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I moved to a new house a few months ago, relocating from Hampshire to West Sussex—25 miles east across the southern coast of England. It was horrible. Don’t get me wrong: The physical movement of people and possessions went fine. Making sure my new contact information got to everybody who needed to know—that was the nightmare. 

I hadn’t noticed my life had gotten so crowded. Bankers, credit-card companies, insurers, the phone company, utilities, publications I subscribe to, organizations I belong to, editors and publishers I do work for, people who do work for me, colleagues, family, friends, acquaintances all had to be contacted and informed of my new contact information. It took longer to sort out than it did to pack up and move. 

But I’ll never face that time-consuming, tedious scenario again. I’ve discovered how to set up a fully “portable office.” The next time I move, my contact information will move with me. Whether I’m on business in Glasgow, vacationing in Greece, sizing up property in Guatemala, or living in Timbuktu—my contact information will stay the same. No matter how often I move around, I will now be instantly accessible to friends, family, and even my bank manager. My portable office system means my postal and E-mail addresses and my telephone and fax numbers need never change again—regardless of my physical whereabouts.
Technology has made my portable office possible. You can set one up too—it’s simple—for less than $35 per month. 

Step 1: Your free E-mail account
Set up unlimited personal E-mail accounts—without spending a cent. You don’t need to have your own computer or to pay monthly rental fees. You can set up free E-mail accounts on-line. Connect to the Internet at a Cybercafe or use a friend’s or employer’s machine. Visit any of the following sites and follow the simple instructions to set up free, personal, fully portable E-mail addresses: 

www.escapeartist.com
www.mailstart.com
www.hotmail.com
www.mailcity.com
www.mailandnews.com
www.yahoo.com

Once your E-mail address is operational, you can hand out the address to your contacts. Using a computer with Internet connectivity, you can access messages sent to your address wherever you are in the world. Even if you don’t own a portable laptop computer, it shouldn’t prove too difficult to find a public- access machine in most places. Try cybercafes, libraries, hotels, bookshops, and office-service providers. It takes less than five minutes phone time to access the Internet, download your new messages, and print them. And you can also use your free E-mail address to send messages. 

Step 2: Your worldwide telephone and fax 
Next you need phone and fax numbers that stay the same and that enable you to receive phone and fax messages—instantly—wherever you are in the world. 

At one time, this would have been impossible. Not anymore. 

Once you’ve set up your free E-mail account, visit www.jfax.com on the Internet. For $12.50 per month, JFAX Personal Telecom gives you a local phone number in your choice of cities in the United States and around the world. Your contacts can send to this number faxes and voice messages that JFAX will instantly forward to your E-mail account. All you have to do is check your E-mail. Faxes and voice messages appear in your E-mail in box as attachments to messages. You just double click to view or listen. You can store or reroute all your messages via your free E-mail account facilities. And JFAX also enables you to send faxes at low cost. 
Visit the JFAX site and follow the simple instructions to activate your new phone/fax number and to download the JFAX software (free of charge). I have a London number with JFAX, and I have found the service foolproof and efficient. I have also found the company’s after-sales service to be first-class. 

Step 3: A permanent postal address
Finally, you need to set up a postal address where all your essential mail can be sent to and from where it can be forwarded on to you. 

One way to do this is to get a P.O. box address. In the United States, this can cost as little as $40 per year—less than $5 per month. Go to the post office complete with a photo ID and complete a form. Once you pay six months in advance, plus a deposit for the keys, you’re in business.

In Europe, I’ve found P.O. boxes cost considerably more than the U.S. equivalent. There, using privately operated accommodation addresses is a cheaper way to go. You can find accommodation-address operators in the Yellow Pages or your local equivalent under “Office Services” or “Secretarial Services.” 
Once your account is up and running, have all your mail sent to this address—bank statements, personal correspondence, subscriptions, deliveries—and have the PO box or accommodation address operator forward the items (as they arrive or however frequently you desire) to wherever you want them to be. You’ll have to pay postage for forwarding, which will depend on the volume of mail.

Using a permanent postal address means you have to inform only the operator when you move from one location to another—preferable to having to tell all your correspondents. 

Putting it to the test
Once you’ve completed these three steps, you’ll have a fully operational, portable, personal and/or business communications structure for less than $35 per month. I’ve been using and testing this structure for the last three months. In the course of my work, I’ve traveled up and down the United Kingdom, into France several times, and recently to Spain. Wherever I’ve been, my messages have proven instantly retrievable. I haven’t missed a call. I’ve received all my faxes and E-mail. And my postal communications have proved easy to manage despite my sometimes-constant changes of location.