@seal16 do you live in the same state as your kid? This poster and his daughter reside in different states…and it sounds like one of the reasons for not switching is so that taxes are less.
Sorry, but that is not honest.
And rent vs own? One of my kids has rented until just recently, and he never used our address as his own. Never. He also doesn’t get much snail mail. Much is done online these days for him.
And re: IRS mailings. HIS should not be coming to us.
My kid lives in another state. He uses our home address for things like credit cards, bank accounts, etc., but files taxes and has the address where he’s living for his work, taxes, etc.
My 25 year old daughter moved from our home to her boyfriend’s mom’s house March of 2020, same state, 40 minutes away. She had to work remotely, and 3 other kids were attending HS and college remotely, my husband was working remotely - it was a hot mess. She’s still there, but hasn’t changed her address. The amount of mail she gets is pretty much nothing.
My D is still in school, so our address is for real her permanent address, but she worked in three different states last year and will end up with a complicated tax return because she needs to pay taxes where the income was earned.
Her car insurance is also higher than normal because she’s been transparent about that with them.
She will be in a rotational program for the first few years of her career, moving every 6 months, so she will continue to do the same until she gets her permanent assignment.
I agree that renting vs owning shouldn’t be the determining factor.
Our S20 uses his own address. Also, I’m struggling to think of any mail he actually received. All his billing and financial paperwork is online and paperless.
I talked to my two boys about this when they were here for Christmas. Most things are fairly insignificant, like credit card offers and discount coupons, but they are increasing, not decreasing in frequency. I believe they are doing it to avoid junk mail at their addresses. An alarming letter came earlier this week. One son works in healthcare and Pfizer sent him a change in “black box” warnings on the drug Xeljanz.
No one has posted a solid reason yet why any launched adult is not solely using the address of actual residence but, like @abasket, I think this is small potatoes unless fraud is involved.
One small though maybe not solid reason is that the mail is so inconsequential that kids don’t care enough to make the change.
Here’s an example of mail that I still get on the regular for ds1: When he was a junior in HS, he did an internship for a state agency. They enrolled him in a state retirement plan for his three months of service. He still gets quarterly statements from that account, which is worth less than $10. This is not a pressing issue for him or me so it’s continued to ride. And my guess is that’s the reason we got some random piece of mail last month from that other long-ago employer – this was his permanent address at the time he was hired there, and he hasn’t taken the time to change it. Laziness more than anything, I suppose. Again, not a solid reason but one that makes sense to me.
Same state, different city. Tax cheating never ends well, tax strategy does. If it’s a loophole, it’s one thing. If it’s against the rules, they will eventually regret it. Different things work for different families. Keeping mailing address at our residence works for our family.
My daughter moved everything to her own address when she graduated college and rented her own apartment. She did everything at once - voter registration, driver’s license, etc. The one exception is that she has one credit card in her name with my address. This is her emergency card which she can use and I will pay the bill.
I agree, but the topic is not about informing sources of address changes (cleanup), it’s about deliberately continuing to use the parent’s address as the official address when the launched adult no longer lives at that address.
I think that young people who move fairly often or don’t feel settled will use their parent’s address. It’s easier than changing and forwarding mail.
I think it happens more often than you think. Think about how many parents still pay for phones, car insurance and other incidentals for their college graduated children.
It’s a pain to take a day off work to get your car inspection, change the title and licenses. Change the address on credit cards, bank accounts and other bills that don’t change when you move addresses.
My kid has had 3 long term relationships in her adult after college life. In every single one, the parents owned the cars they drove, paid for the cell phone they used. Those vehicles were inspected in the state they were registered, the state the parents lived in, not the state the kid lived in.
I was the mean parent who made my child become an adult by making them register the car they drove in their name. It meant taking off work, when they had very limited time off to spend the day changing over or renewing licenses.
I think we understate how parents today help and enable their children from becoming complete adults. Because it’s not that hard for us parents to do, so we help our children.
Rant over lol!
