How do I live with no current address? What do I ship and what do I donate?
Use Earthclass Mail, with an address in the state from which you file taxes, have your drivers’ license, get checks, set up health insurance. I use them, and they are great. They scan your mail, ship anywhere you want, and toss whatever you specifiy. $9.95 a month. Send checks to your parents to mail any bank deposits for you that you can’t arrange to get electronically deposited in your bank. Meet with your local branch manager ahead to arrange for them to receive and deposit any checks by mail from your parents. If your drivers’ license is about to expire, get a new one at your current address. Use Craigslist to get rid of most of your stuff. Offer what’s left over for free after posting a couple “curbside pickup” ads on Craigslist. You need to get the big stuff out at least weeks ahead so you have enough time to deal with what doesn’t sell and how to get rid of it. I don’t have the link, but go to the site for “Couch Surfing.” I haven’t used them, but I’ve met several worldwide trav
Address: My experience has been that it is impossible to live without an address that at least appears to be a “real” (not PO box) address. You will need to have a “home of record” for car insurance, for example, as well as official things like getting a new drivers license and so on. I would suggest either using your parent’s address, or using a local mailbox-type store that offers mail forwarding if you want to keep a local address. The good thing about a commercial forwarding service is that you can call them from Seattle and have them overnight your mail to you, then have them hold it until you are in Denver, and so on, without imposing on your parents’ time and generosity. And how do do I live responsibly with no current address? By not being a mooch. That means being the best damn guest anyone has ever had, not expecting to be waited on hand and foot, and leaving before your welcome is up. I think you might be surprised how expensive traveling can be, even with free accommodation
“Living” with your parents for tax/unemployment/mail purposes is ideal, especially if your stuff is stored there too. If your folks are willing you can ask them to open your mail up, you can leave them some money to deal with your bills etc, and if you happen to need something for some reason, so long as you stored and labelled it all properly it shouldn’t be too much of an ask for them to post it to you. Things that you want to keep, but are very unlikely to need on your trip, ask your family to store, and as I said above, if you expect them to root through it to find something for you, make sure you stored it in a way that makes it easy to do so. You already have a good handle on what to take with you, although even so you’re probably over-packing. One decent backpack’s contents ought to be enough; keeping a car gives you a lot of storage space of your own too. Were this me, I’d pack toiletries, three or four changes of clothes including one suit, shirt and tie; laptop and phone, and
ender6574: “I’ll be available to work, in fact as I travel I’ll be interviewing for jobs, but how do I adequately convey this to the unemployment agency (only dealt with them once before, briefly, and read posts on here, there’s no way to deal with ‘them'” … I’m not worried about the unemployment system.” Um… you should be, since what you’re proposing technically constitutes Unemployment Insurance benefit fraud and you could face criminal prosecution. You are required to be in the area looking for work. Every two weeks you need to report the companies (address, phone number, contact person) where you’ve applied for a job, using forms delivered by snail mail. Lying on these forms or having someone else do it for you constitutes fraud. They also schedule random meetings for you to come in to meet with a EDD adviser and could cut you off if you fail to appea
I’ll be available to work, in fact as I travel I’ll be interviewing for jobs, but how do I adequately convey this to the unemployment agency (only dealt with them once before, briefly, and read posts on here, there’s no way to deal with ‘them'” I thought I’d just leave my address here in NB, CA, so it looks like I’m looking for work, since I’ll actually be traveling the country and (hopefully, only set up for sure) interviewing for jobs, but I know the bureaucracy system won’t understand that I’m really doing what it wants, so I’ll leave my address at a stable place so that it looks like I’m sitting at home doing nothing, wishing I had a job. Because the system can’t handle the lack of address that comes from someone actually looking for a job, really. It’s a lot of work keeping the recruiters posted as to the status of my job search. The trouble comes in that the unemployment question is whether I can find work at all. Like anyone, I can find work tomorrow most likely, it will just be
