How can I move and pay other people to do all the work?
March 29, 2018 9:48 PM
How can I make the most of a substantial moving allowance?
After 15 years and seven moves (including two cross-country moves, with cats!!), I am finally starting in a job that I hope to keep for a long time. This job comes with a $10,000 moving allowance. YAY!!
I need help figuring out how to hire reputable long-distance movers to haul my stuff from Memphis to Texas. Specific companies and general recommendations are appreciated. Packing services would be most ideal. Bonus points if they have an associated cleaning service (as I have to submit a unified estimate to my employer).
With the exception of bedroom furniture and an antique desk, I’m not planning to take most of my furniture with me, as it is mostly a mix of well-loved IKEA and piecemeal stuff from college. I do have loads of kitchen stuff and dishes, and astonishingly large book collection.
After 15 years and seven moves (including two cross-country moves, with cats!!), I am finally starting in a job that I hope to keep for a long time. This job comes with a $10,000 moving allowance. YAY!!
I need help figuring out how to hire reputable long-distance movers to haul my stuff from Memphis to Texas. Specific companies and general recommendations are appreciated. Packing services would be most ideal. Bonus points if they have an associated cleaning service (as I have to submit a unified estimate to my employer).
With the exception of bedroom furniture and an antique desk, I’m not planning to take most of my furniture with me, as it is mostly a mix of well-loved IKEA and piecemeal stuff from college. I do have loads of kitchen stuff and dishes, and astonishingly large book collection.
As of 2018 all relocation packages are taxed like regular income, so ask them if the relocation money is "grossed up" for taxes (ie they give you 10,000 + extra to pay the tax on it) or if you should save some of it to pay the taxman.
posted by muddgirl at 10:16 PM on March 29, 2018
posted by muddgirl at 10:16 PM on March 29, 2018
Make sure that your insurance will cover all your belongings in transit, such that if something does go horribly wrong with the transit, it's your well funded insurance company and their lawyers battling the movers and not you. A friend found himself in the situation where his insurance excluded the move, the movers destroyed more or less everything he owned, and he got a pay out from the moving company of something like $10/lb by weight rather than actual value. So that waterlogged top of the line Mac Book Pro became a $30 check.
Go through anything that holds digital data that you care at all about before the move and either back it up to someplace in the cloud or onto external hard drives (or both) that you can leave with a friend and either have them mail it to you once you safely arrive, retrieve it later from them, or have them wipe it once you arrive safely and verify everything important survived. Stuff gets lost, damaged, or stolen in transit and if it's the only copy of important things, you're SOL. If you're leaving it behind on hard drives, you might want to make sure it's encrypted.
If you have the budget to have people do the packing for you, still make a list of everything you'd be heartbroken if they were to be damaged or destroyed and do the packing yourself so that you know they were wrapped up as safely as possible. Some of the companies have workers that are well compensated and put care into what they're doing but others hire people that they barely pay and get sloppy results.
Movers sometimes take way longer to deliver the goods than expected, so have a plan for what you will do if the mattress doesn't show up for two weeks.
Are you driving your car yourself? If you do so, it will give you more flexibility if things go awry.
While this new job may seem perfect, there's still a chance that it could go sideways and you'll leave, resulting in a clawback of the allowance. Unless you have $10K in savings, you might want to start building up an extra bit of cash in your emergency fund until the clawback deadline passes, just in case.
posted by Candleman at 10:53 PM on March 29, 2018
Go through anything that holds digital data that you care at all about before the move and either back it up to someplace in the cloud or onto external hard drives (or both) that you can leave with a friend and either have them mail it to you once you safely arrive, retrieve it later from them, or have them wipe it once you arrive safely and verify everything important survived. Stuff gets lost, damaged, or stolen in transit and if it's the only copy of important things, you're SOL. If you're leaving it behind on hard drives, you might want to make sure it's encrypted.
If you have the budget to have people do the packing for you, still make a list of everything you'd be heartbroken if they were to be damaged or destroyed and do the packing yourself so that you know they were wrapped up as safely as possible. Some of the companies have workers that are well compensated and put care into what they're doing but others hire people that they barely pay and get sloppy results.
Movers sometimes take way longer to deliver the goods than expected, so have a plan for what you will do if the mattress doesn't show up for two weeks.
Are you driving your car yourself? If you do so, it will give you more flexibility if things go awry.
