retirees who frequently relocate

[simple girl]

Thought this article might be of interest to some:

http://www.realestatejournal.com/buysell/relocation/20070409-greene.html

DH and I have moved a lot over the last 1 1/2 years and have enjoyed the newness of each move (but not the work involved with moving!). This could be an idea we entertain when we eventually FIRE.

 

[JPatrick]

Sounds like these folks are good candidates for a Class A motorhome.
I had almost forgotten about the "valley fever." I knew a couple of folks in Phoenix who almost bit the dust from the fever. Bad stuff.

 

[audreyh1]

How about retirees who move every week or so? It's newness all the time! Although sometimes it gets annoying to have to locate everything in the grocery store since we're always shopping in a different one!

But then you just start to see the whole darn country as your back yard, and every state/city is just a different neighborhood.....

Audrey

 

[kramer]

They barely touch on it, but private health insurance is generally not portable across state lines. If you move your state of residence, you usually have to undergo insurance underwriting from scratch. That means that if you develop a pre-existing condition, you can become of a prisoner in the state in which you currently live until Medicare.

Audrey, how do you guys handle this as full-timers? Did you just establish residence in a state and get a policy with a good nationwide network? This is an issue for me -- I am applying for private health insurance, but I may change my state of residence in a few years.

Kramer

 

[chinaco]

If your health insurance is purchased with a Large HMO that has a national footprint... Does the coverage extend to all states?

Plus, Even if you do move around in retirement... can't you keep your residence in the state where the insurnace contract was purchased and "frequently visit"? The only potential problem is if one has a chronic disease and the Inurnace company uses PPO network. One might pay more if they use an out of network health provider?

 

[haha]

They barely touch on it, but private health insurance is generally not portable across state lines. If you move your state of residence, you usually have to undergo insurance underwriting from scratch. That means that if you develop a pre-existing condition, you can become of a prisoner in the state in which you currently live until Medicare.

As I remember, WA does not require that the WA Health Questionnaire be completed if one moves here from another state in which he had comparable coverage to that which he is applying for. So in some situations at least coverage would be replaceable, if not exactly portable.

Ha

 

[audreyh1]

Audrey, how do you guys handle this as full-timers? Did you just establish residence in a state and get a policy with a good nationwide network? This is an issue for me -- I am applying for private health insurance, but I may change my state of residence in a few years.

Kramer

We remain TX residents not matter where our wheels take us. As long as we don't establish residency in any other state, we remain TX residents. Our vehicles are insured and registered in TX, we have TX driver's licenses, we are registered to vote in TX. That pretty much maintains our residency.

We have Blue Cross/Blue Shield PPO and I suppose we expect that if we need urgent care this will not be a problem - it hasn't before. If we have to return to TX for prolonged treatment of something, that will not be a problem either. We take care of any routine medical care when we are in state.

Audrey

 

[audreyh1]

By the way, each state has it's own rules about what is required to establish residency and these vary widely. The situation is usually much clearer when you are employed rather than when you are retired and "free to roam".

I only know the rules for TX which makes it easy for fulltimers to establish and maintain residency. The Escapees organization publishes a booklet called "How to become a Real Texan" which explains to RV fulltimers establish TX residency http://www.escapees.com/edocs/texan.pdf.

A lot of fulltimers favor TX or SD residency because of no state income tax as well as fulltimer friendly residency rules. There are a few hassles for TX like somewhat higher vehicle sales tax and registration fees plus that pesky annual state inspection for all road vehicles.

We were already TX residents, so we didn't have to really do anything except we changed our county of residence to that of my in-laws.

Audrey

Escapees has a bunch of RV and fulltimer useful booklets on this page: http://www.escapees.com/freebooklets.asp