Well, it's official.
I'm now a Texas resident.
I have my temporary driver's license, and I also have some plates.
As a digital nomad, what state you actually hold your residency in can have an impact
on your travel plans.
So in this video, I'm going to talk about why I decided to change my residency from
Washington to Texas and show you that entire process and talk about why I decided to set
up my residency in Texas versus Florida or South Dakota.
So last year, I quit my job in June of 2018, so it's been almost a year now.
This is March 2019 and because I quit my job, I no longer had health insurance except through
Cobra.
So it's about time that I figured out what state I need to domicile in so that I could
get health insurance.
Now, one of the things that I need as a full time traveling, digital nomad, is a nationwide
health insurance plan.
As a Washington state resident, they don't actually offer a national health insurance
plan.
So I needed to change my domicile to one of three states.
There's South Dakota, Florida and Texas.
Those are three states that are actually really great for RVers because they
don't have state income tax.
Just in general, they're a little bit more RV friendly.
Some of the fees for registering your RV is a little cheaper there.
I actually decided on Texas, but at first I thought I was going to be in Florida because
they had a nationwide health insurance plan.
But this year in 2019, they actually came out with also a nationwide health insurance
plan, so I decided on Texas.
I'll most likely be closer to Texas than I would Florida most of the year, so Texas just
also seems to be more advantageous for that.
Plus I have family there so I'll be in Texas a little bit more.
So the thing with Texas with having to get your car inspected, they do require inspections
every so often, but if you're not in the state, you don't have to go back to get that inspection
until you actually get back into the state.
Then you have about three days to get your RV or your car inspected as soon as you get
back into the state.
So that's another reason why I chose Texas because I wouldn't have to go back quickly
to get my car inspected every so often.
In other words, I really don't have to go back to Texas very often unless I want to
go see my family of course.
But there's no real legal reason why I need to go back, which is why I decided on Texas.
And then of course, because they have the nationwide health insurance plan.
So let's talk about how easy this was actually to get domiciled here in Texas.
So there are four things that you need to do to get domiciled in Texas.
The first one is you need to establish an address in Texas.
The second thing is you need to get your RV inspected and you need to make sure you do
them in this order.
So get your address first, get your RV inspected.
The third thing is you need to get your RV registered.
And the fourth thing you need to do is actually get your driver's license.
So I'm actually part of a club called Escapees and there's a subgroup called Xscapers that
you might've heard me talk about every once in a while.
They have a really great online program that shows you how you can a domicile in Texas,
South Dakota or Florida.
But because I chose Texas, we're going to look at Texas today.
You just go to their website and you can see the checklist has all of the information on
what you need to do to get domiciled in Texas.
And that's what I did.
So the first thing you need to do is get an address in Texas.
Now for me, I do have family here, but I don't want to burden them with having to get my
mail and send it to me.
So I chose to get a mailbox with the Escapees group that offers a mail service.
I did that about six months ago in anticipation that I was going to be changing my domicile.
So here's what I did.
I established that address about six months ago in Texas through the Escapees group.
Then I drove all the way to Texas because I was going to be here to see family anyway,
so I decided this was a good time for me to go ahead and get domiciled.
The second thing you need to do is you need to get your vehicle inspected.
So if you go to the Texas DOT website, you will find a list of places where you can actually
get your RV inspected.
So you'll want to pick out a place that's close to you, wherever that may be.
You can do that anywhere in Texas.
Then you want to go to that particular facility to get your RV inspected to make sure it passes
the Texas inspection.
All right, so we have our Texas vehicle inspection.
We passed, yay!
$25.50 cents for this.
We're off to the next item.
You'll need to take that to the tax county office to get your car registered.
Then you'll want to do the application for the registration.
Now, I did all of this online before I actually came to the different offices to help facilitate
time and just make it a little bit more efficient.
So there's an application for title that you'll need to fill out and I'll put all of the links
to these different agencies in the show notes and in the pinned comment of my video.
