Questions for full time RVers

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HRDWRK

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 27, 2015
Posts
155
Hi:
My wife and I have been playing with the idea of full time RVing but there are many things that we need to figure out first.Some of our questions are related to oridanry things: What do you do with health insurance coverage? We are in our 50s. What do you do with your mail? How do you recieve them? What do you do with your house? I know many people may sell tehir house but if you are just trying full time RVing, you many not want to sell your house just in case you change your mind.
Any other inforamtion would be appreciated.
 
Have you checked out the "Fulltimers Forum" yet? A good place to get a start on many of your questions.
http://www.rvforum.net/SMF_forum/index.php/board,65.0.html
 
HRDWRK said:
Hi:
My wife and I have been playing with the idea of full time RVing but there are many things that we need to figure out first.Some of our questions are related to oridanry things: What do you do with health insurance coverage? We are in our 50s. What do you do with your mail? How do you recieve them? What do you do with your house? I know many people may sell tehir house but if you are just trying full time RVing, you many not want to sell your house just in case you change your mind.
Any other inforamtion would be appreciated.
Some links to lots of info:
http://www.rv-dreams.com/
https://wheelingit.us/usa-rving-tips-tech-more/

The Escapees RV Club has an online educational program: https://www.escapees.com/education/rvers-online-university/

Also the Escapees RV Club has a very helpful forum http://www.rvnetwork.com/ with two sections dedicated to Beginning RV'ing:  www.rvnetwork.com/forum/3-beginning-rving/  and Sharing the Fulltiming Lifestyle:  http://www.rvnetwork.com/forum/5-sharing-the-fulltime-lifestyle/  For both of the above forum sections, you can just start at the most recent topic and work your way back reading the entries of most interest to you.  While you will find many topics that don't pertain to questions you have right now, you will find others which will interest you. 

Escapees RV Club also has a RV Boot Camp several day long educational program in Livingston, TX (about 50 miles north of Houston).  The next class is in November. https://www.escapees.com/community-calendar/category/rvers-boot-camp/
 
Thank you for the links. I didn't know about them. My bad.
 
Instead of going right to full time, consider a summer of camp hosting to try it out.  1 to three months as a camp host will give you a good idea of the life.  Then you could always sell or rent your house.  Those that fill time generally sell or give away everything, store nothing.  Mail is the easy part.  Every state has mail forewording companies, many with street address.  Health insurance is the biggie.  Pick a state like FL or TX and check insurance availability.
 
I'll give some general ideas to help you get started on solutions that would work for you.  We never actually full-timed - we are "long timers", several months a year, but the situation is much the same.

MAIL: These days you don't need to get much US mail - nearly everything can be handled electronically,  email, text messages,  fax via PC, and direct file uploads. That includes online banking and bill pay. For the rest, establish an account with a mail-forwarding service and use their address as your physical mail address.  These services can either forward mail to you (in bulk) at whatever location you specify, e.g. a USPS General Delivery PO, or open and scan mail to send electronically.  There are a variety of services and way to handle the mail.

INSURANCE (Etc):  You still have a legal "home" somewhere, called a Domicile.  As a fulltimer, you have some latitude as to where that is, but it is somewhat determined by where you choose to make your legal relationships, e.g. driver license, vehicle tags, voter registration, etc. Health insurers generally accept  the domicile location as your "home" for insurance purposes.  However, since you are often "away from home", you need a policy that has a broad network of providers and does not penalize for out of area services. Therefore most HMOs are to be avoided, as are state or regional providers.  United Healthcare, Aetna, Anthem and other major insurers offer nationwide coverage in most areas, but the availability of those policies is one of the factors in choosing a domicile states.

Much has been written here about the concept of domicile, so I suggest using SEARCH to find previous conversations about it. Unfortunately, it's a somewhat hazy concept when it comes to how you establish domicile.

