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Advice needed on big move.
The DH and I have just decided to move back to our home town, this is a 1117 mile move. The In-laws seem to think we should just sell our stuff and drive just our cars back home, to save us money. Granted when we moved down here, we did only pack up what would fit in our cars, but we had to buy all new furniture. Now that we have decided to move back home I'm not sure I want to have to go through that again. And if we sell everything we are only going to (at best) get half of what we paid for it. So I want to rent a small moving truck, tow my DH's car and drive mine. That way we keep all of our stuff that we spent 7 months collecting. I did some math and it looks like driving our cars and buying new stuff will be $65 cheaper than renting a moving truck.
I was hoping that i could get some advice, do you think that we should rent a truck or that we should sell our stuff and start over again? And if i should rent a truck what is the best and cheapest truck rental place?
Thanks so much!
Re: Advice needed on big move.
If it was me, I wouldn't dream of selling my furniture and buying new stuff just for convenience. However, I shopped long and hard for the pieces. If you just settled for whatever worked, then selling would sure be easier than driving furniture across the country. Just keep in mind that you will rarely sell pieces for the price you want. Everyone will counter offer lower.
Regarding a truck, Uhaul and Penske are the main sources. Penske has better quality trucks and similar prices, but aren't as accessible or available in all cities.
Big moves like this are a good opportunity to inventory your stuff and decide what you want to keep and what you don't. However, if you just got new stuff and love it I wouldn't sell it. I would suggest looking into the PODS - you load them, but then they move them so you don't have to worry about one person driving the truck and one person driving your car. When we moved from Ohio to Arizona, we used a truck, but I can't remember the company (I'm pretty sure the truck was yellow which I know is not super helpful).
I have done the rental truck for small moves of one bedroom apartment when I was on extended travel for work away from my permanent home (2003 & 2004). I agree Penske trucks are nicer than U-Haul. I have also done the POD thing (2008) to move across town when I needed a month of storage due to timing issues with lease and closing on my house. DH looked in to the PODS to move across town 2 years ago and the price had gone up significantly. (He also did not need any storage so we did the piecemeal move with day labor.) That said i did like the convenience and service of PODS.
Regarding selling or moving - Your time is worth something and it will take a lot of time and effort to replace everything. Also your stuff is relatively new. If you really did not like the stuff or wanted to change decorating styles then this is an opportunity.
I've done it both ways. In 2006 we moved from Detroit to Seattle. Sold everything, shipped the rest ($300 in UPS) and spent about $2000 buying new stuff. In 2007 we moved to Chicago. Again sold it all, shipped the rest and started over. We lived in Chicago for 5 years and over that time, invested a lot of money in our stuff, probably like $6000 or more.
So when we decided to move to San Francisco this year, we didn't really want to sell it all. We sold a few things, then got Door to Door (which was about half the cost of PODS) and they moved 2 pods (queen bed frame and mattress, 2 bookshelves, couch, daybed, dresser, bar, hutch, end table, coffee table, several large mirrors and pictures, and 2 rugs, and about 20 boxes and it cost $2000. Buying all new stuff would have been MUCH more.
I would look really carefully at the prices and think about everything you would need to buy (if you can't ship it) like towels, sheets, pots and pans, silverware, lamps, rugs, all those little things, not just the big furniture. It may work out better to move it. I'd also weight that against how much you like your stuff, how easy it will be to get all new stuff, how much you paid for your stuff and how soon you were going to get new stuff. For example, we had an older hand-me-down kitchen table and four chairs that we sold bc we had planned to buy a new one soon anyways.