What the Retirement You Want Actually Costs

Real 2026 prices for the retirement lifestyle you actually want, read at each company’s own price list. Golf, a club, a trip, your hobbies, a boat, an RV, the grandkids, and a winter somewhere warm. Then where the money comes from.

Every price on this page was sourced from a company’s own website.

The green fee is printed. The club publishes its dues. The marina publishes what a slip costs by the foot. The boat company puts a national price on every model it builds. The campground publishes what a night costs.

I doubt anyone in the financial business ever went and looked.

They looked at your retirement account balance instead, and then they told you what percentage of it you were allowed to spend. That answer has nothing to do with what you want to do on a Wednesday in June.

We did it the other way around. We tried to pick the things most people say they want to do when they retire, went to the companies that sell them, and wrote down the price.

Your retirement lifestyle is not a mood. It’s a list of decisions, and every one of them has a price on it. Golf or no golf. Your own boat or a rented one. Two weeks in Italy or a beach house with the grandkids. A winter in Arizona or a month.

What a retirement lifestyle costs, all in one place

Everything below has its own page with the full breakdown, the sources, and the fine print. This table is the short version.

Every figure read at the seller’s own published price list in August or September 2026. The full page for each one is linked.

Two things to make sure you’re clear about before you go any further.

The first is that the range inside a single row is often bigger than the difference between rows. A country club is $642 or it’s $24,243. Both of those are published prices at clubs. Which one you’re looking at is a decision, not a fact about country clubs.

The second is that most of these are yearly. A trip is money you spend when you go. A club, a boat, an RV, a dog and a garden are money you spend whether you go or not.

The grandkids, and the trips that include them

Grandchildren shape so many decisions a grandparent makes about their retirement lifestyle. Where you live. Whether you move. How much house you keep. What you drive. Whether you’re free in July.

Why don’t advisors put that in a retirement plan? Is it because it doesn’t fit in the software?

AARP asked people over fifty what they travel for, and the answer came back in one sentence: 57% are motivated by time with loved ones, and one in four of their trips includes three generations.²⁹ That survey went to 1,189 people age 50 and over.²⁹

The number of trips you have left with a grandchild is not set by your balance. It’s set by how old they are right now. A six-year-old will go anywhere with you. A sixteen-year-old has a job, friends and a season that runs through August. You get about ten summers in the middle there where it works, and you don’t get told in advance which one was the last easy one.

The beach house everybody flies to

We looked at four houses that sleep eleven to sixteen people, put a week in July or August of 2027 into each manager’s booking form, and wrote down what came back.

Weekly totals quoted on each property manager’s own booking page on September 1, 2026, for the week listed. Summer 2026 has already passed, so these are 2027 weeks. Two of these managers price by demand and say so on the page, so re-quote before you plan around them.

The number on the calendar is not the number on the invoice. The Destin condo shows $758 a night on its availability calendar for every date from July 9 through July 30, 2027.³¹ Seven nights at $758 is $5,306, and the total the same site gives you for that week is $6,662. That $758 is a summer rate, not the home’s year-round rate. The same calendar shows $932 in early July, $874 in June, and the $400s by late August.³¹

The two Florida managers add 24% to 26% on top of the rent. The two Outer Banks managers add about 15%.^30,31,32,33 The difference is mostly the cleaning: the Destin manager charges a $535 departure clean, and the Outer Banks manager charges nothing for cleaning at all.^30,32

One of the four prints the number right on the calendar. Twiddy’s calendar cell for the July 4th week says $14,894 and the page says “Prices shown include taxes & fees.”³³ That is the only one of the four where the first number you see is the number you pay.

Split four ways among three generations, the Duck house is about $2,289 a family for the week.

The cruise where you buy four cabins

We priced a seven-day Western Caribbean sailing out of Galveston on the Carnival Breeze, leaving October 2, 2027.³⁴

Carnival’s published balcony fare is $988 a person in a two-person room, and their page states that taxes and fees are already in that number.³⁴

The third and fourth people in a cabin are not $988. Carnival publishes $651 a person for that same sailing in a four-person balcony room, which is $2,604 for the cabin against $1,976 for two.³⁴ Our subtraction: the extra two people cost about $314 each, roughly a third of what the first two pay.

Carnival’s published per-person fares, seven day Western Caribbean from Galveston, October 2027, read at carnival.com on September 1, 2026. Taxes and fees are included in Carnival’s displayed fare, per their own footnote. The cabin totals and the cost of the third and fourth guest are our arithmetic on their per-person figures.

A family of twelve has a real decision to make, and it is about thirteen hundred dollars.

Twelve people, same sailing, same balcony cabins, with gratuities at Carnival’s published $17 a person a day. Our arithmetic on their published figures.

Packing the cabins saves about $1,348 for the same twelve people.^34,35

Carnival’s own page says parties over eight may be split across several tables at dinner, with a wait that can run over an hour.³⁴

Now what the fare does not include. Gratuities are $17 a person a day on a standard cabin, which is $119 each for the week.³⁵ The alcohol package is $83.94 a person a day bought before you sail, and every adult in the same stateroom has to buy it if one does.³⁶ The kids’ soda package is $8.34 a day.³⁶ Wi-Fi starts at $20.40 a day per person bought before you sail.³⁶ The steakhouse is $52 for an adult and $15 for a child eleven and under,³⁷ and a 20% service charge is added to specialty dining.³⁵

Eight adults in four balcony cabins, with the drink package, Wi-Fi and one steakhouse night, comes to about $15,198. The $988 fare is 52% of that.^34,35,36,37

The Disney week

Disney publishes some of this and will not publish the rest, and you should know which is which before you start planning.

What they publish. Multi-day ticket prices, per day, for ages ten and up, before tax. Their own page prices four days from $124 a day, five days from $103, seven days from $82, and ten days from $64.³⁸ The longer you go the less each day costs.

Read the word “from.” Disney’s own start-date calendar shows the four-day price running from $124 up to $164 a day depending on when you go.³⁸

What they will not publish.

There is no Park Hopper price on the ticket page.³⁸

There is no child’s ticket price on the ticket page either. Every figure there is labeled ages ten and up.³⁸

There is no nightly room rate on their resort room-rate pages. Both the Pop Century and Caribbean Beach pages are titled “Room Rates” and list room types with no rate, asking you to select dates first.⁴⁰

They do not publish Lightning Lane pricing at all, and they say so in plain text: prices “will be displayed in the My Disney Experience app,” and passes “can only be purchased via the My Disney Experience app.”³⁹

And they will not quote you a package price online. Their vacation planning page publishes ticket and room offers, including a four-park ticket starting at $109 a day, but for a resort or package booking it gives you a phone number.⁴⁰

We ran into the same wall on the travel page with a different company, and we handle it the same way. We are not going to print a Disney package number, because Disney will not print one, and the “average Disney trip cost” figures you find in search results do not come from Disney.

