FullTime Questions from newbie.

Divorce forces sale, as they say. Plan on selling out, splitting the sheets and going on the road by myself full time. Intentions are to purchase a 30-40ft diesel pusher and moving around frequently. Don't plan to maintain a permanent home base. Birth place is NJ but have lived in WA for the past 33 years. Have one son that lives here and a sister in NJ.

That said, I was wondering about how full time regulars handled residency? How about drivers licenses/registration? Where do you have mail sent? How about medical treatment? Is it tough to see new doctors on short notice? How about getting drugs mailed?  How about security for us older folks. Are there significant physical security issues we might see?

Being new, I haven't a clue. I'll be on my own for the first time in my life, so I have a lot of questions. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for any consideration you might care to give.

Please check the Forum library for articles on full timing.  Most of your questions will be addressed there.  Then if you have some more specific questions, please post them here.

Most of your questions have been discussed here before, so use Search to find previous discussions. Each of your questions is a lengthy discussion in itself.

You can continue your driver license and registration from your current home state, or establish residency somewhere else and use that state. Many fulltimers choose South Dakota, Montana, Florida or Texas because their tax structure and policies are generally lenient towards RVers.

Mail can be handled through any of dozens of mail forwarding services. The FMCA and Escapees (both great organizations for RVers) have good mail services.  There are local services in many areas too.

Medical treatment: We have found it no harder to get a doctor appointment on  the road than at our home base in Florida. Sometimes its easier. Plus there are hospital emergency rooms and walk-in "urgent care' centers most everywhere these days. You will want insurance that does not require use of a limited number of physicians or only local services. Many HMOs are restrictive about access to care, so they are a poor choice for travelers.

Prescription  drugs can be mailed most anywhere as long as they are not on the federal restricted list (narcotics). We use Medco Health for ours.  Or use national chains such as Walmarts, CVS, Rite Aid, etc. - they can usually transfer prescriptions among their locations easily.

I suggest that you read up on previous discussions on these subjects and then ask more specific questions in separate messages.

Thanks folks, I appreciate the insight. I'll see if I can find the libraries or search for the info.

Found the Forum and looked around. Didn't see anything specific to mail unless I missed something. Mail forwarding isn't the problem it's receiving mail that is. Where is it you have the mail sent when you are moving around? Do Post Offices still accept and hold mail addressed to General Delivery? How do you get mail in National Parks or when you aren't in some place that has an address like a campground?

Many post offices will accept General Delivery, but call first to be sure they do.  In many cities, only one post office will be the GD office, so you need to know which one.

Most campgrounds will also accept mail, but again, call first and ask and get the correct mailing address.

TinCanMan said:

Found the Forum and looked around. Didn't see anything specific to mail unless I missed something. Mail forwarding isn't the problem it's receiving mail that is. Where is it you have the mail sent when you are moving around? Do Post Offices still accept and hold mail addressed to General Delivery? How do you get mail in National Parks or when you aren't in some place that has an address like a campground?

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Mail Forwarding IS what you want.  You can set up a permanent address with entities such as "Escapees" or FMCA.  You let everyone you deal with know the new address.  Then correspondence that is sent to you from bills, letters, bank statements all go to that address.  Then you tell Escapee or FMCA where you are and they "forward" the mail to that address where you will be.  Often it's best to check with the campground and see if they will receive mail for you.  You'll also need to work out your timing so that you don't leave before your mail that has been forwarded to you gets there.

BTW, most fulltimers do nearly all of their financial business "online".  We're not full timers, but are gone 5-6 months out of the year and do all of our financial i.e. bills, bank statements, brokerage business-everything online.  We have a house, so we need to be able to pay electric bills, gas bills, taxes etc while we are gone.  Online banking makes it very easy.

Marsha~

I just clicked the "Search" button on the tool bar above, entered "mail forwarding" and got tons of prior discussions.

Marsha~

I just clicked the "Search" button on the tool bar above, entered "mail forwarding" and got tons of prior discussions

Click to expand...

Yeah, just did that and got lots of hits but notice 20% of each hit had missing words replaced with *********. What's that about???

The ............  are to show that what you're seeing is an excerpt from the message.  Click on the message subject in the search results to read the whole message in context.

Thanx Ned.