Email accounts
We made a big mistake 12 years ago. We signed up for Comcast internet and TV. Signing up wasn’t the problem because we have been very happy with their service. The mistake was using the free email address they gave us as the username and contact email address when signing up with accounts for a myriad of other companies. From our bank to Amazon to our credit card companies to our utility companies. Every time a new company wanted an email address to establish a new account we used our Comcast email address. Now when we move to England all those accounts that have our Comcast email as the username or the contact will no longer work when we close our Comcast account.
What we’re doing now is that whenever we go to an online account we will go into our profile and change the Comcast email address to and address that will travel with us. The account we’re changing to is Gmail. The nice thing about using Gmail is that will travel with us anywhere.
Let’s go one step further. Don’t just setup a Gmail account, setup a Google account that will include Gmail. That way if you want a YouTube account, an Adsense account, and an Adwords account you can tie them all together under one username and password with Google. 10GB of storage and Google Docs makes this type of account even more appealing.
Finally, don’t make the time consuming mistake we did, if your online and asked to provide an email address as a username or contact address, as yourself this question: If we move tomorrow or next month would this email address travel with us?