What the flights cost

We are not going to quote you an airfare, because it changes hourly and whatever we printed would be wrong by the time you read it.

The Department of Transportation publishes an average, though, and that is a defensible way to put a number on this. The average domestic itinerary fare in the first quarter of 2026 was $427.81.⁴¹ That figure is a round trip, and it includes taxes, and it does not include a checked bag.⁴¹

For a family of ten flying to that beach house, that’s about $4,278 before anybody checks a suitcase.

The RV, owning and renting set against each other

What an RV costs to buy

There are two different vehicles here and they are not close to each other in price.

Read at each seller’s own published listing in August 2026. Both are single-unit dealer listings, so they will change when the unit sells.

The sticker on a motorhome is not a price, and the dealer will tell you so in writing. The Iowa dealer selling that Minnie Winnie prints both numbers on the same page and explains why: Winnebago’s own internet pricing policy forbids any dealer from advertising below a set price floor.⁷ That price floor is 32% under the sticker before you have negotiated anything at all.

We did that subtraction. Both numbers are printed on their page.

What it costs to own for a year

Five things you can look up. Two you can’t.

The five you can look up.

Insurance. Progressive publishes what its own RV policies averaged, state by state, on its own site.⁸

Progressive’s published 12-month average premiums, from each state’s own page on progressive.com. Their own wording says these are 2024 policy year figures, so they are about two years old now.

Storage, because most people can’t keep it at the house. A storage yard north of Kansas City publishes $46 a month for an uncovered pad big enough for a forty-foot rig and $116 a month to put a roof over it, and lists indoor garage space at a nearby location for $156.⁹ Those are online booking rates and the page shows limited availability on the covered and indoor spaces.

Registration, where our four states do not agree. Missouri charges $32.25 a year plus a $9 processing fee.¹⁰ Iowa charges $110 a year for a Class C motorhome through its first five model years and $80 after that, and prices a travel trailer at thirty cents a square foot of floor, dropping to 75% of that once the trailer is more than six model years old.^11,12

Kansas and Nebraska will not give you a number. Kansas Revenue’s own answer to what you will owe is to ask the county treasurer’s motor vehicle office where you live.¹³ Nebraska publishes a $15 registration fee, but that figure is written for passenger and leased vehicles and the page does not say which class an RV falls into.¹⁴ What Nebraska does publish is that a Motor Vehicle Fee based on value, weight and use, and a separate Motor Vehicle Tax based on the sticker price when it was new, both sit on top of the registration fee every year until the vehicle is fourteen.¹⁴

Routine maintenance. A dealer chain with locations in Grain Valley, Springfield, Wichita and Des Moines puts its service prices on its own website.¹⁵ A wheel bearing repack is $299.95 for a single axle plus parts. A brake and axle service is $299.95 per axle. A slide-out service is $215.95 per slide. A roof inspection and spot seal is $209.95, and they recommend it twice a year. Their page adds that prices vary by model.

Camping World, in the same metro, publishes $154.99 for the same annual wheel bearing job.¹⁶

That is the same work, published by two sellers, an hour apart, at half the price. A published price is not necessarily the price.

Campground fees. Your costs will vary based on how often you camp and where you camp.

State park nightly rates read at each state’s own agency page in August 2026. Missouri figures are the 2026 Lake of the Ozarks State Park rate card.

Private campgrounds cost more than double that. We priced a week at six KOA campgrounds in your states through their own booking system on August 31, 2026, arriving September 21, 2026 in a thirty-foot rig: Branson $58.57 a night, Springfield $69.29, Des Moines West $71.43, Kansas City West $83.00, West Omaha $88.99, and St. Louis West $93.00.²¹

Those are live quotes, not a rate card. KOA prices by date and availability and does not post a static price list, so your number for your week will be different. On the six we priced, a seven-night stay priced as seven separate nights rather than at a weekly rate.

The two you can’t look up.

The RV loses value, and it loses it fast. J.D. Power has a 2019 Winnebago Minnie Winnie 22R at an $84,965 sticker when it was new and an average value today of $32,950.²² That is about 61% gone in seven years, or roughly $7,430 a year. A 2019 travel trailer of the same vintage went from $22,147 to $10,500, about 53%, or roughly $1,660 a year.²³

One caveat on both of those. They are measured against the sticker, and as we said above, the dealer is not allowed to advertise the sticker on a motorhome. Measure the loss against what you likely actually paid, and it is probably smaller than 61%.

The RV needs work; every seller we opened publishes the routine list above. What we could not find published anywhere we looked was a price for a roof reseal, a slide-out rebuild, delamination, or water damage. All of it was quote only. Camping World advertises a free collision estimate.

The costs an owner can plan for are the ones that get printed. The ones that likely wreck a budget are the ones that don’t.

The year, added up

Owning in Missouri for one year, before you go anywhere. Insurance, storage and registration are published prices. Maintenance is the cost floor, using only the jobs a seller calls out as annual. Value lost is J.D. Power’s figure divided out. Campground nights and fuel are not in here.

Now put renting next to it

Cruise America will quote you without asking for anything. We priced seven nights out of Kansas City, September 21 to 28, 2026, in a twenty-five-foot Standard RV, through their own reservation system on August 31, 2026.²⁴

Cruise America’s itemized quote, Kansas City, seven nights, September 2026. Their own page says rates move with season, location and availability, so this is a dated quote rather than a rate card.

Their page calls that “$181.56 a night.” The nightly rate is $134.00. The difference is the mileage, which they have already folded in.²⁴

Read what a rental includes before you compare two of them. Cruise America bills mileage up front at 100 miles a night on a local rental and refunds what you don’t use, at 39 cents a mile.²⁵ The generator is $3.50 an hour on the models that have one, sheets and a pillow are $75 a person, and the pots and pans are $125.²⁵ There are no awnings, no levelers and no TV.

A dealer in Eureka, Missouri publishes an in-season weekly rate of $1,960 for a twenty-eight-foot Class C, and $910 a week for a travel trailer, plus a $149 prep fee.^26,27,28 Their motorhome rentals include 150 free miles a day and three free generator hours a day; the travel trailer rentals do not, because you tow those with your own vehicle.^27,28

A dealer in Gardner, Kansas rents a twenty-nine-foot Class C at $225 a night and a travel trailer at $155, in peak season from May through September, with a $259 prep fee.²⁹ Their published rates drop $10 to $20 a night in the other three seasons.²⁹ The 100 free miles a night applies to motorhomes only.

An Omaha operator rents a twenty-seven to thirty-foot travel trailer for $650 a week, with the hitch and property damage insurance included.³⁰

And if you rent from a private owner through one of the peer to peer sites, read the total and not the headline. A 2017 Class C listed at “$192 a night” itemized to $2,342 for seven nights once insurance and protection and the service fee were added, which works out to about $335 a night.³¹ That itemization only appears after you pick dates.

How many weeks before owning beats renting

Each year of owning from the table above, divided by one week of renting the same kind of rig. Campground nights and fuel are in neither column, because you pay those either way.

