My wife and I are moving next month. As my friend says, moving is worse than getting a root canal. While I have moved in the past, I haven’t gotten a root canal. The last time we moved, we had the aid of the military movers. They were fantastic – packed everything and unpacked everything. Such services are expensive – too expensive for my wallet.

Our lease expires at the end of May. The place we found was available May 1st. Obviously it’s not a very smart financial decision to pay rent in to two places – we can only live in one at a time. We were able to get the next place to give us a move-in date of the 15th. As luck has it, this gives us three weekends (including Memorial Day weekend) to move. By avoiding the dreaded same-day move, we can move much of the smaller stuff ourselves. We’ll hire movers for the furniture that we can’t carry. We’ll pay the half-month’s rent, but hope to avoid the stress of the move. We might even get movers cheaper since it won’t be the end of the month.

There are other ways to save money moving though:

Save Money Moving

• Get Friends to Help – When you are in your 20s, your friends may help you move for beer or pizza. As you get older they may have families and other commitments that don’t make that such an attractive option any more. For instance, I can work an hour at desk job and have all the beer and pizza I want for a few days. It’s hard to justify a hard days work for a one-hour reward. Then again, and it’s obviously more about the friendship than the pizza and beer. This also comes from a pretty lazy man.
• Go Electronic – It’s a lot easier to move a 500GB hard drive of music than it is to move hundreds of CDs. It’s easier to move an Amazon Kindle than a pile of books (though the Kindle does have some drawbacks). My Netflix account is infinitely lighter than a DVD collection. I’m not saying these are perfect solutions, but just something to think about.
• Purge, Purge, Purge – Moving is a great time to go through the things that you haven’t used in two years. If you have enough time you might even find that you can make a buck or two on Ebay
• Eat Down Your Food – I’ve got things in the back of my pantry that need to be eaten. How about you?
• Sign a Two Year Lease – It’s costly to move every year. Make sure that you at least have the option to renew if you want.
• Save Money with These other Ideas – Here are 72 more ideas to save money moving.

Avoid Moving Scams

I was fortunate to catch Barbara Corcoran on the Today Show a couple of weeks back. She explained some moving scams and how to avoid them. Amongst them:

• The Moving Scams
  • Bait and Switch or “The Hostage” – Movers put the stuff in the truck and then start adding extras when your stuff is there. You have no choice – they have your stuff. They may say that your cubic feet has surpassed the estimate. Corcoran claims you can’t argue it because it’s hard to count cubic feet – she’s right.
  • Late Delivery – Sometimes movers will group more than one person’s stuff together and your stuff is in back. She brings up that a trucking violation could delay your stuff for days as well.

• How to Avoid the Moving Scams
  • Don’t Give a Deposit – They have all your possessions, what else do they need?
  • Don’t Sign a Contract with Blanks in it – A moving company can fill in those blanks and change those terms on you.
  • Look at the Truck – If it’s in good shape the company may care about your stuff more.
  • Don’t Sign a Skinny Contract – A one page contract is too small for a move, you want something more detailed.
  • Don’t Pay Cash Ahead of Time – You have no proof that you paid it.
  • Two Websites to Help You – ProtectYourMove.gov and MoveRescue

Or you could watch the video below:

Photo Credit: Fail blog