Blues

Thank you for asking the question. Of course plenty of people don't bother reading an entire thread so they won't see the admission of bogosity, but as they say, if it keeps just one person from believing a falsehood, you've made a contribution.

Check the breakdown of your coverage for something along the lines of "fulltimer liability," for about $100/year, just to be sure. Places like the ones Kirk mentioned understand fulltimers, but it never hurts to double-check. Years ago I had Geico quote a fulltimer policy for me, but when I checked the breakdown, I didn't see a premium for fulltimer liability. When I called back, I was told that "fulltimer" to them meant that the policy was good for traveling 365 days a year. However, I think most fulltimers want the personal liability coverage they no longer have when they give up homeowner's or renter's coverage. I certainly did.

No need to start a new thread--there are dozens out there already, discussing it to death. However, it is my understanding that people who go the Montana LLC route don't domicile in Montana--they use Montana only to set up the LLC to own their RV, and if they're fulltimers, typically choose one of the Big Three for their domicile, just like most other fulltimers.

I'm thinking you might benefit from a window.

Then you are very fortunate.

The problem these days, which was not the case in the past, is that there are a lot of people who make their living telling and convincing people that they can hit the road on very little money. They are salesmen, but people don't treat their information with the caution that salesmen's statements should be treated. In a battle between a moral stance and a sales pitch, the sales pitch is gonna win.

I don't see anywhere that I doubted that your claim was paid. The only question is why it was paid, if what you did didn't comply with the policy requirements. And to that the answer is, "Who knows." My "they like you" is similar to your "they wanted to keep my business."

Do you have access to the policy that covered it? I've had fulltimer insurance from a few different companies, and I have copies of my policies from both Progressive and National Interstate and they have identical language: "Loss due to theft of personal effects located inside 'your covered auto' must be proven by visible evidence of forced entry." and "You are responsible for providing reasonable safekeeping for personal effects located outside 'your covered auto.'" If you did have this language, then perhaps the insurance company considered your leaving the camera unattended outside your RV as "reasonable safekeeping." Or maybe they just liked you. Who knows. But the bottom line is to know what your policy says, which pretty much nobody does. It's discussions like this that can alert people that they don't know what they don't know. It never would have occurred to me that visible evidence of forced entry is required for a theft to be covered until someone mentioned it somewhere, and I checked my own policy.

Bays are where bicycles should be kept, to keep them out of sight. And many insurance policies require signs of forced entry in order to cover stolen contents.

She's more associated with living in Bolinas, a tiny hippie town in northern California. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/31/what-the-bolinas-poets-built

Someone complaining about "spy devices" posts a link to Facebook?

If Trail Ridge Road (Rocky Mountain NP) was too much for you, Highway 550 will definitely be too much. However, the Dolores route isn't necessarily inferior when it comes to scenery. Ralph Lauren's ranch is on Dallas Divide, between Placerville and Ridgway, and it's a spectacularly beautiful location--just what you would expect for a man with good taste and unlimited funds. Every time I drive through there, I think, "What I wouldn't give..." So don't "just go" the Dolores route--choose the Dolores route.