Three weeks a year and the trailer is the cheaper way to do it. Eight weeks a year and so is the motorhome.

If you’re going to go out five or six times a summer, seriously consider buying it. If you’re going to go out twice, you are paying about $5,400 a week for the privilege of owning a motorhome.

The number we went looking for and could not find

The Coast Guard runs a survey that answers how many days a year the average boat actually gets used. It is 29 days for a motorized boat, and fewer than half of them went out even once in the year they measured.

We looked for the same thing for RVs and came up empty. We checked the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the National Household Travel Survey, the Census vehicle use survey, the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Highway’s per-vehicle mileage tables and the Department of Energy’s data book. Nine sources. None of the nine publishes how many days a year an RV gets used.³²

The Coast Guard needs a per-boat number to calculate accident rates, so it pays for a survey to get one. We did not find an agency with the same need for RVs. Federal registration data folds RVs in with trucks, and the one national survey that has an RV code at all is built on a sample of 112 vehicles and measures miles, not days.³²

The RV industry publishes usage numbers. They come from the people selling RVs. We can’t verify those numbers.

We can’t tell you what the average person does. We can tell you what your own break-even is, and it’s in the table above, and you already know roughly how many weeks a year you’d really go.

Wintering somewhere warm

This is the biggest single change most people make to a retirement lifestyle. You keep the house, and you leave it for three to six months when it gets cold.

The cost is straightforward once you know where to look. The rules are not, and the rules are where people get hurt. We are going to do both, and we are going to spend more time on the rules, because they’re important to understand.

What a season actually costs

Do not price this by the night. A monthly seasonal rate and a nightly rate times thirty are two completely different numbers, and the gap can be enormous.

One Florida park publishes both on the same page for the same site in the same month. A premium back-in site in January is $93 a night, or $1,532 for the month.³³ Thirty nights at the nightly rate would be $2,790. The monthly rate is 45% less. Book the whole season on that same site and it drops to $1,169 a month, which is 58% below nightly.³³

Another Florida park publishes $62 a night and $750 a month in season, and states that both numbers include electric, water and sewer.³⁴ Thirty nights would be $1,860. The month is $750. That is 60% less for the same site.

A condo, if you want a real kitchen and a real bedroom. A two-bedroom beachfront condo in Venice, Florida is listed from $6,000 a month with a three month minimum.³⁵ Internet, cable, water, sewer, trash and electric are included, though the listing notes a monthly cap may apply on the electric, and on top of the rent there is a $125 damage insurance charge, a $250 cleaning fee, a $75 administrative fee, and 13% in state and county tax.³⁵ Another Venice manager, booking by three month blocks for the 2026 to 2027 season, publishes about ten properties running from $3,800 to $7,000 a month, three of them in 55 and over communities.³⁶

An RV site or a park model, if you’d rather. A 55 and over park in Mesa, Arizona publishes $1,200 a month, or $5,760 for six months, which works out to $960 a month.³⁷ Their annual rate is $8,000, or $667 a month. They rent a furnished park model at $3,000 a month, with a discount at three months or longer.³⁸ Another Mesa park publishes $900 a month plus tax and a four month special starting at $1,899 plus tax, with electricity billed separately and a $75 flat fee on any stay over thirty days.³⁹ A 55 and over park in Yuma publishes $605 a month, $1,615 for three months, and $3,025 for six on its standard lot.⁴⁰

What a winter costs, from each park or manager’s own published rate card, read in August and September 2026 for the 2026 to 2027 season. Where a park publishes tiers, the figure below is the base tier.

Read the tier, not just the price. The Yuma park’s $605 is for a rig up to 35 feet with no slides; a rig with a slide is $715 a month and a longer one is $810.⁴⁰ The Summerfield figures are the premium back-in sites; their pull-through sites run higher across the board.³³ If you have a slide, and most people do, price your own tier.

One thing you don’t typically see published. Both Venice managers we opened print the peak monthly rate and refer you to a phone call for the off season.^35,36 The RV parks are the opposite and publish every month of the year, which is where the summer numbers above come from.

And one line to know before you decide anything. Florida charges 13% in state and county tax on a stay under six months, and nothing at six months or over.^35,41 One manager writes it plainly: “all rentals less than 6 months are subject to 13% tax.”⁴¹ On a $6,000 a month condo, five months costs you about $3,900 in tax that six months would not.

What changes on your taxes, and it is not what most people think

This is the part where the common advice is wrong, and it is wrong in the expensive direction.

You will hear that if you stay under six months you stop being a resident of your home state. For three of your four Midwest states, that is not what the statute says, and keeping the house is what decides it.

How each state’s own statute defines a resident. Read at each state’s own revisor or legislature site in August and September 2026. This is general education and not tax advice; talk to your own CPA about your own situation.

Missouri. To stop being a Missouri resident while you’re domiciled there, you have to keep no permanent home in Missouri, keep one somewhere else, and spend not more than thirty days of the taxable year in Missouri.⁴² Thirty. Not 183. A retiree who keeps the Missouri house does not get out from under Missouri tax by staying away six months.

Kansas is the outlier. Kansas ties residency to domicile alone. There is no keep-a-house-and-count-days route in.⁴³ More than six months of the taxable year in Kansas creates a presumption you’re a resident, but the statute says that presumption stands only “in absence of proof to the contrary.”⁴³

Nebraska publishes a worked example. Bob and Jean own a home in Lincoln and a condo in Destin. They spend August through October in Nebraska and the rest of the year in Florida. Nebraska’s own guidance says they remain Nebraska residents, “even though they are in Nebraska for less than 183 days each year.”⁴⁵ Three months in Nebraska, nine in Florida, still Nebraska residents. Nebraska also counts any part of a day as a day.⁴⁵ That guidance is dated 2019 and the department says it is binding on itself until amended.⁴⁵

Iowa is the strictest of the four. The Iowa statute has no day count in it at all. It says a resident includes “any other individual who maintains a permanent place of abode within the state.”⁴⁶ Iowa’s own rule then says out loud that “absence from the state for 183 days of the tax year or for any other extended period of time does not alone show abandonment of an Iowa domicile.”⁴⁷

Iowa publishes its own example. Fred and Mary retired, kept their Iowa house, bought a Florida condo, leave in late October and come back in early April. They moved their car registrations to Florida. They got Florida driver’s licenses. They registered to vote in Florida and actually voted there. Iowa’s answer: “Fred and Mary would be considered Iowa residents because they have retained a permanent abode in Iowa.”⁴⁷

They did nearly everything the internet tells a snowbird to do, and it did not matter, because they kept the house.

Florida’s side of it. Florida does not impose a personal income tax, and its Department of Revenue says so plainly: “Florida does not impose a personal income tax, so there are no filing requirements.”⁴⁸ One correction on something you’ll see repeated: Florida’s constitution does not flatly ban an income tax. It says no such tax shall be levied “in excess of the aggregate of amounts which may be allowed to be credited upon or deducted from any similar tax levied by the United States or any state,” which is currently zero.⁴⁹ Same result, different mechanism, and worth getting right if anybody checks your citation.