While this new job may seem perfect, there's still a chance that it could go sideways and you'll leave, resulting in a clawback of the allowance. Unless you have $10K in savings, you might want to start building up an extra bit of cash in your emergency fund until the clawback deadline passes, just in case.
posted by Candleman at 10:53 PM on March 29, 2018
We used Bekin about a year ago. We moved a massive amount of household goods about a thousand miles. We did our own packing and drove our own cars and cat.
That cost was about $9500. Plus motels, gas, etc.
$10,0000 sounds pretty good, even if it won't cover the whole thing.
posted by SLC Mom at 12:28 AM on March 30, 2018
That cost was about $9500. Plus motels, gas, etc.
$10,0000 sounds pretty good, even if it won't cover the whole thing.
posted by SLC Mom at 12:28 AM on March 30, 2018
also, everything that Bekin did, they did really well.
No complaints at all.
posted by SLC Mom at 12:29 AM on March 30, 2018
No complaints at all.
posted by SLC Mom at 12:29 AM on March 30, 2018
This depends a lot on the size of your household. I used about $4500 of a $10k moving allowance to get from Texas to New York a year ago. I was able to assemble a list of reputable local moving companies (from Yelp, I think), but all were cost prohibitive for a 1 bedroom apartment when it came to long distance moves. They'd have to send a couple people with a truck with just my stuff from Texas to New York, which their back-of-the-envelope estimates put at $10k+. It'd still be a premium over the big van lines for larger household, but not such a huge one. Memphis to Texas might be close enough to make it worth the phone calls.
So that left the local agents for Atlas, Mayflower, United, etc. (Two of them are actually the same company, I think.) You can pick the most reputable or confidence-instilling company at your origin, but the destination is luck of the draw--I think it's assigned by the van line, not the agent at the origin should they happen to be familiar with your destination. (I've gotten as many estimates as is reasonable/possible and then picked the cheapest company that sent a thorough estimator.) They do offer packing services, but I've not bothered with a quote for the two long distance moves I've done. This last time, I figured I'd pay for packing the glass from my coffee table and desk. The moving company estimator did the quote, but the actual packing was to be done by a third party, who didn't show up. I ended up packing the glass myself. (I think the third party was glass-specific and the moving company would do regular household goods.)
If you're a small household, ask about container moves as well, where rather than packing your stuff into a truck, they pack it into POD-like containers. These are priced per-container, rather than by weight. Both times I've moved with movers, they've all run the estimates both ways and it's varied which has been cheaper. (IIRC, I ended up with containers both times, but did get at least one weight estimate.)
The federal government has a surprisingly good leaflet on interstate moves that explains how estimates and quotes work. The moving companies are obliged to give you (a link to) a copy, but it's worth reading beforehand.
There do exist all-in-one relocation companies, but I think they exist for corporate relocation packages and yours is "we'll reimburse up to $10k" not "company X will handle the move", so I don't know how that works.
posted by hoyland at 4:15 AM on March 30, 2018
So that left the local agents for Atlas, Mayflower, United, etc. (Two of them are actually the same company, I think.) You can pick the most reputable or confidence-instilling company at your origin, but the destination is luck of the draw--I think it's assigned by the van line, not the agent at the origin should they happen to be familiar with your destination. (I've gotten as many estimates as is reasonable/possible and then picked the cheapest company that sent a thorough estimator.) They do offer packing services, but I've not bothered with a quote for the two long distance moves I've done. This last time, I figured I'd pay for packing the glass from my coffee table and desk. The moving company estimator did the quote, but the actual packing was to be done by a third party, who didn't show up. I ended up packing the glass myself. (I think the third party was glass-specific and the moving company would do regular household goods.)
If you're a small household, ask about container moves as well, where rather than packing your stuff into a truck, they pack it into POD-like containers. These are priced per-container, rather than by weight. Both times I've moved with movers, they've all run the estimates both ways and it's varied which has been cheaper. (IIRC, I ended up with containers both times, but did get at least one weight estimate.)
The federal government has a surprisingly good leaflet on interstate moves that explains how estimates and quotes work. The moving companies are obliged to give you (a link to) a copy, but it's worth reading beforehand.
There do exist all-in-one relocation companies, but I think they exist for corporate relocation packages and yours is "we'll reimburse up to $10k" not "company X will handle the move", so I don't know how that works.
posted by hoyland at 4:15 AM on March 30, 2018
Moving companies are mostly franchises, so you want a local recommendation from somebody that used the local firm that you might use. The fact that North American did a great job for me here in VA means nothing to you in Memphis.
