It was just about a year ago when we went through this exact process. We were visiting in Texas the first week of March and stayed at the Escapees Headquarters in Livingston for about one week. We had narrowed our options down to Texas or South Dakota. The Escapees have a great service going for their mail forwarding and is a wonderful place but we chose Alternative Resources in Sioux Falls, SD for for the following reasons.
1: We were living in Minnesota and Sioux Falls was only a few hours away. We know we will be going back that way at least yearly because of family.
2: We had just ordered our new Monty and planned on getting a new truck also . The sales tax was 3% in South Dakota. Texas and Minnesota were a lot higher.
3: There is no income tax in either South DAkota or Texas.
Now, this is how we did it.....
February... we ordered our Monty
March...We put our house on the market
April 1.....We called Alternative Resources and got our new address and set up our mail forwarding service.
April 15.... The Monty arrived and we gave our dealer our new address and told them we would license it ourselves. We had a three week window to do that. We waited as long as possible because we didn't want to run into snow. While we were waiting, we started putting thru address changes and setting up everything for internet banking. We did not change banks because we already had one that is in South Dakota and most of the United States but we did change our address with the bank and ordered new checks. Soon our mail was going to South Dakota and we had them forward it weekly. We also canceled all of our credit cards except for one each and asked to be taken off their mailing list. We stressed NO JUNK MAIL.
May....We made an appointment with Tammy at AR and took the Monty to Sioux Falls. We stayed at the campground they recommended the first night because it was in Minnehaha County. In order to register to vote, you must stay in that county. Tammy had sent us paper work to fill out and then she filled in the rest, figured the tax and proceeded to get our license plates for both the Montana and our Truck. While she did that, we went down about three doors and got our South Dakota Drivers License. They give you your license right on the spot after you take the eye exam. This is good for five years but we will have to return at that time to take the eye exam again. Everything else can be done by mail (renewals etc). Next we went next door to the Doyle Insurance. These people know all about fulltiming and will give you plenty of options while making sure you have everything that is necessary. Our truck insurance was exactly 1/2 of what we were paying in Minnesota but our Montana insurance was more because it is like a home owners policy now. We also had to change our Medicare supplement insurance as the one we had was for Minnesota only. Our new one is Mutual of Omaha and covers us where ever we travel as does our Medicare. The supplement was quite a bit less than we had been paying in Minnesota.
By the time we finished all that, Tammy had our new plates and we went back to the campground we were staying at and packed up. We did not like that one so we moved up the road to a nicer one and stayed two more days to explore our new home. It is a great City. The Falls Park is wonderful. The food was great and the people couldn't have been nicer. We went back to Minnesota now calling ourselves Sodaks and finished getting rid of everything in our stick house including the house itself. Everything has worked out beautifully for us. We just let AR know, either by phone or internet , where to send our mail and a couple of days later, we have it. I just finished doing our taxes for last year and had to pay Minnesota tax on all income through April because we didn't get our drivers license until May.
This is probably more then you want to know but I wish someone would have done this for us.
Helen