If you actually wanted to change your domicile to Florida, Florida has a filing for it. The statute is titled “Manifesting and evidencing domicile in Florida,” and the form is commonly called a Declaration of Domicile. Note the word the statute uses: you may file it, and every operative line says “may.”⁵⁰ And read what you’d be swearing to. For somebody who keeps a home in another state, the declaration is a sworn statement that the Florida place is their “predominant and principal home.”⁵⁰ A person who is in Florida four months and Missouri eight would be signing that under oath. Think about that before you sign it. (This is not legal advice, consult a qualified attorney.)

One trap. Florida law says a person claiming a residency-based property tax break in another state is not entitled to the Florida homestead exemption, with a carve-out for property that is the permanent residence of a dependent.⁵¹ That collides hard in Iowa, because the Iowa homestead credit is exactly that kind of benefit, and claiming it is also one of the things that supports a presumption you’re domiciled in Iowa.^47,51 Pick one, with your CPA.

What changes on your Medicare, which is the part that can actually hurt you

If you have Original Medicare, you are fine, and Medicare says so in its own words. You can use “any doctor or hospital that takes Medicare, anywhere in the U.S.”⁵² There is no network and no service area.

If you have a Medicare Advantage plan, this is different, and you need to understand it before you go.

A Medicare Advantage plan has a network and a service area. Medicare’s own comparison puts it this way: you “may need to use doctors and other providers who are in the plan’s network and service area” for anything that isn’t an emergency.⁵² On an HMO, Medicare lists three things covered outside the network: emergency care, out of area urgent care, and temporary out-of-area dialysis.⁵³ For everything else, Medicare’s page says you “may have to pay the full cost.”⁵³

Read that again, because it is your potential exposure and it is not the one people worry about. If you have a heart attack in Naples, you’re covered. If you need your regular cardiologist follow-up, your quarterly injection, a scheduled procedure, or a specialist your Missouri plan has never heard of, you may be paying for all of it yourself.

Then there’s a six-month rule. Federal regulation says that if you have not moved but have left your plan’s service area for more than six months, the plan must disenroll you.⁵⁴ Not may. Must. The plan has to send you written notice within the first ten days of the sixth month.⁵⁴

Two things about that rule.

A three to five month winter does not trip it. The rule says more than six months. If you leave in November and you’re home in April, you’re not caught by it. The danger starts in month seven.

And some plans, not all, offer what the regulation calls a visitor or traveler benefit that lets you stay enrolled past six months while you’re still inside the United States.⁵⁴ The regulation says the plan “may elect” to offer it. You cannot demand it. Ask before you go, not after.

The regulation treats plan mail that comes back undeliverable with no forwarding address as evidence you’re away.⁵⁴ Forward your mail.

Your prescriptions. You can fill out of network, but the rule is narrow. The regulation requires plans to give you out-of-network access when you “cannot reasonably be expected to obtain such drugs at a network pharmacy” and when you “do not access covered Part D drugs at an out-of-network pharmacy on a routine basis.”⁵⁵ Filling every prescription at the same out of network Florida pharmacy for five straight months is not what that language was written for. Medicare’s page says that out of network you will “probably have to pay full cost,” and that even if the plan refunds you part of it, “you won’t get a refund for the out-of-network cost-sharing amount.”⁵⁶

This happens before you leave. Check whether your plan’s network reaches where you’re going. Most of the national pharmacy chains are in most networks, which is why this usually works out, but usually is not the same as covered. And there is no guaranteed vacation supply. Medicare’s own wording is that you “can contact your plan to see if you can get a 2- or 3-month supply.”⁵⁷ That’s a question you get to ask, not a right you have.

There is a Special Enrollment Period for moving out of your plan’s service area, and it runs two months after the move, or three if you tell the plan before you go.⁵⁸ That is a different number from the six-month disenrollment rule and the two get blurred together constantly. And it requires an actual move. Medicare’s list of Special Enrollment Periods has no entry for a seasonal absence, though the page does say to call them if you think you have an exceptional circumstance that isn’t listed.⁵⁸

If you have a Medicare Supplement, a Medigap policy, it travels. Medicare’s own guide says “in general, you can keep your current Medigap policy regardless of where you live as long as you still have Original Medicare.”⁵⁹

Here’s why. Medigap has no network of its own, because it pays alongside Original Medicare. Wherever Original Medicare pays, your Medigap pays.

One exception. If you have a Medicare SELECT policy, that one does use a network, and Medicare sets out separate rules for what happens when you move out of its area.⁵⁹

We could not find a page on medicare.gov about spending part of the year in another state. The six-month disenrollment rule, which is the most consequential rule here, is in the federal regulations rather than in plain language on Medicare’s own website.⁵⁴ The closest thing to snowbird guidance we found in Medicare’s own material is one parenthetical in a booklet, asking “Do I spend part of each year in another state?”⁵⁷

We are not selling you anything in this section. This is the part of the decision that you should have before you sign a six-month lease.

The house you left behind

Your homeowners policy does not stop working when you go, but some coverages can stop, and the day counts are in the policy rather than on anybody’s website.

The freezing one has no grace period at all. The standard homeowners form excludes damage from frozen pipes and then gives it back only if you used reasonable care to either keep the heat on or shut the water off and drain the system.⁶⁰ There is no thirty day or sixty-day threshold on that. State Farm’s form says the same thing, and applies it while the dwelling is vacant, unoccupied or under construction.⁶¹

Note the word “or.” You do not have to do both.

The vandalism one does have a day count, and insurers do not agree on it. The standard form cuts off vandalism coverage after the home has been vacant more than sixty consecutive days.⁶⁰ State Farm’s form says thirty.⁶¹ Allstate’s says thirty, and Allstate’s wording is “vacant or unoccupied.”⁶²

Watch the word “unoccupied.” One filed endorsement defines vacant as the absence of most of the furniture and other items needed for human occupancy and defines unoccupied as “any dwelling without continual residency even if it is fully furnished.”⁶³ A furnished house in Missouri with nobody in it from December to March is not vacant under that definition. It is unoccupied, and under some forms that is the word that starts the clock. That same endorsement does not exclude coverage outright; it cuts the amount of insurance to 60% after thirty days.⁶³

None of the forms we opened requires you to tell them. None of them publishes a notification requirement or sells a vacancy permit. Allstate’s form says outright that the home “may be vacant or unoccupied for any length of time, except where a time limit is indicated in this policy.”⁶² Nothing gets cancelled. Specific coverages just turn off on the dates written into your policy, whether you knew about them or not.

Kurt’s take: read your own policy before you leave, and if you can’t find the vacancy and freezing language in it, call your agent and ask them to point at it. The five state insurance departments we checked, including Florida’s, publish very little on this.

