s house in the States without incurring extra postage.

If you’re moving overseas, the U.S. Postal Service will forward your mail, but you will be responsible for the extra postage due for international delivery. Therefore, it’s essential to notify your correspondents of your new address, so they can send your mail directly to you. That way each of them—not you—will pay mailing costs.

The post office will put a “hold” on your mail on request for up to a month. This option may come in handy if you leave to find an apartment and expect to have an address overseas within that length of time.

Naturally, holding or forwarding your mail will delay your receiving it—and delay your receiving all your bills. Nice try, but it doesn’t absolve you from paying them. You simply get nasty overdue notices and interest charges. Use the post office to hold or forward mail for only a brief time.

Take a few packs of the post office change-of-address cards with you overseas. When you find that ideal Italian villa, use them to notify all correspondents and send the special card in the pack to your post office in the States. The post office can then forward your mail so that if you’ve forgotten to notify old Aunt Maude of the new address, she can still leave her millions to you after her cat dies.

Rather than Uncle Sam, you could take advantage of family or friends—even an attorney or accountant—to forward your mail. They will package your mail and pay postage to forward those packets, and you can reimburse them or at least send a token of your thanks occasionally to show you appreciate all the work they’re doing to help you have this adventure.

The trick to success with this system is ensuring that the chosen person is responsible and reliable. The best person is someone who loves you dearly and is settled down in one location. Your older sister who’s lived in the same house for twenty years will do. Your college son who changes apartments with the new moon won’t.

If you trust the person to judge the value of your correspondence, you can cut the cost and hassles of forwarding unimportant mail. It’s irritating to realize that you just paid $25 to forward three annual reports, two real estate solicitations, and the notice from your old subdivision’s “garage sale jamboree” held last month.

Professional mailing and secretarial services will collect your mail in the United States at their address or a post office box they provide, then forward it according to your instructions. Choose an independent secretarial service or one of the numerous franchises. First, though, make sure the personnel are familiar with overseas shipping. Ask if they have current clients for whom they perform this service.

A number of companies, such as Pak Mail, Mail Boxes Etc., The UPS Store, USA Box, and Access USA, offer services throughout the United
States and in many countries overseas. You rent a postal box at one of the locations and provide a deposit. Most also request that you leave a credit card number on file if you’ll be overseas (I guess they just don’t trust us runaways). Then the company will follow your instructions for forwarding wherever you are.

Tip: Make sure that the forwarding service will accept parcels, UPS, and FedEx deliveries. The usual post office boxes won’t accept parcels, but those connected with a secretarial service or location that has an actual street address can.

We found a Pak Mail center run by a husband-and-wife team who were already performing forwarding services for others overseas. We got the benefits of the professional franchise and a regular U.S. address, plus personalized service. After a trial-and-error period during which the forwarded bills reached us already overdue, we finally set up a three-times-a-month system in which mail was forwarded regularly on the fifth, fifteenth, and twenty-fifth of the month. That way we caught the first of the month’s bills and got mail every ten days. Most of our bills arrived with just enough time to pay them.

Some new services such as USA Box have an online service that lets you decide what gets sent and what doesn’t. It also helps you to consolidate less time-sensitive materials into one shipment to save costs.

If you use a postal box with forwarding, you’ll pay a monthly fee for the box rental itself and a service fee based on the number of times per month you want your mail forwarded. You’ll pay the postage costs, which will be deducted from the deposit you pay up front. As the deposit is depleted, replenish the account by sending a check or charging to your credit card.

Almost as important as ensuring that important mail reaches you is ensuring that junk mail doesn’t. Real junk mail won’t be forwarded, but much of the first-class mail you receive consists of things you don’t want to pay for overseas. Even if you only have $10 in a stock fund, they send annual reports, which are beautiful, glossy—and very heavy. It will cost you a small fortune in January to receive a plump package of them.

Notify stores and stockbrokers to remove you from their mailing lists and only send statements. We also told our mail forwarding service to hold anything they suspected to be marketing. Real estate agents, developers, automobile dealers, and the new pizza place around the corner all rank among the guilty. We picked this mail up on our visits to the States or had visitors bring it over just in case there was anything vital hidden there.

If you’re traveling from one city to another or don’t have a permanent address yet, it’s possible to have mail sent to a main post office overseas where
it will be held for you. Ask your post office in the States which post offices at your destination handle general delivery mail and get their addresses and zip codes.

In Britain, France, Italy, and a multitude of European and Asian countries, your correspondents should address mail to you care of
poste restante
, city, country, and zip code. In Germany, the general delivery mail is called
postfach
. In some towns only the main post office will accept general delivery mail, so check before you have your correspondents send mail there.

When you arrive in the town, visit the post office you’ve selected to let them know that mail is expected. To pick up your mail, take your passport and another form of official (preferably with your photo) identification. You’ll pay a small fee for the service based on the number of letters you receive.

Your bank overseas may be available as a reliable mail drop. International banks such as Barclays serve this purpose if you set up an account prior to leaving the States. Check with your current bank to see if they can recommend a bank in the country where you’ll be.

American Express offers its cardholders a free mail drop service at offices throughout the world. Ask any American Express Travel agent for their booklet, “American Express Worldwide Traveler’s Companion.” It lists American Express Travel office locations in the United States and abroad and provides important phone numbers such as the Global Assist hotline and ATM locations where you can get cash using your American Express card in countries around the world.