To function in modern society, you need to call somewhere home, and most US states seem uninterested in being home to someone who does not have a physical residence there. Before choosing a home state, we considered health insurance, state residency requirements, and mail.
Health Insurance
Health insurance is not optional in our opinion, so that was the first thing we researched. The state you live in and/or the company you work for pretty much dictates your health insurance options. We got very lucky with health insurance, and what worked for us probably wouldn't work for most people, especially those younger than 65.
Kelly's Insurance (COBRA)
Kelly worked in Massachusetts for a Texas company, so for years our insurance was a PPO through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas. When he retired, he continued that coverage through COBRA, and he can stay on that plan through the end 2022. He can go to any doctor in the BCBS network, and since BCBS has a wide network, he is pretty much covered wherever we go within the US. By the time his COBRA expires, he will qualify for Medicare.
Cindy's Insurance (Medicare)
Cindy recently became eligible for Medicare. She signed up for Medicare Parts A and B, a Medicare Supplement (aka Medigap) plan, and a Part D (prescription) plan. This setup is more complicated and more costly than the popular Medicare Advantage plans, but it will give her the flexibility to see any doctor who takes Medicare, no matter where we are.
A State to Live In
Note: In the discussion below, the term “domicile” is probably more appropriate than that of “residency,” but for purposes of this post, they are the same thing.
Note 2: Three years into this, South Dakota insurance companies changed their rules. They will no longer insure a car if you don't have a physical livable residence in SD. They still will insure RVs, but we just have a car. After some scrambling and with a little help from our friends, we rented a room in New Hampshire so that we could become NH residents. SO we still travel extensively, but we have a place to call home.
To get a driver's license, register a car, buy health insurance, vote, and conduct other types of business in this country, you need to be a resident of a state. And many states won't consider you a resident unless you have a physical address in that state and actually spend significant time there.
A few states are more flexible in this regard. After some research, we chose South Dakota to become our new home state. South Dakota actually seems to want full time travelers to call their state home. As a bonus, they have no state income tax. Texas and Florida are also tax free options used by full time RVers, but Florida was a no-go for us because we had to own either an RV or a boat (something you can technically live in) to call ourselves Florida residents. And Texas residency just seemed more complicated than South Dakota.
When we began planning this venture, we started conducting most of our business online to minimize the amount of paper mail we received. However, there are times when you need an address where you can receive paper mail. Enter the Mail Forwarding/Personal Mail Box (PMB) services. These services provide a physical address that you can use for receiving mail, including packages, and, in South Dakota, for getting a driver's license. We choose DakotaPost in Sioux Falls SD to manage our PMB. When they receive a piece of mail for us, they scan the outside of the envelope and post the image to our “virtual mailbox.” For each piece of mail, we can choose from several options: shred it, open it and scan the inside pages, forward it to us, or hold it until the next time we are in Sioux Falls.
There is one significant wrinkle with the PMB address. Although we use our PMB as both our physical address and our mailing address for most purposes, financial institutions (banks, investment firms, and credit card companies) want you to have an actual physical address. They will let you use the PMB as a mailing address, but we have been told that if you try to open or change a financial account using a PMB service as the physical address, the account will be flagged and potentially frozen. Our understanding is that this is a requirement put on financial institutions when the Patriot Act was enacted after 9/11. However, it turns out that the Patriot Act also contains an exception for people without a physical address—you can provide the physical address of a “trusted friend,” a person who could in theory vouch for you or would know your whereabouts if requested. If you are thinking about starting a nomadic lifestyle, you should check with your financial institution for more information and for any tax ramifications.
Detailed Details
Here is exactly what we did to become South Dakota residents for anyone who is crazy enough to care. We sold our house and moved into an apartment in Massachusetts. More than a month before our lease expired, we made a trip to South Dakota to establish residency there. We then returned to Massachusetts, changed all our mailing addresses to our new SD address, emptied the apartment, and hit the road. Doesn't that sound easy?
Mail
In late fall of 2021, we set up our account with DakotaPost, a mail forwarding service based in Sioux Falls, SD. That gave us the South Dakota address we needed to proceed, and also gave us time to check out the services they provided.
Car Insurance
Before we headed to South Dakota, we contacted an insurance company in Sioux Falls and arranged to have car insurance in place starting the day we expected to convert our car registration to South Dakota. After we got our new driver's licenses and car registration in South Dakota, we contacted the insurance agent with that information. BTW, car insurance is not required in South Dakota.
Lawyer
Before we headed to South Dakota, we contacted a Sioux Falls attorney and worked with him to prepare wills, powers of attorney, healthcare proxies, etc. We set up an appointment with the attorney so we could sign all the documents while we were in Sioux Falls.
Transferring Massachusetts Driver's Licenses to South Dakota
Before leaving home:
- We made appointments for an Out-of-State License Transfer at the Sioux Falls DPS Licensing Office. Your address determines which office you must go to. We thought appointments were required, but when we got there we discovered that the office took walk-ins.
- We gathered the necessary documents. The South Dakota DPS website listed what documents were required to transfer our licenses, and there was also a separate section describing the documents required for full time travelers. In our case, we needed paperwork from our PMB service, passports, social security cards, and a completed copy of a Residency Affidavit. We had our eyes checked in advance so we knew would pass the vision test.
In South Dakota:
- We spent the night before our DPS appointments in a South Dakota hotel. We made sure both of our names were on the hotel receipt and that the address on the receipt was our DakotaPost PMB address.
- We took our documents, our Massachusetts drivers licenses, and the hotel receipt to our appointments. We came out with SD driver's licenses. They kept our Massachusetts driver's licenses.
Car Registration
Once we had our SD driver's license, we could register our car in South Dakota. We took the Massachusetts car title and a South Dakota driver's license to the Minnehaha County Treasurer. (The address on your license determines which office you go to.) Before entering the office, we noted the mileage on the car. This office did not take appointments, but the long line moved quickly. Our Massachusetts car title was converted to a SD title. (We received the new title in the mail a few weeks later.)
We were handed plates, stickers, and a registration card to keep in the car. We had already arranged for car insurance, and SD does not require vehicle inspections, so we found an empty parking lot and swapped out our plates, using the screw driver we remembered to bring with us from Massachusetts. We hit the weather jackpot that day—it was a sunny 40 degree day, sandwiched between days with single digit temperatures.
SD requires you to re-register the car annually and replace the sticker. Your renewal month is based on your name, and our renewal month is August. Jim at the County Treasurer's office recognized our DakotaPost address and suggested that we renew online and have the sticker mailed to DakotaPost, who can then forward it to us. We plan to use registration renewal as a good reason to return to Sioux Fall in August, as it was a bit cold in January for exploring.
Voting
We can now register to vote in South Dakota. When we return to Sioux Falls in August of 2022, we will investigate.
Jury Duty
Having a South Dakota driver's license means we are eligible for jury duty in South Dakota.
Final Thoughts
Although we travel full time, we now have permanent connections to South Dakota. We consider it our home state, and we expect to return there periodically. In fact, we have signed a Residency Affidavit that says we will “return there after being absent.”
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