What do you do about mail?
08 April 2009
One of the challenges in preparing to be away from home for an extended period of time is how to handle mail and bills.
There are services set up to help with this -- some designed especially for cruisers. For a yearly fee they give you an address that you have everything go to and they hold and then repackage all your mail and send it to you when you let them know you're in a port long enough to receive it. I hear they work well.
I've always been lucky to have someone back home that was willing to do this for me. On our first cruise aboard Cassiopeia, my sister Monica took on the task so I had our mail forwarded to her and she took care of us well. She took on the task again when we set sail aboard Cetus in 1998.
This time our good friend, Liz, is going to step up to the plate! She also took care of things when we returned to Cetus in Tahiti in 2002, so she comes with experience, too. The big advantage to having her handle it is that she lives right here in Gig Harbor, so I can continue to have our mail go to our same PO Box instead of doing changes of address or forwarding mail. Thanks Liz!
The key to making it manageable for whoever is handling your affairs is to get everything as simplified as possible. Ideally you wouldn't have any bills or payments to be made while you're gone. But there are always some things that are there -- in our case it's property tax, homeowner's dues and insurance. For the most part, everything can be set up for auto deposits and auto pays so things pretty much take care of themselves, but you never know what can crop up. I'll leave several signed blank checks with her to take care of any unusual things that need attention. For some regular mail in payments that I haven't been able to set up on an auto pay (such as the property tax) and a monthly deposit to our "spending money" account I will have a file folder divided by month with envelopes addressed and stamped with the checks inside so all she'll have to do is at the beginning of the month take them out and drop them in the mail.
It's also easier now than it was when we set out on Cassiopeia 16 years ago because of the improvements in communication. Back then I could call back home to check in about once a month, at best, depending on what country we were in. Now, we are able to keep in email contact from the boat anywhere -- even in the middle of the Pacific -- through our Ham Radio. And there are internet cafes everywhere where I can take care of business just like I was back home.
I also keep two checking accounts. The main one is for all the business as usual, but the second one is the "spending money" account I mentioned earlier. In this one we'll have a preset budgeted amount deposited monthly for things like food and entertainment. It's not only a way to keep us within our budget, but it's also a security that if our cards to this account are lost or stolen only a small amount of funds will be in jeopardy.
When we get to a spot where we will be long enough to get some mail, I'll contact Liz and let her know where to send it. But I'm really looking forward to having her just deliver it in person when she and her husband Tom come to visit us along the way!