When our S moved to a city more than an hour away, we contacted our insurance agent to change the address of where his car is garaged. We were told that because he is an adult (not a kid away at school), keeping the car in our name and allowing him to keep it away from our home was a no-go. She warned that it definitely could result in very expensive problems in the case of an accident. We didn’t know this. We signed the car over to our S & he has insurance in his own name. We had hoped to spare him the full brunt of the young adult male surcharge (but to be honest, his rate wasn’t any higher than what we saved when he & his car were removed from our policy). And yeah, in retrospect, we were wrong to think it would be okay to do that.
On another note: A major city near me has experienced a surge in young adults working & residing within the city limits. Unfortunately, many are using their parents’ addresses to get out of paying city taxes on their income. That’s just not acceptable.
My D graduated college in another state in May 2021. We bought her a used car in that state the summer just before her senior year. Actually, she had to buy it all on her own, but we funded it. Since we were not present for the purchase, nor we would ever be driving it, it had to be titled in her name and our insurance required us to remove her from our policy and she had to get her own in that state, even tho it was a temporary residence. She did all of this using her college rental apartment address. She then also had to, by law, get a new license in that state. When she graduated, she moved to a new apartment in the same city. Shortly thereafter, her car needed to be re-registered. Since she was living at a new address, she ended up having to due a change of address, etc, but she figured it all out. She files taxes where she lives and works. Most of her banking is online, but she uses her current address now for all of that. She has one small college loan and the mail for that was coming here until recently, but she updated her address last month and changed the statements to online access. She also registered to vote in that state so she could vote in the 2020 election. So essentially, she started changing her address for most things just before her senior year of college, even though she lives in rental properties and has already moved once.
The only mail we still get for her are credit card offers.
I take photos of anything that isn’t spam for S and text him with it. Most of it is spam. He does get mail where he’s living as well. It’s 5000 miles away.
Use of a different address to avoid higher payments (car tabs, salestaxes, income taxes, etc.) = fraud. Use of the address simply to mail important documents to a more secure mailbox = OK.
No you are not being unreasonable. When you move out of your parents house, you need to use your own address.
My D lives separately and uses her own address for stuff. She really doesn’t get much mail at all. And she says most of the mail that she gets is junk mail, which she throws out. She’s gone paperless for most her important stuff like banking, car insurance, bills, etc. The only important mail she gets are things from family and friends (cards, postcards) and she can let them know when she moves. She also does get stuff from her employer and the DMV (car registration notices), but it’s easy to let her employer know when she moves and you can change your address with the DMV online. Her renting has not been a problem with getting mail.
That said, when she had to order a new phone, she had it sent to our new house because she knew H and I would be home when it was delivered and she didn’t want it sitting on her apartment stoop all day…I think that sort of thing is reasonable. When my niece was engaged, she had the gifts sent to her in-laws house. They were retired, so they’d usually be home during the day. My niece and her fiancee worked full time and there apartment was right at the front of the complex, where it would be easy for someone to swipe a package from their doorstep and run off from it…
I’ve had important things mailed to me at work too. And one of my co-workers had a package stolen off of her front porch, so she’s started having stuff delivered to work as well.
A bit off topic, but my 60yo brother uses my address as his legal address. He holds dual citizenship - US + other, and he resides mostly in a third country. When my mom passed away, he wasn’t allowed to maintain the inherited assets with a US financial institution with the address of the country where he mostly lives. Since he is basically retired, he also didn’t qualify to have his address in the second country of citizenship.
To make it legal, we actually have a signed lease with him where he rents a room and a garage space from us.
He gets occasional mail at my house, which I open only with his permission if it seems important. Due to COVID, he hasn’t been “home” since June of 2019, so now the mail is starting to pile up!
Well, what your daughter’s boyfriends were doing is illegal. If the car is “domiciled” and parked every night in state A, but registered and insured in state B, that could get the driver in a lot of trouble if he gets in an accident.
Let me guess: Massachusetts?