Moving Out Advice

If you are new to moving then you are in the process of putting together a moving out checklist. Your probably thinking that to pack all the things you are moving is the way to go. Well, a moving pack would be a great find to help with this but I have not found a good one yet.

A common thought is should I pack it for moving and send it/move it to where I am going or should I sell it.

My advice is almost always Sell It if you are moving a great distance and paying for a moving service. This goes double if you are moving a car. Moving companies are very expensive but they get the job done very efficiently. However, the cost will often be more to move the item then to buy it again when you get where you are going.

An example: My friend decided he was moving to Indiana. He started packing everything he owned (and he owned quite a lot of stuff). He packed his children’s toys, he packed all his books, he packed his tools, he packed his bedding, he packed all he furniture, he packed up EVERYTHING. By the time he was done he had a full size 40 foot conex totally full and then started mailing boxes of his stuff because it was cheaper than using a moving company and getting another conex.

You may be wondering, how much does it cost for moving all that stuff? Well, in his case it was over $16,000. Imagine what you can buy with $16,000. Of course he was moving from Alaska to Indiana but even then, $16,000. Yikes!

Next he decided to ship a car (actually, it was a mini van). How much does it cost to ship a car? Well, its a lot. Especially from Alaska. If I remember correctly, it was something like $5000. In my experience, you can buy a pretty decent used mini van for $5000. They are not the most sought after vehicle on the planet. Good used ones often sell for $5000 or less.

So, he shipped the car for $5000 and he still owed about $7000 in it so he just took a $5000 vehicle and paid $12,000 for it. Now I ask you, should you move it or should you sell it? He would have been far better off if he had just sold it at a loss and then bought a new one when he got to his destination.

To make things worse, he bought a motor home to move his family and move his animals. Plane tickets would have been $2500, maybe $3000 with the two dogs. The motor home cost $18,000. The trip (which took weeks) was another $6000 easy. That’s $24,000 for a trip that he could have made for $3000!

Well, he gets to his destination and after they get moved in to their new place, he decides to sell the motor home. After a long time trying he finally sold it for $8000. Thats a $10,000 loss on his purchase and makes the total cost of moving the family $16,000 and thats on top of the $16,000 he paid to move his house stuff.

I ask you, would you move it all or try and sell everything that wasn’t a family treasure and just purchase what you need when you get where you are going?

When I move out the next time, I’m moving out with the bare essentials. Its a great opportunity to shed a bunch of the junk you have collected over the years.