Van Life Problems | Permanent Mailing Address

Today, I wanted to talk with you guys about how to get a permanent address while living in your van, because having an address for some things in life are quite important. For a driver's license, a lot of times you're going to need a residential home mailing address and P.O. boxes don't cut it because they're technically not a legitimate address. Well, I got a solution for you. I personally myself have quite an awesome address. So if I ever have to send out anything for business, which I have for like school dances and stuff, my address, not like people care, but my address is on quite a prestigious street in Vancouver for both business and shopping. It's on Robson Street and it's kind of famous in my city, I guess you could say in a little way. So my address is actually on this street, which is super cool and it looks kind of good because I would never be able to afford anything in this district ever. I'm sure that most major cities around the world have services just like this. So what I did is I went online to simply just Googled permanent mailing, post office box Vancouver, and it came up with a ton of different companies. Okay, maybe not a ton, but definitely five or six different companies that offer different levels of service depending on what you needed. The place I do mine with is a company called Mailroom. What they do is they're just PO boxes on the wall, just like you would have at a post office box except for that number that's on my box is actually my address. So to give you guys an example, just an example, my address is 289-1735 Robson Street, Vancouver. So it looks like that is my unit number. That is my street address and my postal code, the whole bit, and that's it. So I put that on my letters, so it looks like a permanent residence, but it's really not. That's actually just the address to the place where all my mail is and the unit number is just the number of my box. But it's pretty cool because it's actually an address where if you're using something like the local post office, it's a PO box. People don't take PO boxes seriously because, I mean, especially if you're using it for business like I am, a PO box looks really kind of sketchy. And if you're doing a renewals of driver's license or anything like that where you need a full address, PO boxes don't work for a lot of things. So finding a mail service like I have in my city is pretty awesome and it's great. I have a key for it, I just walk in, check my mail, leave what I want, that's it. If I get larger packages sent there, they will give me a phone call saying there's a package here. Sure, there's an extra additional fee for that, but it's pretty simple. So some things you might want to Google to find a service like this in your area, just type in mail receiving service or virtual office or permanent post office box address or anything like that and see if something pops up. Because I know out here, besides the one that I joined, there's tons of them. There's a few of them that offer some pretty cool stuff. Especially if you're kind of a trusting person, you're not getting anything overly personal in the mail, there is companies out there that will actually offer you an email service. So they will scan your mail and email it to you so you don't even have to show up there. And I even seen some of them online that actually offered a check deposit service. So giving them the authority to just go into your bank and depositing the check for you. Obviously they can't do anything with your check, but there's companies that offer pretty much an all-in-one mail receiving services, including taking care of all your checks for you. I mean, I don't get stuff like that. I would rather go down and pick up my checks myself. But if you look at it, there's a service for pretty much anything. Now you're probably wondering, how much do these services cost? Are they expensive? Well, that's going to all depend on you on what's expensive or not, or how important receiving mail is to you. I spend $195, give or take, per year for my box. I personally had to get a business one, so it is a little bit more expensive. But if you're just getting a personal one, it wasn't that much cheaper, but you saved an extra like $15 a year, whatever. But with my business account, I can get letters to myself as well because they allow three other names on the business one. So it works out. So if you look at it, I got mail for $195 a year and an actual permanent address. So for me, the address itself is worth the $195, easy. So cool. How do you get stuff from Amazon? Some of you may already know this. Some of you may not. When ordering from Amazon, there's this section where you put your own shipping address in or the address you would like to have it shipped to. There's also another option on there where you just simply click it and you can go to one of Amazon's multiple drop-off locations around your area. When I click pick up locations here in Vancouver, there is a ridiculous amount of them and it's just a matter of finding one that's close to you and it's super easy. Most of the times I've ever picked up anything on Amazon while I've been in the van and there's been a few occasions. There've been Canada Post locations where they've been like the post office or the local shipping company, whether it be FedEx because they usually have like local offices or local departments where you can pick up your FedEx or whatever other kind of shipping things. So depending on who Amazon ships with, that's where your pickup locations are. Pretty simple. Well, now you know getting a permanent address is pretty simple. Now you know receiving parcels at the place you get your permanent address at, pretty simple. I think my place charges like three bucks to receive a larger parcel if I had to get one sent there. And now you know where to pick up your Amazon orders. So if you look at this video, here's another element of van life that is just that easy. Thanks for watching. Thanks for kind of hanging out with us today. Disco is a completely beat tired. We had a super big day in Squamish yesterday and Fat Boy is just like wiped out today. Stay positive, stay beautiful and never stop being weird and I'll see you guys soon. Love you guys.