Quote:
Originally Posted by morls
The only catch is the email. I think for this kind of saving it's worth the hassle, and our current provider offers an email only account (for max 3 months) that costs $6.00 p/m. This will make the transition easier.
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Get yourself and your family onto one or more perpetual free email accounts (Google gmail.com, Microsoft outlook.com, etc - pick the global internet behemoth that you're most comfortable to connect to). Notify all of your important contacts of the changed address (you can probably send out a couple of mass emails using "bcc" so that the recipients don't get a full list of all your contacts), and go onto the websites of your key contacts (banks, insurance, car registration, etc) to update your details.
Create a couple of rules on your old ISP-supplied email to auto-forward all incoming messages to your new email address AND auto-reply to incoming emails advising them of your new email address. (If you're clever, you can create rules which auto-forward and auto-reply to only "trusted" senders, so that the spam-merchants don't get forwarded or notified.) Every time you get an auto-forwarded message, you can check that the sender has indeed updated their records (e.g. you'll probably have forgotten to update your contact details with a few of your more obscure contacts).
You'll probably want to pay your old RSP to maintain the old address for about a year (or at least until after the end of the financial year), to make sure you catch all of the important contacts / annual subscriptions, who may only send out an update once a year. (We paid iiNet $25 for a one-year email-only extension in early 2017 - over two years later, it's still running, but they haven't re-billed us, and the old credit card details that they may have on file no longer work.)
This way, you'll be able to keep your email address henceforth, no matter how many times you change RSP, or even if / when you move overseas.