The cheaper alternative

Most of this doesn’t apply if you go for a month instead of a season.

One month in Yuma is $605.⁴⁰ One month in Zephyrhills is $750.³⁴ You stay under every day count in every one of these rules, your Medicare Advantage network problem shrinks to something you can schedule around, and your homeowner’s vacancy clock never starts.

If what you want is to miss February, you can do that for about eight hundred dollars and a tank of gas and skip this entire section.

The trips you take at 66 are not the trips you take at 82

A retirement lifestyle is not one thing for thirty years. The golf you play at 66 is not the golf you play at 82. Neither is the RV, the boat, the beach house or the flight to Italy. The expensive years are the early ones, and they are also the short ones.

Most plans assume you spend the same amount every year for thirty years. Do you think you will? You spend more at the front, when you can still do things, and less at the back, when you can’t.

Which means the money you were saving for later is the money you needed at the beginning.

What none of these numbers include

None of the figures on this page include your gas or your flights. None of them include what you eat while you’re doing it. The boat numbers don’t include fuel or towing. The RV numbers don’t include campground nights or fuel. The golf numbers don’t include the caddie, the cart or the room. The club dues don’t include what you spend in the grill.

We left those out because they change too much from person to person to put a number on, and a number we made up would be worse than no number.

Each page says what its own gaps are. This is all of them in one place.

Where does the money for all of it come from?

Look at what a retirement lifestyle is actually made of. A country club bill every year. Boat insurance every year. The winter storage package every year. The county tax on the boat every January. The dog. The garden. The campground. None of those are one-time purchases. They are a standing order, and they arrive whether you went or not.

Pull that money out of your savings in a year the market is down, and you didn’t just spend the money. You spent that money and everything it would have earned back for you later. Let that happen three years running in a bad stretch and it shows up in your balance for the rest of your life.

Or maybe worse, you don’t go. The trip waits. The boat gets sold. Not because you stopped wanting it, but because a bad year in the market turned a bill into a decision instead of a payment.

Here’s what Lifestyle-First planning does differently, the money does come out of your savings. It has to. There’s nowhere else for it to come from. There are no magic sources of money to create retirement income.

What changes is that instead of leaving everything in one account at risk in the market and selling pieces off whenever a bill shows up, you take the portion you have already allocated for living on and for the adventures, experiences and memories that make life worth living, and you turn that portion into income that is deposited into your bank account every month for as long as you live. That’s your Protected Lifetime Income. Never all of your savings. The right amount.

Same portion of your retirement money. It just shows up as a paycheck instead of a withdrawal.

The ten-year head start

We also tell people to plan what they want to do in retirement years before their actual retirement date. Not just thinking about retiring. Actually, planning the income for it.

Money moved into guaranteed lifetime income earlier buys more income per dollar. A couple planning to retire at 65 who moves $100,000 into a retirement lifestyle budget ten years ahead, at 55, produces about $15,554 a year for life. Move that same $100,000 at 60 and it produces about $10,579. Wait until 65 and it produces $7,680.

Follow traditional retirement planning and that same $100,000 creates maybe $4,000 a year, or $4,700, or $5,500 adjusting up for inflation each year, and none of that is guaranteed. It is also at risk of loss, likely in a mix of stocks and bonds.

What the same $100,000 pays every year, depending on how far ahead it was moved into guaranteed lifetime income, with retirement at 65. These figures are illustrative and hypothetical, verified with our carriers in August 2026.

What that yearly income buys you of a retirement lifestyle. Every cost below is a full year, taken from this page or the page it links to.

One hundred thousand dollars, moved ten years early, pays for the boat or the trailer or the club or the dog and the garden, every single year, for as long as you live. The same hundred thousand, moved the year you retire, still covers the pontoon, and stops covering the motorhome.

That is the same money. The only thing that changed is when.

If you’ve saved more and you want to put more toward the life you want, the math is easy to estimate. $200,000 with a ten-year runway creates about $31,108 a year for life. That covers the Florida boat and the private club, both, every year.

The budget you’d use in your go-go years, when you’re healthy enough to be out there every other weekend, keeps coming for the rest of your life. No matter what the market does. No matter how long you live. And if you’re married, as long as your spouse lives. Even if you sell the boat later on.

There is a trade-off with having the right amount of Protected Lifetime Income, and we’ll show it to you before you decide anything. The protected part is less liquid, and on its own it leaves less behind. The liquidity piece is something traditional planning tends to emphasize without fully disclosing the cost of you using that liquidity.

What you get for that trade-off is pretty powerful. Since the income covers your life, the rest of your money isn’t being drained to live on.

Nobody ever asked you what you wanted to do with the money

The reason your advisor never priced out a winter storage package for you isn’t laziness. The whole traditional retirement planning business is built backward.

The standard retirement plan starts with your savings and lets that balance decide what life you get. Usually, it’s based on some combination of safe withdrawal rate, or a retirement success score, or a guardrail strategy that tells you to spend less when the market falls.

Doesn’t that sound more like a business model than a plan for your retirement?

Would you define your retirement as being successful if you are told to cut spending, or even just feel like you need to cut spending?

Is that the retirement you worked 20, 25, 30 years or longer to build?

Lifestyle-First planning starts at the other end. You decide your retirement lifestyle first. Your essentials, your adventures, your experiences, and the memories you want with the people you love. Then we build income underneath it.

Never all of your money. The right amount for the retirement lifestyle you picked, with the rest left liquid and still growing.

Here’s how Lifestyle-First income planning works.

First your life, then your money.

Related reading

• What a Boat Actually Costs in Retirement
• What Your Retirement Hobbies Actually Cost
• What a Trip in Retirement Really Costs
• What a Country Club Membership Actually Costs
• What a Bucket List Golf Trip Actually Costs
• What Would a Random Tuesday Look Like in Retirement?
• Afraid to Spend Money in Retirement

Run your own number

Put in your savings, the income you want, and the age you’d claim Social Security, and see what your own picture looks like. It costs nothing and asks nothing of you.

Frequently Asked Questions

A retirement lifestyle is priced piece by piece, and every piece of it is published somewhere. A round at a bucket list golf course runs $130 to $775. A country club runs $642 a year to $24,243 a year. One trip for two runs about $3,000 to $12,000 before plane tickets. A dog is $2,770 a year and a garden is $740. Owning a pontoon boat is about $6,700 to $7,200 a year in the Midwest. Owning a travel trailer is about $3,500 a year and a Class C motorhome about $10,800, before campground fees and fuel. Most of those are yearly bills, not one-time purchases.

It depends on how many weeks a year you actually go. Owning a travel trailer runs about $3,489 a year in Missouri before campground fees and fuel, and a week’s rental from a Missouri dealer runs about $1,059, so owning wins at about three weeks a year. Owning a Class C motorhome runs about $10,792 a year, and a seven-night Cruise America rental out of Kansas City quoted at $1,378.66 all in, so owning wins at about eight weeks a year.

