US citizen, fully remote job, planning about a year of a van plus short rentals across states. I still have a car loan, I need an address that satisfies my bank and my insurer, and I would like to vote and file taxes without a saga. I have read about mail forwarding services but not from anyone who has actually lived on one for a year. What was the first thing that went wrong for you?
The first thing that broke for me was not mail, it was insurance. Vehicle insurance is priced on where the vehicle is kept, and health cover in the US is largely organised by state, so a domicile you never physically visit creates questions the moment you need to use either one. I got a straight answer from an insurance broker who deals with full-time travellers and it cost me nothing to ask. Do that before you cancel the lease, not after.
Jury duty summonses still find you and ignoring one is a bad time. Set up the mail scanning so you actually read what arrives, weekly, on a fixed day.
Disagreeing with the full-domicile-change approach for a one year trip. Changing your licence, registration, insurance and voter registration is a lot of paperwork and some of it is annoying to reverse. If you are fairly sure this is twelve months rather than a way of life, keeping a cheap room rented somewhere is genuinely simpler and often not much more expensive once you count the fees and the hassle. I did the full change and I am glad I did, but I was three years in by then.
Using a relative's address is the thing everyone does and it worked fine for eleven months and then did not. My problem was that their address is in a state with its own rules about who is resident there, and I ended up having a conversation about tax residency that I was not equipped for. It resolved and it cost me an accountant's fee to resolve. If your plan is a family address, at least talk to a tax professional about which state considers you theirs, because two of them can both think so.
This is the one people underestimate. Residency for tax purposes, residency for a driving licence, and where your post arrives are three different concepts, and nothing in the system helps you keep them straight.
Two small practical ones that cost me real time. Some banks will not accept a commercial mail forwarding address and will quietly flag the account, so ask before you move everything. And keep a physical folder of the documents you needed for the licence, because you will need them again in four years and you will not remember which ones they were.
@visa_run_val · last mo. · 3 replies
The standard route is to pick a domicile state that is friendly to full-time travellers, set up a mail forwarding address there, and move your licence, vehicle registration and voter registration to it. South Dakota, Texas and Florida are the three you will see over and over, mostly for the tax treatment and how straightforward the process is. When I did South Dakota it involved a mail service address and staying a night in the state with a receipt to prove it, and there was a specific list of documents for the licence — but requirements do get revised, so read the state's own DMV page rather than a blog post from four years ago. The mail forwarding itself has never once been the problem.
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@wanderport · last mo.
Worth adding that mail forwarding services differ hugely in whether they scan and open post or just bundle and ship it. Scanning is worth paying for. Waiting nine days for a physical letter to reach you in another state is how you miss a deadline.
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@overlap_owen · last mo.
And use the mail service address consistently everywhere, including your employer's payroll record. Half a dozen institutions with three different addresses on file is what actually causes the mess.
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