I’m not retiring for 8.5 years.  We can’t travel full time at least until then so why am I deciding on our domicile so far in advance?  Because I can’t help it, I’m a planner.  We’ve had three states in the running; Florida, Texas, and South Dakota.  I had always thought we would move our domicile to Texas but recently I’ve been waffling.  South Dakota was starting to look very attractive which made me rethink my decision.  After crunching the numbers and reviewing health care options I have decided to stay with Texas.

So why even blog about this.  Mainly it just helps to write out my thought processes.   Also, I’ve done a lot more research on what we need to do to emigrate to Texas.  I’ve got a timeline now with what tasks we need to accomplish step by step as we moved to Texas.

The rough outline of the plan is this:

• Purchase the RV prior to retirement
  • We’ll buy the RV a few years before we retire so we can get the RV outfitted and get some practice before we retire.
• Sell the house
  • Once we are comfortable towing and living in the RV, we’ll select an RV park near my work to finish out the last few years of work.  Then we’ll clean out the house, do some minor remodeling, and then sell it.  We’ll pay off the RV and then invest the rest.
• Full-Timing
  • At this point we will not have a house but I won’t be retired yet.  We’ll use this time to get used to full-timing and prepping for retirement.
• Retirement
  • First we’ll set up a mail service in Texas.  More than likely this will be with Escapees.  They have tons of resources for full-time RV’ers.  This will give us our street address.  We’ll change our bank, insurance, etc to use this new address.
  • Next we’ll have to find an insurance agent in Texas to insure our vehicles just prior to the trip.
  • After retirement we’ll pull up stakes and head to Texas.  We have a 40 day trip planned to get to Texas.  Once we’re there we’ll set up shop and begin the process of registering vehicles and getting Texas driver’s licenses.

The domicile process:

• Once we arrive in Texas we’ll head over to Escapees’ RV park, Rainbow’s End, to set up as a home base to begin all the tasks involved in becoming Texans.
• Register our vehicles
  • We may be able to register our truck and trailer before we even leave for Texas.  However, it may be cleaner and easier to register once we get there.
• Apply for Texas drivers’ license
  • Once we’ve insured and registered our vehicles we can apply for a driver’s license.  Once we have our TDL we are for all practical purposes, residents of the State of Texas.
• Begin professional relationships
  • After we complete the domiciling process we need to talk to an attorney because California is notorious for going after people that it THINKS are California residents.  We want to talk to a lawyer to make sure we’ve got all our i’s dotted.

After we’ve got this process complete our next stop will be to near by Lake Livingston where we’ll stay for a month or so to just decompress and decide what to do next.  Again, we have 8.5 years before any of this happens but in that 8.5 years we need to buy a bigger truck, buy our 5th wheel trailer, get rid of our possessions, and sell our home all while holding down a full time job.  And we need to help our daughter move out and get established.  That’s probably JUST enough time to do all this.  It will be here before we know it.