However, for comparison, when I moved last fall I was getting $1600 quotes for a full-service 60-mile move. I ended up using a 22 foot Uhaul and a hired labor crew on the delivery end to pull it off for about $500.
posted by COD at 4:41 AM on March 30, 2018
However, for comparison, when I moved last fall I was getting $1600 quotes for a full-service 60-mile move. I ended up using a 22 foot Uhaul and a hired labor crew on the delivery end to pull it off for about $500.
posted by COD at 4:41 AM on March 30, 2018
I've moved just about as many times as you have in the same time period, and my favorite method of moving is to get a U-Pack trailer, park it at your old place, hire local movers to pack and load the trailer, and then hire another set of local movers at the destination to unload. It's the cheapest and least-stressful method that I've found. If you don't have room to park a 17-foot trailer at either location, you can have the U-Pack trailer start and/or end at the ABF freight terminal and have the local movers meet you there to load or unload their own truck.
posted by tybstar at 5:03 AM on March 30, 2018
posted by tybstar at 5:03 AM on March 30, 2018
Consumer Reports has a good summary: https://www.consumerreports.org/consumer-protection/find-a-moving-company-you-can-count-on/
Particularly important is to learn about the nature of quotes and get a couple to compare. The quotes should be done in person and in writing with iirc a maximum of 10% more that you’re liable to pay based on weight.
Make sure you read a about the way moving insurance works. It’s weird and you’ll probably want to insure by value, not weight which is the default. You may get a better deal going with a separate company for insurance: I did.
Finally, unless you have a ton of stuff, 10k should be enough for a full-service move. I did a one-bedroom cross-country move for considerably less.
If you’d like to see the spreadsheet of the quote comparison I did for my move, MeMail me.
posted by Cogito at 5:32 AM on March 30, 2018
Particularly important is to learn about the nature of quotes and get a couple to compare. The quotes should be done in person and in writing with iirc a maximum of 10% more that you’re liable to pay based on weight.
Make sure you read a about the way moving insurance works. It’s weird and you’ll probably want to insure by value, not weight which is the default. You may get a better deal going with a separate company for insurance: I did.
Finally, unless you have a ton of stuff, 10k should be enough for a full-service move. I did a one-bedroom cross-country move for considerably less.
If you’d like to see the spreadsheet of the quote comparison I did for my move, MeMail me.
posted by Cogito at 5:32 AM on March 30, 2018
Warning, speaking as someone with lots of books: my consistent experience has been that movers badly underestimate the weight of your books. Like, massively. Definitely try for the 10% max over estimate recommended by Cogito.
posted by thomas j wise at 5:48 AM on March 30, 2018
posted by thomas j wise at 5:48 AM on March 30, 2018
You've probably already thought of this, but can you ask your employer if they have any companies they recommend? If they pay for relocation regularly they might have some experience with particular companies.
posted by aka burlap at 7:13 AM on March 30, 2018
posted by aka burlap at 7:13 AM on March 30, 2018
I've done two intercity moves in the last five years. Your budget should be sufficient. My first move, with fancier movers, ran about $3500; the second, with a smaller budget and movers appropriate to them, about $1800. That included packing (but not a tip, and you should expect to offer a decent tip to the guys hauling your precious goods around). Most movers offer that as an add-on. They are surprisingly good and fast at it. But things that are truly precious and irreplaceable you should handle yourself.
The key issue, as others have noted, is insurance. They will have you sign a waiver saying that they are only liable for some ludicrously low amount per pound. If your own insurance doesn't cover goods in transit, and something happens, you will not be getting anything like the value of your loss. So discuss more extensive insurance options with them.
There is going to be some point at one end or the other where you are in a place without your stuff (because you personally will likely be traveling faster than your goods). So make sure to pack your travel bag appropriately. A hotel the first night while waiting for your stuff to arrive wouldn't be the worst idea and would probably be covered by the travel allowance.
You're going to have to think about what to do with your existing furniture. Where I've lived, discarded furniture could go curbside and be snatched up within minutes. But that may not be possible in your neighborhood, in which case you should research what your movers can do with it.
I'm not familiar with any movers that also offer cleaning services--believe me, the kind of guys who show up to do moving are not the guys you want doing delicate cleaning jobs. I assume that there must be some level of high-end at which the services can be bundled, but you may not want to go that high.
posted by praemunire at 8:35 AM on March 30, 2018
The key issue, as others have noted, is insurance. They will have you sign a waiver saying that they are only liable for some ludicrously low amount per pound. If your own insurance doesn't cover goods in transit, and something happens, you will not be getting anything like the value of your loss. So discuss more extensive insurance options with them.
