Lazy Man and Money

Should I Move?

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Should I move? That’s the question that many people are likely asking themselves these days. If not, maybe they should be asking themselves that question.

Nearly 8 years ago, my family moved from the San Francisco Bay Area (aka Silicon Valley) to Rhode Island. We had lived there for 7 years and it was a difficult decision to leave all those friends behind and start a new life. I had never lived in Rhode Island, but I lived in Massachusetts for the first 30 years of my life, so I figured it would be relatively easy. I won’t get into all the specifics, but it hasn’t been easy at all.

[Editor’s Note: This article was started last week. The focus is on a move within the United States. After the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I’ve seen some talk on social media about moving outside the United States. That’s a topic that I won’t be covering here at this time.]

I’ve been talking with some friends from San Francisco and they’ve sent me some crazy pictures about the wildfires there. The sky was simply red all day. Their rooms were dark orange. My memory of the area couldn’t be more different. The Bay Area had the best climate in all of America. It was about 75-80 and sunny almost every day. No one needed air conditioning because it only got hot for 2 weeks in the summer. My only complaint was that you didn’t get all the seasons. You’d have to drive a couple of hours to Lake Tahoe to go skiing.

Nowadays, I don’t regret our decision to move across the country. In fact, some of my friends are looking to move to New England as well. I don’t blame them. Who wants to live in fear of wildfires and extremely poor air quality?

Of course, the wildfire problem isn’t only in the Bay Area. It’s millions of acres in multiple states all along the west coast… and of course, that’s just the fires. I hope they prepared for an emergency ahead of time.

I’ve been talking with another friend of mine (who writes as Kosmo on this website) about a natural disaster that hit close to his home. The Midwest derecho leveled Iowa in August. He was lucky to have missed most of the damage, but millions of people lost utilities. Last week he told me that they cleaned up 250 million pounds of tree debris and it was still going on.

It barely made the news as this Washington Post article notes.

This made me reach out to a couple of other friends (completely tapping out my network):

  1. I have a friend in Jacksonville, Florida, who roughly represents the southeast portion of the US that has to deal with hurricanes. This year the storms are so bad, they literally ran out of names and had to start going with Greek letters of the alphabet. I asked about her long-term plans. As I guessed, she has plans to move in the future. The hurricanes are just too much.

    If you live in Alabama, Lousiana, or another state in the southeast, perhaps you’ve had similar thoughts?

  2. Arizona has always been a very hot state. However, it seems to just get hotter and hotter with more and more days over 100 degrees every year. I contacted Abigail from I Pick Up Pennies who lives in Arizona to see if she is thinking of moving. While she isn’t a fan of the extreme heat, good friends and a low cost of living make it bearable.

To spare you any further gloom and doom, I won’t skip over thoughts of flooding and rising sea waters.

All of these thoughts are presented in much greater detail in Propublica article on climate change. It is a long read, but well worth it.

It’s hard to read that article and come away with any conclusion other than people in the United States will start moving to Maine and Vermont. While those states typically get feet of snow at a time nowadays, the snow may be more moderate over years of climate change.

What does all of this have to do with personal finance? There are a lot of places with expensive real estate that may not make sense over the long term. In my own area, Newport, Rhode Island has many million-dollar

Should I move?
If your city looks like this, it is time to move.
properties on the coast. It’s not like we have the money to buy them. However, if we did, we’d have to think long and hard about whether it would make long-term sense.

What are your thoughts on climate change? Do you think you’d consider relocating in the next decade or two due to climate change? Let me know in the comments.

Save Money on Moving

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Moving Fail
Moving Fail
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