About $3,489 for a travel trailer in Missouri and about $10,792 for a Class C motorhome, before campground fees and fuel. That covers insurance, storage, registration, the routine maintenance a dealer calls annual, and what the RV loses in value. The two biggest lines are not bills anybody mails you. A Class C loses roughly $7,430 a year in value, and the repairs that really hurt, a roof reseal or a slide-out rebuild or water damage, were quote only at every seller we opened.

We could not find anybody who publishes it. We checked nine federal agencies and datasets and none of them publishes days of use for an RV. The Coast Guard publishes that number for boats because it needs it to calculate accident rates, and we did not find an agency with the same need for RVs. The usage figures in circulation come from the RV industry itself.

A Keystone Coleman travel trailer at a Kansas City dealer listed at a $24,904 sticker and a $23,294 selling price. A Winnebago Minnie Winnie Class C motorhome listed at a $151,111 sticker, and the lowest figure any dealer is permitted to advertise on it is $102,850. That gap is 32%, and it exists before you negotiate anything, because Winnebago’s own internet pricing policy sets a price floor on what dealers may print.

Yes, by a lot. A full hookup night at a state park runs $22.75 in Kansas, $34 to $40 in Iowa, and $35 in Missouri and Nebraska in season. Missouri takes $2 a night off for anybody 65 and over. The six KOA campgrounds we quoted across those states for a week in September 2026 ran $58.57 to $93.00 a night.

The money still comes out of your savings, because there is nowhere else for it to come from. What changes is how it gets to you. Selling investments to cover a bill in a down year costs you the money plus everything it would have earned back. Moving the portion you have allocated for living on into guaranteed lifetime income creates a payment that arrives every month for life, and it buys more income per dollar the earlier it is set up. In our own illustrative figures, $100,000 moved at 55 for income starting at 65 produces about $15,554 a year for life, against $7,680 a year if the same $100,000 is moved at 65.

