“Kathleen, I’ve been a subscriber for years and haven’t seen anything about deposit insurance in foreign banks. I think Jyske Bank has some form of it? Have you written any articles about overseas bank deposit insurance?”
–Charles C., on Facebook
The bank deposit insurance that you find in the United States doesn’t exist in most of the rest of the world. Jyske Bank has a U.S. subsidiary, which probably explains why they offer this insurance. Otherwise, again, generally speaking, outside the States, you aren’t going to find deposit insurance. Doesn’t exist.
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“Kathleen, how do you handle your mail? Bills and things? I’ve gotten most of ours down to online receipts and payments, but some just aren’t. Do you have someone who collects your mail and sends on important things to you wherever you are?”
–Sharyn C., on Facebook
The best strategy for handling old-fashioned paper mail depends on where you move. If you relocate in Latin America, you can subscribe to a Miami mail-forwarding service. You’ll get a P.O. Box number from the service, and that’s where you can have your mailed delivered. Then the service couriers your mail to you in the country where you’re living…and you go to their local representative to pick it up (or sometimes you can have it delivered by the local agent…but, in our experience, depending where you are, this is generally unreliable).
If you move to a country where no one offers a mail-forwarding service, then, yes, the best strategy is typically to set up a system with a friend or relative back home. You use his (or her) address as yours…your mail is delivered to him…and then he forwards it to you as you agree…or you collect it next time you’re in town visiting.
We do both things. We have a Miami P.O. box with a mail-forwarding service with representatives in Panama City…and we also have some mail delivered to relatives in the States. It depends on the type of mail, how urgently we want to receive it, our travel schedules, etc.
