We have established so far that moving is a highly stressful and highly expensive endeavour. The expense that we calculate here is not the expenses of your new home or finding your new home, no. We are talking about moving expenses only.
Despite the popular belief that moving is easy and not that pricey, we are here to tell you that if you are not careful this might turn out to be a pricey thing and that can lead to a lot of stress build-up. Most of you believe that moving is packing up, boxing everything and shipping it to where it needs to go. That is the gist but you also have to think about the safety of your things, you need to make sure that they all reach the destination and that they reach it as a whole. This might lead to extra charges by the moving company or just a bigger fee you will pay to make sure your moving company provides this.
Today we will talk about moving and the ways you can save a lot of money in the process.
You will be able to move easily and you will move all your stuff intact and safe. First thing is to pick a good moving company, read more on that here, and the second thing is to read this article through.
1. Clear unwanted items
All of us have stuff laying around our homes that we haven’t touched or used for ages. We bought them or got them as a present, used them once or twice and we stored them somewhere and forgot all about them. These things tend to accumulate over time and we accumulate a lot of them. The funny thing is that all of us drag those things with us to the new home for no reason at all. These things are pure expense because you have to box them up, you have to secure them and you have to pay for them to be transported to your new place just to not be used at all, again. What we suggest is to make a yard sale of sorts or give to charity everything you don’t need or that you haven’t used for more than one year. That way you either make some money or you do a good deed and you will save up on moving expenses.
2. Take what you can
We all know that when we are moving there are smaller items and more bulky items that will go with us. Now what most of us do is we do not think about taking those smaller things and packing them up in our vehicles to save at least on those. We all tend to stuff everything up in those moving trucks for convenience and pay for them when we can save and bring them in our vehicle with us. We also forget that there are plenty of small things we can carry with us, and if we pack them nicely you would be surprised by the amount of these things that can fit in a regular vehicle. When you do the math the savings on only this add up to a nice sum.
3. Packaging expenses
For an unknown reason, we tend to waste a lot of money on brand new packaging that we immediately throw away and discard as soon as we set foot in the new place and unpack everything. Why should you do this and why should you waste money on brand new packaging when you can either get some of them used, use some of the ones you previously used when you moved, given the fact that you saved them, or when you can get perfectly good packaging from friends and family that don’t need it anymore. There is no shame in trying to save money like this because when you save on everything, we wrote so far, the sum of money isn’t that ridiculous and you can use it toward some new appliances, furniture or maybe your first rent or mortgage payment.
4. Alternative ways of moving
If you want to save some money while doing this you can also think about other ways you can move some of your stuff at a lower process. The thing we will tell you about here goes the best if this is a city-to-city move or country-to-country move, and it applies to only certain things. For electronics like TVs or any other gigantic boxes, Amtrac and Greyhound will give you a really good price for a cross-country ride. For smaller things like books, CDs, DVDs or any other media and things that size, the post office should be your choice as the best and cheapest option. Use their media mail service where they will not calculate the distance but the weight of things that are being sent. They are slow, but your books and CDs are not something you will need immediately.
5. DIY
This last piece of advice is a good one when it comes to saving money. If you are doing a move in the same city then using your car is probably the best option, for all the things it can move. Amtrak or Greyhound will be cheaper than renting a moving truck but renting a truck will surely be cheaper than hiring a moving company. This all depends, of course, on the location and the distance you are moving to. Sometimes DIYing things can save you money, other times it will cost you more, so make sure you have calculated everything twice before deciding on an option. Either way, there are plenty of options before you and if you just sit down and crunch some numbers you will see an equal number of places where you can save some cash you can use on other things later on.
Moving can be both stressful and expensive but if you have got the nerve if you can keep calm and organized there is no reason for this process to be like that. There are several ways you can keep everything nice and organized and there are several ways you can save money when moving. 5 of the most obvious, but somehow most overlooked ways of saving money are here the rest you can probably find by yourself, depending on your situation and your particular factors.
