The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Mailboxes for US Banking Purposes – Nomad Gate

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The modern nomad lifestyle is all about freedom, flexibility, and the ability to live and work from anywhere. However, one challenge that many nomads face is maintaining a stable US address for banking and credit card purposes.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://nomadgate.com/virtual-mailboxes-us-banking
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My tax situation is probably different than most on this site but in the US state residency laws are very diverse. For example in my case the vast majority of my adult life was spent in NY - an easy state to divorce oneself from but my last US legal address was NC - this state’s property laws make removing residency quite difficult legally. For me it is far easier than most to understand these varient laws as my career was in Finance. In my case it is easier to pay NC each year for the time I spend within USA borders rather than sell my car, close my local bank account, get my name off the deed to my mother’s house etc - that is frankly much more trouble than it is worth. However, if I was in the GV asset class and income level these considerations could change radically. In that case, I will always recommend that a good global tax attorney is essential.

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What can I use to make a main residence address for banking and voting?

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These addresses should work well for banking. Whether you’d be able to use them for voter registration I’m not sure about, but I suspect it would be possible.

Either way, perhaps also prudent to ask the mailbox provider whether that’s OK or not.

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Who is the best? I need to lay low? I also live in portugal and United Kingdom

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Hey thar, TKR. Do you have any sense of how often these things get changed/re-characterized (non-PMB → PMB, residential → commercial )?

We’d like to shift to one of these within our already-state (Wash), but there are also solutions from the likes of St. Brennan’s (Reddit - Dive into anything) which feel safer (i.e. not just a weird flag that exists for unknown reasons), but require changing states.

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No, not quite sure about that. However, I don’t think it’s something that happens frequently, at least for certain types of addresses that have been operational for some time.

I think the “safest” addresses are the ones that appear to be:

  • A private home (although I’d make sure the operator is trustworthy and plan on living there indefinitely)
  • An RV park or similar
  • Other type of mixed building (e.g. some stores and apartments sharing the same address) where the address format doesn’t require you to add on a specific suite number/letter in addition to your mailbox number

While there may be a CMRA located there, it’s less likely that the full address gets flagged as a CMRA.

If you click the Look up on Google Maps button for the listings you’re considering you should quickly be able to identify what kind of property it is with the help of Street View.

I believe the RDI is less important than the CMRA indicator for most purposes (I haven’t heard of banks or government entities using it for anything), however the listings you’ll find in the residential delivery areas are more likely to match the types of properties I listed above.

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Cool, thanks for the thoughts!

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Banks generally want proof of residence, how to get that? Utility bill, phone bill, banking account statement and the likes. Any suggestions on how to give that proof?

I have applied for a American Express Credit Card and need to provide a proof of residence.

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Do you have US credit history? That’s usually sufficient in my experience.

You can also change your address on an existing (US) bank account and provide that.

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I applied by transferring my credit history from my country to USA thorough Nova Credit Line. I don’t have any existing USA bank account unfortunately.

Any other way to provide proof of residence for my non-cmra forwarding address?

The only way seem to be to go to USA and open a bank account, that is currently difficult to do for me

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Would be easier with an existing US bank account for sure… And how are you planning on paying the credit card bill every month without a US bank account, anyway?

Perhaps there are other options, such as:

  • Somehow getting a government entity to send you a letter to the address you’re using. Perhaps if you send a local government entity a letter (you could send it with Mailform) they will respond to your US address.
  • If they accept a mobile phone bill you may be able to sign up for e.g. Google Fi and use their statement.
  • Could you change your address on file with a foreign bank (preferably one that issues English-language statements)? It’s possible it would be accepted.
  • Sign up for a cheap insurance (e.g. renter’s insurance) and cancel it when you no longer need the proof of address.

To be clear, there’s no guarantee that any of these would work, just trying to brainstorm some ideas for you.

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I have an account with utoppia, they have my home country address.

This seems a viable option, do they not ask for proof residence, and what docs they ask for generally?