Welcome to the forum
.
No, the spousal visa is what you need and it's fine if your husband is currently living in the US - the requirement for him to be 'present and settled' in the UK just means that he has to be a UK citizen with the right to live permanently in the UK.
However, he has to meet a minimum UK income requirement in order to sponsor your visa, so depending on his circumstances he may need to move to the UK ahead of you before you can apply for a spousal visa.
In order to be able to apply for the visa while he is still living in the US, he has to meet two financial criteria:
1) he has a UK job offer paying at least £18,600 and starting within 3 months of moving to the UK
And
2) he has earned at least £18,600 in the US in the last 12 months before applying.
There are other ways to meet the income requirement as well, such as savings of £62,500 or more if he doesn't have a UK job offer.
Have a read through Appendix FM 1.7 (a link to it is in the documents section of the spousal visa information on the UKVI website - 'Join Family Living in the U.K.') to see all the ways he can qualify to
sponsor you.
In answer to your other questions:
1) you can apply no earlier than 3 months before you wish to move to the UK... So if you won't be moving until next year you have a few more months to wait. When you apply, you have to put an intended travel date, which can't be more than 3 months ahead, and you will have 30 days from this date to move to the UK. So say you applied today, the latest travel date you could put would be 24th August 2016 and you would have to move between 24th August and 23rd September 2016.
2) it's the visa you are expected to get as the spouse of a UK citizen. If your spouse cannot meet the financial requirement for the visa, the other options would be a work or student visa, but a work visa can be very difficult to qualify for and a student visa requires a lot of money for tuition and living costs.
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