Another RV Repair and Becoming a Florida Resident – 8/24/19 to 8/30/19

Since my last blog post was all about the wonderfulness of having family fly out and join us on vacation in a beautiful area, it seems only right that I follow up with a blog post that is about the more mundane/real aspects of RV living.  Just my way to reinforce that while we may be “living a dream”, that dream has an awful lot of reality with it!  My next blog post, which I’ll post shortly after this one, will be about our exploration of beautiful Glacier National Park, so if you’d prefer to skip this post to read that one, I’ll certainly understand.

Way back in June, when we were in Santa Fe NM, Karen and I noticed a loud “pop” sound when we were retracting our leveling jacks as we were getting ready to leave an RV park that we’d stayed in for about 3 weeks.  Everything seemed to be working fine after that, so we just kind of tucked that away hoping it was no big deal.  A few weeks later, when we were doing our exploring of the Utah national parks, when we would go to a new RV park and use our leveling jacks, we started to notice that our RV would slowly sink out of being level, particularly in the rear of the RV.  We noticed it happened the most when we would be in RV sites where we had to “jack-up” the rear of the RV quite a bit in order to get to level.

On the final day of our family vacation, when Jillian was the last one to be with us, she helped us move our RV from the Airbnb we had rented for the vacation back to the RV park not too far away, since Karen and I planned to stay in Idaho for another several days.  When we got to the RV park, Jillian went outside of the RV with Karen while I was operating the leveling jacks from inside.  As I tried to deploy the jacks to raise the rear of the RV, a strange whining noise occurred, and the leveling jacks wouldn’t lift the RV.  As you can imagine, we started to worry about what the cost of repairing the leveling system would be.  Jillian happened to be standing near the RV compartment from which the noise was coming.  She let us know that, so Karen opened up the compartment (which housed the machinery that operates the leveling jacks) and saw a flood of fluid on the floor of the compartment.  Karen called an RV repair person, who said that it was likely to be transmission fluid, which is used by the leveling system to operate the jacks.  In the best-case scenario, if the fluid was from a leak and the leak was easy to find/repair, it wouldn’t be too costly a repair.  Karen and I had our fingers crossed!

The RV repair guy came out and was able to confirm that the fluid was coming from the junction of where a tube (through which the fluid flowed) was attached to a pump.  He surmised that the tube had been overly tightened to the pump and had basically squashed an O-ring gasket that keeps fluid from leaking out.  He replaced the O-ring, re-tightened the tube, re-filled the transmission fluid tank, and had us test the leveling system by using the jacks and then retracting them.  The leveling jacks successfully operated to level the RV without any noticeable leaking, so we were thrilled.  Yeah, it still cost us close to $300 for the repair, but it was sooo much less than we had worried it would be if we had to replace any of the actual jacks or the machinery that operates them. 

I’ll end this part of the blog post by telling you what another RVer said to us about RVs and having to live with the expectation of repairing them somewhat frequently – “Remember, living in your RV is like living in a house that is constantly dealing with earthquakes.”

A couple of days after the leveling jacks repair, I flew down to Florida to work on completing the process of changing my state of residence from MD to FL.  I may have mentioned something about this process way back in an earlier blog post, but I’ll refresh your memory as to why we’re doing this.  When you become a full-time RVer and you no longer live in one state permanently, you have some options as to where you want your state of residence to be.  You want to find a state that is RVer-friendly – that will permit you to be a resident of the state without requiring you to live in the state for a minimum period of time each year and doesn’t require you to come back very often to renew your driver’s license, get a vehicle inspected, etc.  It is well known among full-time RVers that three of the RVer-friendliest states are Florida, Texas, and South Dakota.  We ended up picking Florida.

One of the selling points of Florida was that it has a very good mailing service, called St. Brendan’s Isle, where they provide you with a legitimate mailing address for the purpose of having a place for your mail to be received and using that address to provide to various organizations that ask for your mailing address, such as for insurance policies, credit cards, etc.  Our physical mail arrives at the mailing service (in Green Cove Springs, FL), they scan the envelope, and then notify you to get on your web portal to view it so you can make a decision as to what you want done with it.  The second selling point of Florida is that there isn’t any state income tax.  Not having state income taxes taken out of your pension/employment checks can be a huge savings – multiple thousands of dollars each year.  The third selling point, at the time we were making the decision, was that Emma and Robin were living in Sarasota, so if we needed to do anything in FL as part of becoming residents, it would conveniently allow us to visit with them while taking care of business.