I was with Miller for several years, and started having the same problems you're having and in 2014 switched to Thum Insurance. https://thuminsurance.com/ I'm currently with Progressive through Thum. The only claim I've ever filed was for a windshield, and that was handled fine (and I know windshield claims are pretty much a no-brainer, but that's all I've had, and I'm not sure Thum was even involved). But I've adjusted my coverage during my time with them, and never had a problem getting someone on the phone, and emails (which I prefer) were answered quickly. I will suggest, however, that you shop around. I found that going directly to the "mothership" instead of through an agent didn't necessarily mean a lower premium for the same coverage with the same company, which definitely surprised me. And I noticed in another thread you were wondering if when you submit an address change (to Livingston) you'll "have to proclaim" you're a fulltimer. You definitely want to proclaim you're a fulltimer. For one, that will mean that you and the insurance company understand and agree on what you're doing. And for another, it will mean that your policy will include fulltimer's personal liability coverage (mine is $89/year); most people get personal liability coverage as part of their homeowner's or renter's insurance, but fulltimer RVers don't have homeowner's or renter's insurance. You should also look into how much personal effects coverage is included in your policy, since you won't have anything covered under a homeowner's or renter's policy. In my case, I have a "general" amount of personal effects coverage, but in my Progressive policy, some individual types of items aren't covered if they're worth over $500. So for fancy bicycles and computers that are worth more than that, I have them insured as "valuable personal property," and I had to submit a receipt for each of them. That coverage is cheap--the premium is less than 1% of the item's value. I remember that on some quotes I was getting, I would specify the amount of general personal effects coverage (not the valuable personal property--that's a specialized part of the process), but on a Geico quote I got in 2014, it included only $1,000 of personal effects coverage, and the only reason I noticed was I have a spreadsheet where, for every quote I get, I enter the premium for each element of coverage (collision, comprehensive, fulltimer liability, etc., along with the deductible) in addition to the total premium, to double-check that I'm getting the coverage I think I am. It also makes it easy to track what caused a premium increase--like when my premium with National Interstate through Miller jumped over $500 on renewal. I realized that $471 of that was due to an increase in the premium for comprehensive coverage. Apparently National Interstate was adjusting its premiums to reflect high comprehensive claims it had experienced in Texas; it had nothing to do with me personally, so I wasn't "mad" at National Interstate. (I think a lot of people don't understand why premiums can rise even if they haven't filed a claim.) The spreadsheet is also how I found out that the Geico policy didn't include fulltimer's liability, which at the time they didn't offer in Texas. They said they considered it a fulltimer's policy because it covered use 365 days a year, and I countered that if it didn't include the personal liability element, it wasn't a true fulltimer's policy. My impression is that they now do offer the fulltimer's personal liability coverage in Texas, so that problem may be solved, but it's the sort of thing you have to look out for when getting quotes, and is why I recommend that people never just look at the total premium, and should always ask for the breakdown if they don't get it automatically.

I'm curious about what this relief will look like. Will they have to account for the savings they'd gotten until the big spike? Especially during the high-electric-use summer months? If not, they will have gotten the benefit of the lower electricity costs without any of the risk, and that doesn't seem fair. Well, to those who didn't enter into these risky arrangements, anyway.

Eh, it's a huge difference only if you're interested in accuracy. That may be the case, but the point is that NamMedevac70 said he heard there were 700 variants, and when challenged, posted his source, and it appears he is still misunderstanding it, because it said: "As of February 7, 699 variant cases have been confirmed across 34 states, with 691 cases being the b.1.1.7 variant." A "variant case" is not the same as a "variant." I can't find a Dr. John Walker who says there are 1300 variants. Source?

This is no longer the case. Florida is requiring proof of Florida residency. https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Prioritization-of-Floridans-for-Covid-19-Vaccinations.pdf

Not only does this not matter, you miss the entire point. The point that I was making is that people need to look farther than to consider vehicle registration, insurance, and similar expenses. That's odd. You pointed out that ToddF gave wrong information about Texas sales tax on food, but when you give wrong information about the law concerning common-law marriage in Texas, it doesn't matter. Or, I guess strictly speaking it doesn't matter where your friend got his information, but I thought it was a polite way to point out that your statement about common-law marriage had not even a whiff of truth to it, and to then state what the law actually is. And yes, I did get your point, which I agree is a valid one. But maybe it would be better to just to say that, and leave the false buttressing out. Or if you feel you need to give a reason, find one that's true.

The California Legislature abolished common-law marriage in 1895. There are court cases addressing claims of property rights for cohabiting couples (Lee Marvin ring a bell?), but that's just property rights, not marriage itself (which offers benefits other than property rights, and has been unavailable in California without a ceremony for over 125 years). Why not? Once a couple becomes common-law married, their marriage is treated exactly the same as a ceremonial marriage. For example, they have to get a divorce to dissolve it, just like ceremonially married people do. There's no such thing as "common-law divorce." So why wouldn't they be able to travel? Did he say where he got this information? Only a handful of states still allow common-law marriages to occur, and not a single one of them has a law that imposes a marriage on a couple based solely on X amount of time living together. It doesn't matter how many people think that, or how often they say it. It's simply not the case. And for the record, people usually claim it's 7 years, for some reason. They're always wrong, but it's an interestingly consistent wrong. In Texas, common-law marriage has been recognized since 1847. Despite a push to abolish common-law marriage, in 1970 the Texas Legislature refused to do so and instead enacted a statute codifying the requirements for establishing a common-law marriage (Texas calls it "informal marriage"). The requirements are the same today as they were in 1970: They agreed to be married, and after the agreement lived together in Texas as husband and wife and there represented to others that they were married. There is nothing that would impose a common-law marriage on a couple solely based on living together, regardless of the amount of time. And if a couple wants to be sure their common-law marriage is recognized, and not just subject to being declared later by a court based on evidence, Texas allows them to file a Declaration of Informal Marriage, on which they can specify their date of marriage.