Sources

1. **Golf, bucket list courses. ** Carried from our own page, What a Bucket List Golf Trip Actually Costs, where each course’s published green fee is linked to the resort’s own rate page.
2. **Country clubs. ** Carried from our own page, What a Country Club Membership Actually Costs, where each club’s published dues and initiation fees are linked.
3. **Trips. ** Carried from our own page, What a Trip in Retirement Really Costs, where each operator’s published fare is linked.
4. **Dog and garden. ** Carried from our own page, What Your Retirement Hobbies Actually Cost.
5. **Boat. ** Carried from our own page, What a Boat Actually Costs in Retirement.
6. Camping World, Kansas City, Kansas, 2026 Keystone Coleman 23B listing. Published MSRP of $24,904 and selling price of $23,294 on a new 2026 Keystone Coleman 23B travel trailer, 27 feet 6 inches, 4,462 pounds dry, sleeps 8. This is a single-unit listing at one store and will change when the unit sells.
7. Lichtsinn RV, Forest City, Iowa, new 2026 Winnebago Minnie Winnie 22R listing. Published MSRP of $151,111 against a Winnebago Minimum Advertised Price of $102,850, with the dealer’s own statement that they comply with Winnebago’s Internet Pricing Policy, “which does not allow any dealer to advertise prices below Minimum Advertised Prices.”
8. Progressive, Missouri RV insurance, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa. Each state page publishes the average premium for a 12-month RV policy at Progressive for 2024: Missouri $1,098.82 for a motorhome and $599.97 for a travel trailer, Kansas $999.53 and $727.53, Nebraska $798.02 and $710.43, and Iowa $845.19 and $577.17.
9. RecNation RV and Boat Storage, Trimble, Missouri. Published online rates of $46 a month for an uncovered 10 by 40 outdoor pad and $116 for a 10 by 20 covered canopy space, with a 12 by 20 indoor garage at a nearby RecNation facility at $156, all shown as web rates with limited availability.
10. Missouri Department of Revenue, motor vehicle fees. Recreational vehicle registration of $32.25 for one year plus a $9 processing fee, and trailer registration of $7.50 for a full year plus a $9 processing fee.
11. Iowa Code Section 321. 124. “For class C motor homes, one hundred ten dollars for registration each year through five model years and eighty dollars for each succeeding registration.”
12. Iowa Code Section 321. 123. Sets travel trailer registration at “thirty cents per square foot of floor space computed on the exterior overall measurements, but excluding three feet occupied by any trailer hitch,” reduced to seventy-five percent of the full fee after the vehicle is more than six model years old.
13. Kansas Department of Revenue, registration FAQs. “Questions concerning fees and taxes can be answered by the local county treasurer’s motor vehicle office where you reside or where the vehicle is garaged.” The page publishes no fee schedule.
14. Nebraska DMV, registration fees and taxes. A $15.00 registration fee for passenger and leased vehicles, plus a Motor Vehicle Fee “based upon the value, weight and use of the vehicle” and a separate Motor Vehicle Tax assessed at initial registration and annually until the vehicle reaches 14 years, based on the manufacturer’s suggested retail price. The page does not state which class a recreational vehicle falls into.
15. Blue Compass RV, published service pricing. Wheel bearing repack at $299.95 for a single axle plus parts, brake and axle service at $299.95 per axle, and slide-out service at $215.95 per slide, all listed as recommended every 12 months, and a roof inspection and spot seal at $209.95 recommended every 6 months, with the page’s own note that prices vary by model.
16. Camping World, RV service pricing. Wheel bearing packs at $154.99 for a single axle and slide out maintenance at $84.99 for a single slide, both described as recommended annually, with the page’s note that prices may vary based on location.
17. Missouri State Parks, Lake of the Ozarks State Park 2026 camping fees. Sewer, electric and water 50 amp sites at $35 on-season, April through October, and $29 off-season, with a $2 per night discount available year round for senior citizens 65 and older, persons with disabilities, and military and veterans.
18. Nebraska Game and Parks, park pricing. Full hookup camping at $35 a night, with off-season rates $5 less per night for all site types except primitive, and the page’s own statement that rates are consistent across all parks “with the exception of Lake McConaughy State Recreation Area.”
19. Iowa Department of Natural Resources, 2026 camping rates. Peak season sewer, water and electric sites at $34 to $40 a night, dropping to $18 to $24 in the off season, with rates including sales tax.
20. Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, park fees. Daily camping at $10.00 plus $12.00 for three utilities, billed separately, and a $2.75 per stay transaction fee on all overnight stays.
21. Kampgrounds of America, booking system. Average nightly rates quoted through KOA’s own booking system on August 31, 2026 for a 30 foot RV arriving September 21, 2026 for seven nights: Branson $58.57, Springfield $69.29, Des Moines West $71.43, Kansas City West $83.00, West Omaha $88.99 and St. Louis West $93.00. KOA prices by date and availability and does not post a static rate card, so these are dated quotes.
22. J. D. Power, 2019 Winnebago Minnie Winnie M-22R values. Suggested list price of $84,965 against an average retail value of $32,950 and a low retail value of $27,350.
23. J. D. Power, 2019 Jayco Jay Flight SLX M-264 BH values. Suggested list price of $22,147 against an average retail value of $10,500 and a low retail value of $8,700.
24. Cruise America, online reservation system. Itemized quote for a 25 foot Standard RV from Kansas City, September 21 to 28, 2026, run on August 31, 2026: seven nights $938.00, 700 estimated miles $273.00, prep fee $50.00, environmental fee $9.95 and state tax $107.71, for a total of $1,378.66, displayed as a $181.56 nightly average. Cruise America states its prices fluctuate with season, location and availability.
25. Cruise America, renter FAQs. An estimated mileage charge billed at 100 miles per night on a local rental at 39 cents per mile, a generator charge of $3.50 per hour on the models that have one, a personal kit at $75 per person and a vehicle provisioning kit at $125 per vehicle.
26. Byerly RV, Eureka, Missouri, Thor Four Winds 28Z. In-season weekly rate of $1,960 for a 28 foot Class C, May 1 through September 30, with an off-season weekly rate of $1,435, and 150 free miles a day and 3 hours of generator use a day listed as included on all their motorhome rentals.
27. Byerly RV, Keystone Passport 264BH. Weekly rate of $910 for a travel trailer, with no season split published and no mileage or generator allowance, since travel trailers are towed by the renter’s own vehicle.
28. Byerly RV, rental resources. A one-time $149 prep fee on all rental contracts, and the statement that mileage does not apply to travel trailers.
29. Olathe Ford RV Center, Gardner, Kansas, rental information. A $259 preparation fee plus Gardner sales tax and a 3.5% rental tax, 100 free miles per night on motorhomes only at $0.59 per mile after that, and published seasonal rate changes of $10 off nightly in fall and spring and $20 off in winter against peak season rates from May 1 through September 30.
30. I-80 RV Sales and Rental, Gretna, Nebraska. Published weekly rate of $650 for a 27 to 30 foot travel trailer, with a weight distribution hitch and property damage insurance included, before taxes, and a $500 security deposit.
31. RVshare, 2017 Thor Four Winds 22E listing. A Class C listing published at $192 a night, with a $500 refundable security deposit, 100 miles per night included and a 3% discount on stays of seven nights or more. The full seven-night total including insurance, protection and the service fee appears only after dates are selected in the booking widget.
32. **Federal data on RV days of use, our own search. ** Checked and found nothing at the Bureau of Transportation Statistics National Transportation Statistics, the Federal Highway Administration National Household Travel Survey and Highway Statistics, the Census Bureau Vehicle Inventory and Use Survey, the National Park Service, the Forest Service National Visitor Use Monitoring, the Army Corps of Engineers recreation data, and the Department of Energy Transportation Energy Data Book. The Census survey excludes motor homes by design and the National Household Travel Survey carries an RV code on a sample of 112 vehicles measuring annual miles rather than days.
33. Sunkissed Village RV Resort, Summerfield, Florida. Published 2026 to 2027 season rates for a 55 and over park. On a premium back-in site: $93 daily, $498 weekly and $1,532 monthly for January, February and March, a six month season rate of $1,169 a month, and a summer monthly rate of $700. Pull-through super sites are higher across the board, and metered electric is added on stays of one month or more.
34. Leisure Days RV Resort, Zephyrhills, Florida. Published rates for a 55 and over park for November 1, 2026 through April 30, 2027 of $62 daily, $300 weekly and $750 monthly, each stated to include electric, water and sewer, plus a four month pre-paid special at $2,800.
35. Horse and Chaise Rentals, Venice Sands condo, Venice, Florida. A two bedroom beachfront condo listed “From $6,000 Per Month” with a three month minimum, including internet, cable, water, sewer, trash and electric with a note that monthly caps may apply on electric, plus $125 damage insurance, a $250 cleaning fee, a $75 administrative fee, and 7% state and 6% county tax on stays under six months.
36. Preferred Properties of Venice, three month seasonal rentals. Published monthly rates for the December, January and February 2026 to 2027 block running from $3,800 to $7,000 a month across about ten properties, three of them described as in 55 and over communities.
37. Orangewood Shadows RV Resort, Mesa, Arizona, rate schedule. Published monthly rates effective August 1, 2026 for a 55 and over park of $1,200 a month, $5,760 for six months and $8,000 annually, including water, sewer and trash with electric billed monthly.
38. Orangewood Shadows RV Resort, sales and rentals. Park owned park models offered as seasonal rentals at $3,000 a month with a discount at three months or longer, including antenna TV, water, trash and electric, and a note that rates may be adjusted for availability and length of stay.
39. Citrus Gardens, Mesa, Arizona. Published rates for a 55 and over park of $900 monthly plus tax and $400 weekly plus tax, a four month stay special starting at $1,899 plus tax for January 1 through May 1, 2027, electricity not included, and a $75 flat fee on all RV stays longer than 30 days.
