Changing your address was once a complicated process that required you to contact every person and company you had dealings with, inform them of your address change, and pray that you hadn’t forgotten someone. Fortunately, the internet and the United States Postal Service have made this process significantly easier; you can just simply go online, fill out a form, and pay a nominal fee. Here’s how you do it, and some tips for once the process has finished.
The Process:
Go to http://www.usps.com/moversguide. There, you will find the USPS’ entire guide to moving and changing your address. Click the specific link for changing your address and follow the instructions to fill out the form.
What You’ll Need to Know
Before you fill out the form, you will need to know a few different things:
- Is the move permanent? The post office defines permanent as longer than 12 months. If you are planning to move back into your current address before 12 months is over, indicate temporary. Otherwise, indicate permanent.
- Who is moving? Will it just be you, or will your family be moving? Are you moving a business? The Postal Service will happily sort your mail out if it will just be you moving.
- What’s your new address?
- When will you start living there?
- What’s your credit card number? There is a $1 credit card verification to keep fraudsters from requesting a mail change.
Tips
We’ve learned a few things along the way that we thought we’d pass along:
- Do this in advance! It can take several days to over a week for your information to be verified, especially if your credit card is not attached to the address you are moving from.
- If you changed addresses last minute (or forgot to put in your notice), put your mail at your current address on hold until your mail forwarding kicks in.
- Keep an eye out for forwarded mail at your new address. Contact any institutions or people that send mail to your old address and inform them that you’ve changed addresses. Mail forwarding only works for one year, so you will need to change addresses with these contacts before then.