Matthew Gates 3m 706 #pobox
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
If you have a home, you most likely have a mailbox, in which you receive mail from others, more often than not it is junk mail. If you are not opted in for or the company is old school, you may receive bills in the mail as well. Letters from people that are still old school may send you something in the mail as well. Birthday cards are also often sent through the mail. The mailing system has been around for for millennia and may date back as early as Egypt or even Mesopotamia and Sumeria.
Records even show it was used in Ancient Babylon which had a banking and loan system. Any place with a tax system would likely need to come up with a system in which its people would be able to send and receive mail, possibly even demanding they show up in person at times. In modern times, the mailing system is so advanced and complex that machines exist to sort tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail per hour, sorting them into various compartments, where they are then further sorted for all countries, different regions, and states, and processed to be either shipped by air or driven by vehicle to the hundreds of locations that receive mail and then resort them to be taken to their final location, usually your home address.
As more people become entrepreneurs and business owners, it hardly makes sense to use your home address which exposes to your customers, clients, and the world where you live. While the majority of people would unlikely come to where you live, there are still security and safety concerns about sharing your home address. Enter the PO Box, which is usually a PO box near your home location where you can have mail sent and received. The PO Box allows you to run your business without any concerns for exposing your home address. Other than needing to use your home and billing address to obtain a PO Box, which only the company knows, your home address will never be known.
PO Boxes are hosted by the United States Post Office, UPS, and FedEx, among many other agencies that specialize in receiving mail. They may cost as little as $8 a month and can receive letters and can cost as much as $50 a month or more and can receive giant packages and boxes. They are worth the amount depending on what you wish to receive and how much you care about your privacy. The good thing is that no matter who you are, you can use a PO Box for personal or business reasons.
There are very few disadvantages to having a PO Box and that is some companies are unwilling to send anything to a PO Box. Government agencies are also almost unwilling to send anything to your PO Box and require a home address to reach you and send things to you.
So what are the primary reasons you should have a PO Box?
- Look professional with a PO Box for your business
- Hide your personal address from everyone
- There is no limit on the amount of PO boxes you can have
- While many states do require you have a home address in the actual state, there are ways around it, especially if you have friends or family willing to support you and lend you usage of their address to claim, so you can have a PO Box in multiple states
- There may be legal issues associated with this, so you have to look up the individual laws in place by the state that may or may not allow you to have a PO Box in a state that you do not live
- Having a PO Box in multiple states for business reasons can prove useful, especially if you travel between multiple states often
- For obvious safety and security reasons of protecting your identity and home address
- A PO Box is affordable and simply requires that you check it every so often
There are plenty of reasons to have a PO Box. If you don’t already have one, check with your local USPS, UPS, or FedEx location to determine which is the best fit for you.
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