40. The Caravan Oasis RV Park, Yuma, Arizona. Published rates for a 55 and over park. On a regular lot, for rigs up to 35 feet with no slides: $605 monthly, $1,615 for three months and $3,025 for six. Deluxe lots run $715, $1,880 and $3,575, and premium lots $810, $2,200 and $4,040. Monthly and package stays pay utilities on top of the stated rate.
41. Home and Condo Rentals, Venice, Florida. “Rates are per month and all rentals less than 6 months are subject to 13% tax.”
42. Missouri Revised Statutes, Section 143. 101. Defines a resident as an individual domiciled in Missouri unless that person maintains no permanent place of abode in Missouri, maintains one elsewhere, and spends “not more than thirty days of the taxable year in this state,” and also as a non-domiciliary who maintains a permanent place of abode in Missouri and spends “more than one hundred eighty-three days of the taxable year in this state.”
43. Kansas Statutes, K. S.A. 79-32,109. Subsection (b): “‘Resident individual’ means a natural person who is domiciled in this state. A natural person who spends in the aggregate more than six months of the taxable year within this state shall be presumed to be a resident for purposes of this act in absence of proof to the contrary.”
44. Nebraska Revised Statutes, Section 77-2714. 01. Subsection (7): “Resident individual shall mean an individual who is domiciled in Nebraska or who maintains a permanent place of abode in this state and spends in the aggregate more than six months of the taxable year in this state.”
45. Nebraska Department of Revenue, Information Guide 8-645, Determining Residency Status. Carries Example 2, a couple who own a home in Lincoln and a condominium in Destin, Florida, spend August through October in Nebraska and the rest of the year in Florida, and “remain residents of Nebraska for income tax purposes because they have not abandoned their domicile, even though they are in Nebraska for less than 183 days each year.” The guide also states that Nebraska counts any part of a day spent in the state as a day. Revised May 2019 and described by the department as binding on it until amended.
46. Iowa Code, Section 422. 4(14). Iowa Code 2026: a resident includes “any individual domiciled in the state, and any other individual who maintains a permanent place of abode within the state.” No day count appears anywhere in the section.
47. Iowa Administrative Code, rule 701-300. 17(422). “Absence from the state for 183 days of the tax year or for any other extended period of time does not alone show abandonment of an Iowa domicile,” and the worked example of a retired couple with an Iowa house and a Florida condominium who transferred their vehicle registrations, driver’s licenses and voter registration to Florida and voted there, who “would be considered Iowa residents because they have retained a permanent abode in Iowa.”
48. Florida Department of Revenue, personal income tax FAQ. “Florida does not impose a personal income tax, so there are no filing requirements.”
49. Florida Constitution, Article VII, Section 5(a). “No tax upon estates or inheritances or upon the income of natural persons who are residents or citizens of the state shall be levied by the state, or under its authority, in excess of the aggregate of amounts which may be allowed to be credited upon or deducted from any similar tax levied by the United States or any state.” Article VII begins well down a single long page carrying the whole constitution.
50. Florida Statutes, Section 222. 17, Manifesting and evidencing domicile in Florida. Provides that a person who has established a Florida domicile “may” file a sworn declaration, and that a person maintaining a place of abode in another state may evidence Florida domicile by swearing that the Florida abode “constitutes his or her predominant and principal home,” with subsection (7) preserving all other methods of proving domicile.
51. Florida Statutes, Section 196. 031. Sets the homestead exemption for a person holding title on January 1 who in good faith makes the property a permanent residence, and provides at subsection (6) that a person receiving or claiming a residency-based ad valorem tax exemption or credit in another state “is not entitled to the homestead exemption provided by this section,” except where the Florida property is the permanent residence of someone legally or naturally dependent on the owner.
52. Medicare, comparing Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage. With Original Medicare, “You can use any doctor or hospital that takes Medicare, anywhere in the U.S.” With Medicare Advantage, “You may need to use doctors and other providers who are in the plan’s network and service area (for non-emergency care).”
53. Medicare, Health Maintenance Organization plans. HMO enrollees “generally must get your care and services from doctors, other health care providers, and hospitals in the plan’s network, except: Emergency care, Out-of-area urgent care, Temporary out-of-area dialysis,” and “If you get health care outside the plan’s network, you may have to pay the full cost.”
54. Code of Federal Regulations, 42 CFR 422. 74. At (d)(4)(ii), an enrollee who has not moved but “has left the service area (or residence) for more than 6 months, the MA organization must disenroll the individual from the plan,” and treats plan mail returned as undeliverable with no forwarding address as evidence of temporary absence. At (d)(4)(iii), a plan offering a visitor or traveler benefit while the enrollee is outside the service area “but within the United States” for longer than 6 months and less than 12 “may elect” to let the enrollee stay enrolled to the 13th month. At (d)(4)(iv), written notice is required within the first 10 calendar days of the sixth month of a temporary absence.
55. Code of Federal Regulations, 42 CFR 423. 124. Requires plans to ensure out-of-network pharmacy access when enrollees “cannot reasonably be expected to obtain such drugs at a network pharmacy” and “do not access covered Part D drugs at an out-of-network pharmacy on a routine basis,” permits a sponsor providing coverage other than defined standard coverage to charge the enrollee the difference between the pharmacy’s usual price and the plan allowance, and requires plans to set reasonable limits on out-of-network access.
56. Medicare, pharmacies and drug coverage. At an out-of-network pharmacy “you’ll probably have to pay full cost for the drugs,” and a plan refund “won’t get a refund for the out-of-network cost-sharing amount.”
57. Medicare, using drug coverage and Your Guide to Medicare Drug Coverage. The web page states “you can contact your plan to see if you can get a 2- or 3-month supply for drugs you take regularly.” The booklet carries the one question in Medicare’s own materials aimed at part-year residents: “Do I spend part of each year in another state? (This may be important if a plan you want to join requires you to use certain pharmacies.)”
58. Medicare, Special Enrollment Periods. A person who moves outside a plan’s service area may switch beginning when they move and continuing for two full months after, or beginning the month before the move if the plan is told in advance. No listed Special Enrollment Period covers a seasonal absence, though the page invites people with an exceptional circumstance not listed to call Medicare.
59. Medicare and the NAIC, Choosing a Medigap Policy. “In general, you can keep your current Medigap policy regardless of where you live as long as you still have Original Medicare.” Separately sets out the rules for a Medicare SELECT policy, which “may require you to use hospitals and, in some cases, doctors within its network to be eligible for full benefits,” and what happens when a SELECT policyholder moves out of the policy’s area.
60. Insurance Services Office, Homeowners 3 Special Form HO 00 03 05 11. Excludes loss caused by freezing of a plumbing, heating, air conditioning or sprinkler system, with the provision not applying “if you have used reasonable care to: (a) Maintain heat in the building; or (b) Shut off the water supply and drain all systems and appliances of water,” and no day threshold. Excludes vandalism and malicious mischief “if the dwelling has been vacant for more than 60 consecutive days immediately before the loss.”
61. State Farm Homeowners Policy FP-7955. Applies its freezing exclusion “only while the dwelling is vacant, unoccupied or being constructed,” and not at all if reasonable care was used to maintain heat or drain the system. Excludes vandalism, malicious mischief or breakage of glass “if the dwelling has been vacant for more than 30 consecutive days immediately before the loss.”
62. Allstate House and Home Policy AVP58. Excludes vandalism or malicious mischief “if your dwelling is vacant or unoccupied for more than 30 consecutive days immediately prior to the vandalism or malicious mischief,” and states in its conditions that “the residence premises may be vacant or unoccupied for any length of time, except where a time limit is indicated in this policy.”
63. Endorsement form 11010 05/10, Reduction in Coverage When Vacant or Unoccupied, filed with the Nevada Division of Insurance. Defines vacant as “the absence of most of: 1. The furniture; and 2. Other items needed for human occupancy as a dwelling,” and unoccupied as “any dwelling without continual residency even if it is fully furnished.” Reduces the amount of insurance to 60% of the amounts shown any time the dwelling is vacant or unoccupied for 30 days or more.

Every figure on this page was read against the source listed above it in August and September 2026, one source at a time. Prices change, and the vacation rental, cruise, campground and RV rental quotes above are dated quotes rather than standing rate cards. Check them before you write a check. Kurt’s own carrier income figures carry no source link; they were verified with our carriers in August 2026.* —

All figures on this page are illustrative and hypothetical and were read at each company’s own website, price list, or the state’s own statute in August and September 2026. The vacation rental, cruise, campground and RV rental figures are dated quotes rather than standing rate cards and will differ for your dates. Prices, tax rates and registration fees change without notice. Check the linked source before you buy anything or write a check. This article is for general education, not personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. Kurt H. Jackson is Life and Health Insurance Licensed in MO, NE, KS, IA, and FL, and is not a securities broker, registered investment advisor, or CPA. Guaranteed income strategies involve real costs and require careful planning based on your individual circumstances.