Good news on our upcoming move. Well, such that any good can come of it…)
I won’t be taking the big pay cut that I thought I was going to get because I’m moving out of one of the most expensive areas of the country. My pay will stay the same, but something called a “reference point” is going to be kicked up very high, so future performance-based raises will be itty-bitty.
Just need to find a cube for me now. Hopefully, with six months’ notice, that shouldn’t be too hard.
The Great Stuff Sell-Off continues. We’re getting rid of almost all of our furniture so there’s that much less to pack, and hopefully, we can fit everything that we want to keep in one PODS container, our camper and the back of our pickup.
We were thinking of selling the camper, but once we realized that we could use it as a 20-foot cargo bin for free, we decided to keep it and use it rather than pay a staggering $1700 for a 10-foot UHaul trailer. The PODS are bad enough - $3300 for one or $6100 for two. However, it’s still cheaper than a UHaul truck, which would have been about $3000, plus fuel. I’ve heard epic tales of their rotten MPGs, and paled at the thought that we might need to feed it as much as 1,000 gallons of gas, plus the horrors of having to actually drive it. By using PODS and our camper, we’ll be driving only one vehicle and saving somewhere between $1500-3000 on gas. Only downside is that the camper will be loaded with our lightweight fragile things like lamps, vases, computers and artwork, so it won’t be usable for sleeping.
However you slice it, it’s going to cost somewhere between $5000 and $10,000 to move, depending on how much stuff we keep. Furniture-wise, it’s looking like the survivors will be my secretary desk, grandfather clock, treadle-powered sewing machine, a new futon couch, our mattress and box spring, a couple small end tables and a spinet piano. And the piano is on the bubble - there’s nothing spectacular about it, so if someone comes by and offers $500 for it, we’ll help them load it. The big stuff like the china cabinets, bookshelves, dining room table and chairs, sofa and recliners are almost all gone already.
The real fun will be in the garage… Two big workbenches, table saw, router table, slide miter saw, roll-away tool chests and a collection of DeWalt “luggage” holding drills, saws and routers.
