Ask a Travel Nurse Question:
Do you forward your mail to a new address each time you take on a new assignment? Would it be wiser to maintain a PO Box in one location or have it delivered to a trustworthy friend/family member and have him/her mail it in bulk periodically to your current location? What are your thoughts?
Ask a Travel Nurse Answer:
How you h and le your mail is entirely up to you. What you need to know are the options open to you.
First, the USPS will forward your mail to a temporary address for the amount of time you would spend on a typical assignment (13 weeks). By contrast, the USPS will only “hold” your mail up to 30 days. So for many, forwarding the mail works best.
In my travels, I did a combination of things. First, for all of my professional licenses, I used either my mother or father’s address and then had them send me any renewals I needed. I also did this with my auto tags and insurance bills. It was simple enough for my dad to shoot me an email saying that State Farm wanted a couple hundred for my truck insurance and then go online to arrange payment through my credit union. He would also just store up whatever else came along and then forward it to me every few months. However, after awhile I figured it was easier to call every few weeks and we would go through the mail together. Almost every time I would have him throw out at least 90% of what I received.
With my credit cards, I would call and change my address so that I got those bills in a timely manner. I kept a secure list of the credit card numbers, security codes, and company’s phone numbers, so that every time I moved I would simply spend about 20 minutes calling up and having everything changed. Mind you, you have to be aware of when bills are due so that you do not miss a payment and having a credit union or bank that has online bill pay is a big advantage.
You can always maintain a PO box if you wish, but I figure that anything that I can go without seeing for 13 weeks is not something I really need to see anyway. If you were talking about getting a PO box and then having a friend or family member go pick up your stuff, why not save them a trip and just have it delivered to their address?
So as you can see, there are many options out there and no one single solution will work for everyone. Just remember when having a family member tend to your mail, they need to be someone you can depend on to get you the important things on time.