There is going to be some point at one end or the other where you are in a place without your stuff (because you personally will likely be traveling faster than your goods). So make sure to pack your travel bag appropriately. A hotel the first night while waiting for your stuff to arrive wouldn't be the worst idea and would probably be covered by the travel allowance.
You're going to have to think about what to do with your existing furniture. Where I've lived, discarded furniture could go curbside and be snatched up within minutes. But that may not be possible in your neighborhood, in which case you should research what your movers can do with it.
I'm not familiar with any movers that also offer cleaning services--believe me, the kind of guys who show up to do moving are not the guys you want doing delicate cleaning jobs. I assume that there must be some level of high-end at which the services can be bundled, but you may not want to go that high.
posted by praemunire at 8:35 AM on March 30, 2018
There are some things that I should clarify (and then I promise no thread sitting):
- I'm moving in with my husband. We've been living in separate states while I've been in fellowship. He is moving into a 3BD apartment about a month before I get down there, so all of his remaining furniture will be set up. No need for a hotel.
- We will be driving my car down, with the cats in tow.
- I currently live in a 1.5 bedroom (1 with a den). The only living room furniture I'm taking is my television/entertainment center. Maaaaybe a Billy bookcase (but this would be its third move, and in my experience, that's when Ikea furniture starts to fall apart). Dining room table. Queen bed, two side tables and a large dresser.
- I am actively working to declutter and donate.
posted by honeybee413 at 9:14 AM on March 30, 2018
- I'm moving in with my husband. We've been living in separate states while I've been in fellowship. He is moving into a 3BD apartment about a month before I get down there, so all of his remaining furniture will be set up. No need for a hotel.
- We will be driving my car down, with the cats in tow.
- I currently live in a 1.5 bedroom (1 with a den). The only living room furniture I'm taking is my television/entertainment center. Maaaaybe a Billy bookcase (but this would be its third move, and in my experience, that's when Ikea furniture starts to fall apart). Dining room table. Queen bed, two side tables and a large dresser.
- I am actively working to declutter and donate.
posted by honeybee413 at 9:14 AM on March 30, 2018
Sorry if this isn’t really relevant to your question since it seemed like you might need a single invoice. For a recent cross-country move we ended up using Task Rabbit for a lot of the incidental moving things (gig economy app thing). For example, we hired a guy with a truck to load up our leftover furniture and haul it to a donation center. We also hired a guy through Task Rabbit to do some touch up painting and light cleaning since we didn’t own a ladder that was tall enough.
posted by forkisbetter at 9:53 AM on March 30, 2018
posted by forkisbetter at 9:53 AM on March 30, 2018
As of 2018 all relocation packages are taxed like regular income, so ask them if the relocation money is "grossed up" for taxes (ie they give you 10,000 + extra to pay the tax on it) or if you should save some of it to pay the taxman.
Alternatively, you could ask whether your employer would reimburse you for your moving expenses (up to $10,000) rather than give you a lump sum. This would require that you a) front the money for those expenses (maybe not possible), and b) keep all your receipts. The upside is that, depending on your tax bracket (and assuming no "gross-up") you could save $2,500 or more in taxes.
posted by John Borrowman at 12:15 PM on March 30, 2018
Alternatively, you could ask whether your employer would reimburse you for your moving expenses (up to $10,000) rather than give you a lump sum. This would require that you a) front the money for those expenses (maybe not possible), and b) keep all your receipts. The upside is that, depending on your tax bracket (and assuming no "gross-up") you could save $2,500 or more in taxes.
posted by John Borrowman at 12:15 PM on March 30, 2018
« Older What contemporary thinkers have most influenced... | The impact of wanting to be liked online Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
Costs:
Your flight - maybe 2 if you go out to find a place to live
Your hotel stay possibly if you can't move in right away
Having your car shipped
Having your house cleaned possibly
Vet bills if cats are flying
Then moving... Hiring movers that are all-in-one in that the same people pack and drive and unpack is super expensive. I haven't done it in a few years but it was thousands. Also beware that there are a ton of moving scams.
Cheaper alternatives include hiring people to pack and disassemble furniture, putting it into a Pod or a UPack and then hiring people on the other end to unpack and assemble furniture. I've done this a few times and it is still a lot of money but less than all in one.
So start by writing down absolutely every step and price out what isn't variable like plane tickets. Then see what you are left with.
Also relocation packages are usually taxed heavily. Look into this now!
posted by k8t at 10:13 PM on March 29, 2018