With all due respect, wouldn't it be a good idea to verify your statement before putting it out there? As it is, you're leaving it up to others to verify it, and post a challenge if appropriate. If nobody had bothered to do that, your misstatement would have stayed out there, as fact. I used to have a job related to Texas sales tax. At the time, there was the "six doughnut rule," where a purchase of five or fewer doughnuts was considered for immediate consumption and therefore not taxable, and a purchase of six or more was exempt. I was going to mention the rule in this discussion about taxes on groceries in Texas, but decided to verify it first, and turns out it's no longer the rule. It took me only a few seconds. Probably less than it would have taken someone unfamiliar with the rule who was trying to investigate it himself, not to mention that having one person check the accuracy of something before posting it is a lot more efficient than having multiple people checking it after it's posted.

I'm sure that doesn't help, but I've done an inadvertent experiment and concluded that the windows, even closed, are a major culprit. I have three windows that I've had Reflectix in for several months. Two slide sideways and one slides up and down. They've just been sitting there, never opened. I removed the Reflectix the other day and couldn't believe the amount of dust on the window sills, and the part in the middle on the one that slides up and down. It looked like dust bunnies you get under a bed. I've noticed dusty sills before, obviously, but that dust might have come in through another open window and settled on a different window, that hadn't been opened, just like it settles on countertops. You never know. But with the Reflectix in there, the dust from another open window couldn't get to that window; it had to be coming from outside that closed window.

Nobody recommended supplements. People are discussing Medicare prescription drug plans.

How old were the posts you were looking at? That insurance website changed ownership a year or two or so ago. It's now owned by Social Knowledge, LLC, whose address is a UPS mailbox in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. That company also owns the discussion forums at irv2.com and rvnetwork.com, a bunch of discussion forums about specific RV manufacturers, and rvtripwizard. Even under its prior ownership, it could have been clearer about the nature of the insurance options it was offering, but there was some useful information there (like after Blue Cross stopped offering PPO plans in Texas, leaving a lot of fulltimers high and dry on health insurance). Now, I don't see anything other than marketing insurance plans, with the usual opacity those who have spent time trying to figure out the insurance landscape have come to expect. To be fair, a lot of major medical plans expect the same thing. Their networks may be more stable than the PHCS network, but it really doesn't matter in an emergency, when you're taken to the closest emergency room. Here's a harrowing tale (one of many, but this one has stuck in my mind): https://khn.org/news/a-jolt-to-the-jugular-youre-insured-but-still-owe-109k-for-your-heart-attack/ Here's an informative article on indemnity plans: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/usc-brookings-schaeffer-on-health-policy/2020/08/04/fixed-indemnity-health-coverage-is-a-problematic-form-of-junk-insurance/ It notes that the reason they came about was as a form of income replacement in situations where you're sick and can't work. They were never intended to pay for medical care, but over time they've morphed, in a way that makes them look like insurance (deductibles, networks, etc.). And they're certainly marketed to look like insurance. That's not to say that they might not be a viable alternative, as long as the consumer understands what he's getting, which is almost never the case, and consumers can be dumb, but it's a lot more likely they'll be dumb when the marketing materials are very carefully designed to toe the line of "this isn't insurance." I don't know about indemnity plans doing this, but it's definitely a thing when it comes to short-term, limited duration insurance plans (STLDI). STLDIs were traditionally intended to cover someone for short periods of time, like when he was between insurance plans. But after a rule change by the current administration, STLDIs can have a duration of up to 3 years, so they look a lot like regular insurance and not some sort of temporary measure to fill a gap. STLDI plans are different from indemnity plans. STLDI plans really are insurance as most people understand it. The big difference is that they don't have to comply with ACA requirements (they don't have to offer essential health benefits, they can have lifetime limits, etc.). And unlike ACA plans, they can reject an applicant based on pre-existing conditions. So a person might think, "I'm healthy and don't have any pre-existing conditions, so if they accept me, I'm good to go." Well, maybe not. Because what you mentioned with the kidney stones is a practice known as post-claims underwriting (underwriting is the process where an insurance company decides whether to issue the policy). The insurance company asks questions about the applicant's health, but they may not be really comprehensive questions (and might be designed that way on purpose). Then once a person files a claim, the insurance company starts doing the real underwriting, like demanding prior medical records, and poring over those to see if there's something they can use to reject the claim. The fact that they accepted the applicant's application apparently means nothing. This is the situation that one of the RV bloggers ran into--I think it was wheelingit, who used to do a deep dive into health insurance but are in Europe now. They had an STLDI plan and went to some doctors, and it took them months and months to get the claims paid because they were having to get medical records from all over the place and that took forever and a lot of effort, and I think they were even turned over to a collection agency over one of the bills. Not a great experience. Anyway, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce did an investigation into STLDIs. Here's their press release summarizing what they found: https://energycommerce.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/ec-investigation-finds-millions-of-americans-enrolled-in-junk-health (Something new I found out is that unlike ACA-compliant plans, short-term medical plans don't have to pay out at least 80% of premium dollars on health care, and the investigation revealed they pay out 48%. And, the commission on selling ACA plans is 2%, while the commission on STLDI plans is 28% among the companies they examined.) But back to your example of the BBB complaint, how they determined that the kidney stones were a pre-existing condition is beyond me. That's pretty brazen, but I wouldn't put anything past an insurance company. But at the same time, sometimes anecdotes don't offer all of the pertinent facts.

