Selected South Dakota as our home State...any words of wisdom - RV-Dreams Community Forum

Camper Chronicles · RV-Dreams Family Member

Selected South Dakota as our home State...any words of wisdom

sdman · RV-Dreams Family Member

We use Americas Mailbox out of Box Elder SD (Rapid City) in Pennington County. We went with Americas Mailbox because Pennington county doesn't have a wheel tax. We lived in NJ and just before the house closed we flew to Rapid City, stayed the one required night and got our DLs. After the house closed, we bought our 5th wheel and the truck to pull it. Americas Mail box handled the registration in SD and sent us our plates. At registration renewal time, Americas Mailbox sent reminders to us and took care of it for us after we send them the money.

To be honest, we didn't check to see if auto insurance was less in some other place in SD. However, auto insurance for us is under half what we would have paid in NJ. As for medical insurance, we are covered nationally through the company I retired from so I didn't do any research on that.

Hope this is some help.

Alie and Jims Carrilite · RV-Dreams Family Member

We just made the change to SD and went with Alternative Resources. Yes we had a wheel tax, but it was an easy process.

Terry and Jo · RV-Dreams Family Member

For the benefit of myself (because I'd never heard of the wheel tax), I looked it up on the internet. I'll share what I found for the rest that may be interested.

South Dakota has 66 counties and 46 of those counties have a wheel tax. Since those are set and determined by the commissioners in each county, the implementation and/or increase of a wheel tax is always a possibility. Below is a link to a document that shows the wheel tax for those 46 counties (at least as of 2012.)

South Dakota Wheel Taxes by County

Terry

Alie and Jims Carrilite · RV-Dreams Family Member

Our was $4 per wheel up to 3 axles, over that is free I think. The wheel tax was cheap from what I remember.

bigboomer · RV-Dreams Family Member

Tracy,

When we decided to go full time we went with SD and used Alternative Resources in Sioux Falls. The process was smooth and easy. Paul and his staff walked us thru all the steps. In one day when we were there in August 2012 we had our DL, registered to vote, had the cat licensed and set up our new bank accounts. When we transfered our registrations from NJ to SD, AR handled all the paperwork and it took about 45 min. of phone time with time. We recieved everything in the mail in about a month (plates, reg. , etc.).

We saved a lot on insurance and registrations.

We love South Dakota!

Good luck,

Les and Sue

Dranoel · RV-Dreams Family Member

+1 on Alternative Resources. We use them as well. The process was simple. However, if you will be purchasing Health insurance, make that part of your total expense/portability calculation.

Technomadia · RV-Dreams Family Member

We were South Dakotans for our first 5 years on the road and used MyDakotaAddress.com - super friendly and helpful folks. Presented in person at any SD DL office to get our DL (now you also need a campground receipt with both your names on it), and vehicle registrations all handled remotely - paid them online. Have heard that you can also now renew your DL online - if so, that's a really new progression.

Earlier this year we moved our domicile to Florida, for a myriad of reasons. However a serious one to contemplate for folks who have not yet earned their Medicare benefits is health insurance - as the pickings for nomad-friendly plans are mighty slim up there in SD.

- Cherie

RVKevi · RV-Dreams Family Member

We use Your Best Address in Sioux Falls. We are also very satisfied with our mail service. However, I don't really know how they are on helping with DL, vehicle registration, etc, as we chose to handle that ourselves. They did give us a lot of good advice and made sure we knew exactly what we needed before we came.

Getting the driver's license, vehicle registration and voter's registration was not difficult or time consuming. In Sioux Falls it is all in the same building. We went in at their opening time, 8:00am and walked out of the building with everything done an hour and a half later at 9:30am. However, we were told that it isn't a good idea to do this at the end of the month. Apparently, most people wait till the last minute to renew their licenses, and so the end of the month tends to be busy. We were there around the 10th, I think it was.

Do make sure that you have everything you need. Before we went, we had to get a copy of Kev's birth certificate (we already had mine) and a certified copy of our marriage license. You need original social security cards, not the stub that comes with the cards. I think if you have passports you don't need all that, but do your homework and make sure you've got everything in order. The mail services are good at listing all that you need. We also called the state agencies with questions before we went, and they were very helpful. It was a good experience all the way around.

One thing they may tell you, but that I think bears repeating, is to make sure both you and your spouse's names are on the receipt for the place you stay. That is necessary for the driver's license.