Okay, so much for the reasons for us picking FL as our new state.  Now, let me tell you what’s involved in changing your residence.  If this information is of little interest to you, certainly feel free to skip to the end of this blog post.  There are several steps you have to take AND they have to be taken in a certain order or you could make it very difficult for yourself.  Thankfully, there is some guidance out there to help make sure you do it correctly.  Here are the steps:

1. Sell your residence in your current state.  Some states won’t let you declare residency in their state if you still own your house in another state.
2. Set up your mailing service/mailing address in Florida.  You need to do this early on so that you start getting legitimate mail to that address.  Part of the process requires you to bring a couple of pieces of mail addressed to you that comes from insurance companies, credit card companies, utility companies, etc., essentially proving it is a legitimate address for you.
3. Get your RV and any other vehicles with you insured in Florida.  Sadly, because of hurricanes and proximity to big bodies of water, insurance rates in Florida are higher than in MD.  Also, when you get your RV insured as your full-time residence, the cost of insurance goes up.  They figure that if you’re living in it and driving it all the time, there’s more likely to be issues requiring you to use your insurance.  The way to stomach this jump in insurance costs is to remember that you’ll be saving thousands of dollars when your income isn’t taxed by the state. 😉
4. Get your vehicles registered, titled, and tagged in Florida. Once your RV and other vehicles are insured in FL, you can now go through the daunting effort of getting them registered, titled, and tagged.  This can all be done via phone calls and mail, but you have to send your vehicle titles, proof of FL insurance, and application forms to FL in the process.  Before you send any of that stuff in, you will need to go to your local police station and have a police officer verify the Vehicle Information Number (VIN) for each vehicle.  They literally have to come out of the building and look at your vehicle, find the VIN, and then sign the Florida form confirming the VIN.  Mailing your vehicle titles is easy enough if you have your titles in hand.  However, if your vehicle is financed and the title isn’t in your hands, then FL will have to contact the lender to get the title before they’ll register/title it in FL.  That can take a few weeks.  Once FL has everything they need, they’ll calculate how much you have to pay them for registering/titling/tagging.  Payment can be made over the phone.  It won’t be a small number, so, again, try to make yourself feel better by thinking about your income no longer being taxed by the state.
5. Go to FL and get your Driver’s License. Once Florida lets you know they’ve received everything and they have registered, titled, and tagged your vehicles, it’s time to plan a trip to FL to finish the process, which you can do in one day.  The first step when you get to FL is to get your FL driver’s license.  Most FL counties require you to come to the “tax collector” office in the county of your mailing address in order to get your license, declare your change of state of residence, etc.  So, I flew into Orlando (where Emma & Robin live), and then drove the next day a couple of hours away to Clay County to finish the process.  I brought everything I needed (MD driver’s license, proof of my social security number, proof of our RV being registered in FL, and two pieces of mail addressed to me in FL) so that I could get my FL driver’s license.  Interestingly, for full-time RVers, the address they put on your driver’s license is actually your RV’s license plate number, not your mailing address!
6. Submit a Declaration of Domicile Form. After you get your FL driver’s license, you drive a couple of blocks to the County Clerk’s office so that you can file a declaration of domicile form, indicating that your former state of residence was Maryland and that your new state of residence is Florida (and you have to swear you’re a good person, too 😉)
7. Register to vote. Finally, the last step is to drive another few blocks away to go to the Board of Elections so that you can register to vote in FL.

Normally, Karen and I would have done this process at the same time, but when you have an RV and two dogs, it’s not so easy to both leave the RV and fly to FL for a few days.  We figured I should go first since our primary income is connected to me, so the sooner we get me changed to an FL resident, the sooner the state income tax savings would begin!  Karen will head to FL in the next month or so to complete the change of residence process.  Luckily, she’ll only have to go through steps 5, 6, and 7 above!

I’ll wrap-up this post here.  As I mentioned at the beginning, I plan to quickly write up another blog post about our time in Glacier National Park.  Besides the beauty of the landscape, it was also the park in which we got the most close-up encounters with wildlife (with photos!), so you won’t want to miss that!