I find the whole Medicare scheme to be almost impenetrable, and can't find a reference on medicare.gov about this, but according to the AARP website: It also says that some states are less restrictive on this and have different rules about "guaranteed issue" of supplemental policies, but in general, it looks like the system is designed to let someone try out an Advantage plan for a year with no risk of being refused acceptance into the supplemental plan he had before switching to the Advantage plan.

Just because you've always submitted residency documents doesn't mean your license wouldn't have been renewed if you hadn't submitted them. Like if there was no indication in the information on your forms that you were renewing by mail because you were living out of state for school or a job, and had the new license sent to your usual Texas address. Would the renewal have been rejected? We don't know. And as I've said, it makes no sense that one person sitting in Minneapolis for three days doing an online renewal doesn't have to submit residency documents, while the person sitting next to him does have to submit residency documents, with the only difference that she can't do it online. There's no public policy reason for a rule like that, which makes me wonder if that's actually the rule. The out-of-state packet was revised in July 2020. It now says: In the previous version, this section mentioned the Texas Residency Affidavit (which has nothing to do with out-of-state renewals, since it's for someone to swear that their agency provides services to a person at a stated location in Texas), stating the the back of the affidavit had a list of acceptable residency documents. The new packet doesn't even mention the Texas Residency Affidavit, never mind actually include it in order to see what's on the back. And it now mentions only a letter from an employer as being used to verify residency. What do we make of that? And in the section on renewals, it says to "complete and submit all documents listed," like the CDL-2 (RV exempt from CDL) and the DL-63 (eye exam form), and "proof of lawful presence or U.S. citizenship," but nothing about proof of residency. But interestingly, in the section on Replacement, Address Change or Name Change, it does say, "Submit proof of Texas residency." Why did they include it there, and not in the instructions on renewals? It's not at all clear that proof of residency would be required if someone gives only a Texas address on all forms, and perhaps is using the out-of-state forms only because online renewal isn't available because of the class of license they have. Yes, you've always submitted it, but that doesn't mean it was actually required.

Well of course they require residency documentation when a person renews a Texas license but has it sent to an address that isn't in Texas. And I thought that's what you'd done, because you previously said: That led me to believe that the only difference between your renewal and an online renewal by someone on vacation was that yours was for a Class B license. But that turns out not to be the case. Instead, you were acting just like people working outside the state or attending college outside the state, and having the license sent to the apartment or house they're living in outside the state. And Texas requires people who are living somewhere out of state to the extent that they want to receive their driver's license there to prove that they're entitled to have a Texas driver's license instead of one from the state where they're living. Which brings us back to whether people who are renewing a Class B license by mail only because they can't do it online or by phone, and an out-of-state address is never mentioned (like someone on vacation) have to submit residency documentation.