NWescapee · RV-Dreams Family Member

We found Americas Mailbox to be very thorough, almost "information overload" but I would rather know more than less. For us it was easy, we had chosen SD, needed a good mail forwarding company and since we were coming from Washington State with plans to continue on to California, we didn't want to drive all the way across the state, plus the main tourist attractions we wanted to see were in the Black Hills. Not real scientific after we chose the state, mostly it was convenience. However, they've been pretty easy to work with, our mail has gotten to us without issue over the past 4 months.

WhoWanderLost · RV-Dreams Community Member

We are using Americas Mailbox, my DH is from Rapid City and the family is all there so the location for us was ideal. The service we have received has been outstanding and the team there is so very friendly and helpful.

Good luck!

Bill and Jodee · RV-Dreams Family Member

We plan to domicile in South Dakota as long as we can maintain decent health insurance on our travels. I try to stay on top of the requirements so was excited to see that DL renewals may have upgraded to online submissions. Unfortunately as of this morning, their website still indicates the requirement to do so in person. You can make the appointments online but it doesn't look like we can avoid the face-to-face for renewals as this time. Bummer.

Hiding at home on Black Friday,
Jodee

mpierce · RV-Dreams Family Member

I suggest looking into the health insurance very closely. From other forums, I take it that unless you have a physical address and home in SD, the options available in SD do NOT cover you when traveling out of state. Just check it out carefully.

This ACA thing has really thrown a monkey wrench into a lot of things. This might be one of them.

Bill and Jodee · RV-Dreams Family Member

Will definitely keep my eye on it! Florida may end up being a better location for the healthcare options.....Chris and Cherie of Technomadia just switched from SD to FL for what look like reasons that impact us as well. This is one (of maybe two) area where I'm glad to have over a year before we can head out!

jfocallag · RV-Dreams Community Member

I do not need to think about this yet. Hopefully, by the time I am ready to full time, the dust will have settled on the healthcare front. For those who do need to think about it, I saw this interesting article about healthcare options.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/12/25/Top-8-Ways-To-Opt-Out-Of-ObamaCare

Politics aside, the options look like they are worth exploring.

-- Edited by jfocallag on Friday 27th of December 2013 10:17:55 AM

LibertyLinda · RV-Dreams Family Member

Thanks for this article! This will be what we will look at. There is so much confusion right now, some people are not considering SD anymore - but we still are. SD is cheaper on all fronts as far as we can tell, and the residency requirement is the best (versus Tx & 30 days).

I will not let the healthcare issue alone derail our planning - its too unstable.

One of the huge reasons we decided to go fulltiming is we want to do it while we are young. We do not believe in "retirement"- we will work until we can no longer work. We do not believe that Social Security or Medicare will be in existence when we become age eligible in about 15 years. We will live FIRST to the fullest, we will not live to work for "benefits" we will never see (even tho the money is involuntarily removed from our paychecks to pay for it).

Happy Journey's RV-Dreamers!

Sushidog · RV-Dreams Family Member

Don't worry, Ann4now. As long as they continue printing money out of thin air both Social Security and Medicare will be there when you retire. They can't keep getting people to contribute to these "plans" without promising to give them something in return. In the future you may qualify for these benefits at a later age, and your Social Security may only buy a tiny fraction of what the money does now, due to inflation or even hyper-inflation, but you will still get the check. Unfortunately, we'll probably be forced to go without health care between ages 62 and 65 and pay whatever penalty they decide, as I believe health insurance will go through the roof by then, but what can you do? There will be many in the same boat, so they can't throw us all in jail for failure to pay, (choosing food over health insurance) or can they?

Chip

-- Edited by Sushidog on Thursday 9th of January 2014 10:33:10 PM

LibertyLinda · RV-Dreams Family Member

Chip,

LOL, you are absolutely right. And, you reinforce our original reason to go full-timing and live our lives as free as possible while we still can. Thanks for your words of support. aww

Happy Journey's.

Jack Mayer · RV-Dreams Family Member

If you need to buy health insurance I do not think SD will work at all. You better look at it carefully, because it looks like there are no PPO providers that will allow travel or that will insure fulltime RVers.

SnowGypsy · RV-Dreams Family Member

I agree with Jack Mayer as I was in a couple other RV websites and SD and health insurance are a lively topic. For good exposure to what is being said, I suggest "googling" the situation.