I'm also going to do a blog post on it so you can go to StoryChasing.com and also find
an instructional written document that shows all of the instructions in order to get domiciled
in Texas.
So you'll take your application for registration to the Texas county tax office and there are
several things that they want.
There's a checklist of items, but one is the application.
Two is they want actual physical picture of your RV so they can make sure that they know
what they're actually registering.
You'll also need to provide them with the registration from the state that you came
from.
So mine was New Mexico, so I provided them with the registration for that.
You also need to know what your unloaded weight is of your vehicle because they do charge
you based on the unloaded weight.
So mine was actually on my New Mexico registration, so I used that, which was 7,700 pounds.
You can also pick that up on a spec sheet or something like that that you have for your
RV.
But it's probably going to be on some kind of registration document that you originally
filled out.
You also need to show proof of insurance.
So yesterday I actually got my Texas insurance.
I've got it all switched from Washington to Texas.
So I got that done.
And mind you, it was almost $400 more expensive in Texas than it was in Washington.
So obviously this is going to be different for everybody based on what insurance you
had and what state you were actually registered in.
But for me, it was about $400 more expensive.
So I provided all of those documents to them.
Of course my ID, things like that.
And I actually got my plates today, Texas Plate.
They also provide you with a registration sticker that you need to put on your front
window.
That was really it.
It took maybe 15 minutes in order to get all of that taken care of.
So not a long time at all.
Then I came over to the Texas driver's safety office in order to get my driver's license.
That one took a little bit longer because there was a line for that.
But I already had all of my documentation ready.
There is a nice checklist that they have online, which I'll also will put in the show notes
again for you.
So in order to get your driver's license, all you need to do is fill out the application.
Then you need to be able to prove who you are and that the address that you're giving
to them is actually your address.
So bring in further documentation, which is in the checklist.
Now, I would probably bring in a more than you actually need just in case.
I would hate it if I came in and they had decided that they weren't accepting that proof
of residency anymore.
So I brought it in a bank statement.
I brought in my insurance that I printed out yesterday that has my new address on it.
I brought it in my new registration that also had my address on it.
And you'll be able to find all the documentations in the checklist that you can bring to prove
that address.
You'll also need your current driver's license and you need to make sure it's current and
not expired.
You'll also need another proof of who you are.
So I brought in my passport.
You can use a passport card if you want, but I used my passport.
And then they also do ask for your social security number or some proof of your social
security number.
So I had my social security card so I just used that.
So all I did was I brought it into the office.
I showed them all of my documentation.
I didn't have to do a driver's test or take a written test thankfully.
They just completed all of the paperwork.
I had to do two thumb prints, a signature.
I had to do a quick little eye exam because I do wear eyeglasses and then they took my
picture.
Then they give you a temporary license, which this is the one that they gave me.
It's just on paper.
Yeah.
All you're seeing is my picture because I'm covering everything else up.
So what's funny about this is they gave me my old driver's license number from when I
was 16 years old.
I'm still in the system, so they gave me the same number.
That's funny and interesting.
The day before I did the inspection is the day that I got all of my paperwork together.
So from start to end, it took me about two to two and a half hours to figure out all
the documents that I needed, put them all on a thumb drive and then go get them printed
so that I had everything printed out and ready to go and I just needed to sign off in front
of them in their presence.
So there's that two and a half hours for paperwork.
Then the inspection was 30 minutes.
So that's three hours plus two hours and 15 minutes today.
So five hours and 15 minutes in order to get everything done from start to finish.
Now of course, that doesn't count drive time and all of that.
But as you can see, once you get all of your documentation together, it does not take very
long at all to do this.
One of the reasons why I decided on Texas was because of the nationwide health insurance
plan.
So I'm curious if you're needing health insurance as a digital nomad, how have you gone about
getting the insurance?
Leave me a comment below.
I'd love to hear how you're getting insurance.
Or if you have insurance at all, have you opted to just not have insurance?
So if you like this video, give me a thumbs up.
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And right over here, there're some more videos that I'm teaching on how to be a digital nomad.