arhayes wrote:
You are actually asking very smart questions! For mail, there are several mail services that Full-timers use but the two I'm familiar with are:
- Escapees-Mail Service
- America's Mailbox - Americas Mailbox
We used a couple local, mom & pop mail forwarding services which worked just fine.
arhayes wrote:
Medical is trickier depending on your state and whether you can qualify for an Obamacare plan. You say you didn't want one, but insurance was cost prohitive when we retired as I wasn;t willing to pay $2500 a month for the two of us. We retired at 60 and hit the road, so had to go thru 5 years of scrambling for insurance because our retirement income was too high to get an ACA subsidy. if your retirement income will be below the threshhold (it was $63k - not sure if that's that same now) you may be in good shape.
When we started full timing, we used my company's COBRA health insurance for 18 months. It was a very good Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO plan that also included dental and vision benefits. This COBRA plan was $1100/month.
By comparison, we checked out other health care plans. This was a year before the ACA started. The best plan we could find cost about $700 a month and didn't have dental or vision coverage.
After that 18 months, I only needed individual health insurance for one month since I turned 65 and went on Medicare. However, my wife went on an AZ ACA (aka Obamacare) plan for about 2 years.
arhayes wrote:
Just make sure whatever plan you get would you would be in network in any state.
ACA plans are based on where you
actually reside which may not necessarily be your domicile. Remember, ACA plans are Federal. Typically, under 65 full timers chose FL as their domicile because it is the only one of the "Big Three" (TX, SD, and FL) that still has nationwide PPO plans.
Besides the Big Three, there are several states that have nationwide PPO plans, like AK, AL, AR, CA, ND, and WY. However, in this list only AK and WY have no state income tax.
arhayes wrote:
We wound up using a Healthcare Sharing Ministry program that worked for us. It provided essentially the same poor coverage as ACA at less than half the cost. As an aside, I found that routine doctor visits cost me less by paying cash than using the insurance. We used GoodRX for routine prescriptions at reasonable prices.
The ACA was a lifesaver for my wife. She developed uterine cancer and her ACA health plan covered most of the expenses. Otherwise, we would have been out thousands of dollars.
Remember, that the ACA covers pre-existing conditions. Without that, my wife would have been
without health insurance.
As a reminder, health sharing plans are
not health insurance. They are not required to cover anything. Best you examine these plans VERY carefully.
arhayes wrote:
You need to look at legal Domicile issues if you think you may change state of residency for legal purposes. Again, Escapees has info on their website to give you some guidance.
Escapees is a fine organization. I've been a member for several years. However, their business includes TX, FL, and SD, and not other states. So getting reliable info from Escapees on other domicile states besides the Big Three will be challenging.