HOUSE:  As long-timers, we of course kept our house, essentially our winter home (in Florida, in our case).  We "closed up the house" just like many others who have two homes do, shutting down some services (e.g. cable tv), forwarding mail and landline phone, shutting off most of the water lines, heat or a/c set to low or high temps, arrange for lawn care, etc.  If you expect to be gone long term, renting it out is a possibility as well, but that has both risk and reward.

One advantage of keeping a house is that you have a ready-made permanent physical address to use for the purpose of insurance, icenses, etc. That makes those things somewhat easier to manage.


This probably raises as many questions as it answers, and there are many variations of how to handle each item I've mentioned. Surely others will voice their solutions as well.
 
HRDWRK said:
My wife and I have been playing with the idea of full time RVing but there are many things that we need to figure out first.Some of our questions are related to oridanry things: What do you do with health insurance coverage? We are in our 50s.
Health insurance eclipses all your other concerns. If you have to purchase your own health insurance for 10+ years before Medicare, then it could cost you hundred of thousands.

Unless you can afford this, I usually suggest folks wait until they're 65 when Medicare kicks in.
 
I don't think that healthcare necessarily costs any more on the road than at a fixed home. For those near but under 65, it is going to be hugely expensive either way, though a fixed location may have more coverage options.  The least expensive, broad coverage plans are likely to be state or regional HMO's, and they generally restrict access to services out of their area. RVers who travel widely (whether fulltime or not) and need routine (non-emergency) medical care will have to select an insurer & policy with a nationwide provider network. Those are almost always PPO plans.
 
Gary RV_Wizard said:
I don't think that healthcare necessarily costs any more on the road than at a fixed home. For those near but under 65, it is going to be hugely expensive either way, though a fixed location may have more coverage options.
Fulltime healthcare costs can be much more expensive, Gary.

For example, a few years ago my wife contracted cancer when she was on an Arizona ACA PPO plan. This PPO plan only had a network in AZ. Since we work camped in California, we had to travel 400 miles (one way) back to AZ for her chemotherapy.

If we lived in AZ, we would not have had to do that.

Gary RV_Wizard said:
The least expensive, broad coverage plans are likely to be state or regional HMO's, and they generally restrict access to services out of their area. RVers who travel widely (whether fulltime or not) and need routine (non-emergency) medical care will have to select an insurer & policy with a nationwide provider network. Those are almost always PPO plans.
No, there are not always nationwide PPO plans. Nationwide PPO plans are few and far between, and some PPO plans are not even nationwide.

Here's a link to a 2016 survey of ACA PPO plans I researched: https://rvseniormoments.com/2016/09/29/where-the-ppos-are/. This is when times were "good". Now there are fewer plans overall and far less nationwide PPO plans.

In fact, of the "Big Three" full timer domicile states -- SD, TX, and FL -- only FL currently offers a nationwide plan -- and it's an EPO plan, not a PPO.
 
zulu said:
In fact, of the "Big Three" full timer domicile states -- SD, TX, and FL -- only FL currently offers a nationwide plan -- and it's an EPO plan, not a PPO.

Not necessarily. I am on a Blue Cross PPO that covers me in my home state of SD.  I have been on it a year now.
 
SargeW said:
Nope, just a regular PPO plan.
SargeW woah this is great news!  Would love to go with SD but thought we couldn't get a PPO managed care plan (we're both under 65).  What plan is it and who do you use for mailing service?  Great info will be going full timing next yr.
 
Sorry, busy day yesterday.  We are with Anthem Blue Cross PPO.  And our mail service is with "My Dakota Address" in Madison.  There are several in SD and all seem to do a good job.
 
The insurance is obtained through our past employers contract with Blue Cross. The employer is in Ca. They may offer the coverage due to the size of the insured group. I just know that I used to have the HMO until we left CA, and I had to switch to the PPO.
 
SargeW said:
The insurance is obtained through our past employers contract with Blue Cross. The employer is in Ca. They may offer the coverage due to the size of the insured group. I just know that I used to have the HMO until we left CA, and I had to switch to the PPO.
Was the insurance coverage perhaps part of your retirement package?  Perhaps since you were previously covered through your employer, you were allowed to continue with them, even out of state?
 

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