Home base for full timers

My wife and I are hitting the road full time in Aug.  We will be selling our Condo here in Oakland Park, Florida (Ft. Lauderdale) and will no longer own property in Florida.  We know that we can set up mail forwarding with either a service or family members, but for other purposes such as taxes, voting, driver license renewal, car and RV insurance, etc.  Your feedback would be appreciated.
Charlie & Andrea

Hi Charlie and Andrea!

Texas seems to be a popular place to establish a residence for those purposes. Other states will have their advantages too, such as low income/sales tax, reduced insurance rates etc. I maintain Wisconsin as my residence mainly because, well, that's where I'm from, vehicle registration and insurance is quite reasonable for me, and that's where my health care (VA Center, Milwaukee) is.

I recently established mail forwarding service with Escapees after several years of using my sister's address and having her box up and ship my mail to me. It was a pain for her and me, required lots of telephone calls, and sometimes things didn't get to where they should have or at the right time. I highly recommend you use a mail service too - much more efficient and lots easier on family/friends relations. ;D   

Since you are currently a Florida resident, there is little motivation for you to change your legal residence, since you are already in a state that is popular with fulltimers as  a residence. RV registration fees are very low, no state income tax or personal property tax, no special driving license needed for large RVs, and flexible government policies for part-time residents (FL is used to dealing with folks who do not physically reside in the state year around).  Sales taxes about average (low compared to the northeast, though) if you buy a new RV there.  You would want to change your address away from the Ft Lauderdale area, though. Vehicle insurance is relatively high in Florida (compared to western states) and the south Florida metro areas are the worst in the state. Your vehicle insurance would drop substantially if you use an address in central or northern Florida. Our home base is near Ocala, though we used to live in Boca Raton  (1977-1993).

Other good choices are Texas and South Dakota.

If you do not take any overt action to establish  residency elsewhere, your Florida residency will remain in effect indefinitely. It is not necessary to own property in a state to be considered a legal resident (domicile) and in fact, merely owning property there does not in itself make you a resident. Domicile or legal residency is a complex subject that you will need to learn more about if you decide to make a change - feel free to ask further questions if you want to go that route.

Hi Charlie and Andrea,

We are full timers and live at The Great Outdoors in Titusville. We own a lot with screen room and shed. TGO forwards our mail wherever we want. It costs $5/month plus the postage. When we are here we don't pay anything for the mail. We have found Florida pretty inexpensive compared to other states.

If you don't want to own any property one of the better places to go is the Escapees in Livingston, TX. They also forward your mail for the same price. The big difference is it's always forwarded. I think registering in TX requires periodic vehicle inspections. I don't know the cost of registering but we have members that do.