Mail forwarding

What do travelers do to set up their mail to be collected and sent to a location? We are planning a three to four month trip but have to do something about our mail.  Thank you in advance!

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There are plenty of mail forwarding services available. I used MailLink in Las Vegas for many years and was very happy with them. Ten bucks a month.

File a temporary change of address form with the US Post Office and tell them to send your mail to a relative's house if they can put it in another envelope and send it to you.

Or send it to a mail forwarding service like Seilerbird suggests.  Check with your local UPS store, some of them will rent you a mailbox (like a PO box) and for a fee will gather up your mail and send it to where you'll be.

It doesn't apply to you, but the Temporary Change of Address is only good for up to 6 months, or 1 year if you renew it.  If you are going to be away longer than one year, you'll have to submit a Permanent Change of Address and you won't be able to change your address away from the forwarding company when you return home.  This is because the post office won't sort through all of the mail going to the forwarder to find just your mail to send back to you.

As far as where to send it, most post offices have General Delivery.  You (or your forwarder) addresses the mail to Your Name, General Delivery, City, State, Zip, then you go to the Post Office counter, show them your ID and get your mail.

Choose a place where you expect to be in a few days and have your forwarder send your accumulated mail there.  It's best to choose a small town with only one PO branch, larger cities with multiple POs only have General Delivery available at one location, and it may be a ways from where you'll be at that time.

The Post Office also has their own Premium Mail Forwarding, but it's fairly expensive ($20 enrollment and $20 a week) and you have to tell them every Wednesday where to send your mail.  It's on the same page as the above link.

I would suggest setting up anything you can for auto pay or online pay and receive your bills online. We get very little mail that isn't junk. When we travel for 10 weeks or so, we have the little amount we get forwarded through USPS to our son's house. You can do that online with a start/stop date.

Lou's reply came in just ahead of mine while I was typing, so mine basically says the same thing.

We have used this service for years: https://www.sbimailservice.com/

Our experience with USPS Premium mail forwarding over a couple of years was awful. Even when I visited and phoned the Postmaster to discuss it, his personal assurances were worthless. I didn't mind paying the (expensive) costs, but they just couldn't get it right. We resorted to having a neighbor pick up our mail and send us the 'important' stuff.

I contractd with Postal Depot in Davision MI.  Most UPS stores offer this service (And if you are a customer of the store which is a chain there may be another benefit as well)

Every month I call up to my mail box and they ship me a "Care Package"  currently it goes to General Delivery a couple miles from my RV. IF I'm more than six months I make other arrangements. 

But you really should spend six months in your home state.

Summers I just drop in and use my key.

They can accept UPS Fed-EX and all forms of USPS as my agent .