Sclass's moving journal

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Sclass
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Sclass's moving journal

Post by Sclass »

I'm moving from SF bay to Orange County CA.

Here are some things I've learned.

Lighten up the load. Most of my life can be reconstructed with money. Thanks to cheap Chinese manufacturing very little money. I've fire sold all kinds of stuff. Dumped stuff. eBay, Craigslist etc. I've been at it a year. I have rented my home 12 years and I hoarded every screw and wire I could salvage. Now I need to dump it. And I have.

eBay CL only for the highest dollar lowest hassle factor stuff. Like old 35mm cameras. Project cars and motorcycles.

Give to friends. Harder than I thought because people say can you hold it? Yes I want it please hold it. Financially the same as dumping given my sort of friends and expected reciprocation.

Donate. Still slightly difficult. We are having a tech boom in Silicon Valley. Goodwill is getting picky.

Dumping. Easiest and financially the same as giving away with no hassle factor.

To move easily using a storage container I'm dumping all furniture. That's easy because my stuff is trash that I've gotten free over the years and particle board shelving/dressers from big box stores. A good way to dispose of this pressboard stuff is cut it up with a chainsaw. I turned 75% of my furnishings into toothpicks in twenty minutes. Neighbors think I'm nuts but I will walk into Target in SoCal and replace everything with the same pressboard trash in a day. I'm happy to own cheap stuff the day I need to dump and replace it.

Replacing bed is well timed with my mattress sag.

Shredded 25 years of financial documents in one full size file cabinet. Why keep any paper docs anymore? I scanned anything of importance.

I'm using the smallest container from PODs. 7' long. Pretty good for moving two adults in a three bedroom home. $2000 to move it. $150 /mo to store it. Filled with my BIFL stuff. I'll live at a friend's vacation home for a month while I look for a new rental. Living out of a suitcase.

shade-tree
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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by shade-tree »

Congratulations! Moving is always a great opportunity to get rid of stuff.
I don't know if this is a thing in your area, but I have gotten rid of a lot of household clutter with a "free pile" at the end of my driveway. Saves a trip to the Goodwill drop off.
Also, we have a local Facebook page that was set up to give and get items no longer needed to people who live close by. I decluttered my kitchen yesterday and there are three people clamoring for my old muffin pans!

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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by jacob »

Both DW & I have been moving every 2-4 years (our record is 4.5 years in the same place) for the past two decades and we learned the same lessons although we approach it a bit differently.

For me, decluttering is a ongoing process of optimization. I'm constantly building up and parring down my possessions, so that when moving time comes, I don't really have much to do. Indeed, quite a bit of my stuff already sits in storage containers, boxes, or suitcases. So my inventory is analogously described as a sine wave with a small amplitude.

DW's inventory is better described as a boom and bust cycle. Things accumulate for a long time in all places until it either gets cleaned up, decluttered, or we move. These describe gradually more extreme versions of the same kind of purge.

Both methods work for one but not the other. Sum total, I spend more time worrying/optmizing/stressing out about stuff than DW. This is possibly because I'm on the sucker who gets to haul all the crap from home to moving van/pod ;-P Seriously, though, DW is as much a hoarder (mild) as I am a minimalist (moderate). We're separated by two Wheaton levels.

When we moved from CA to IL we used a pod. I like pods! Except ... because we moved into the city, we only had 2 hours to unload from the street to the second floor. From this experience I know that I can carry all our crap 100 yards+2 floors within the span of two hours. And that results in my biceps being bruised for a few days after.

Another thing I noticed is that if we had sold our bicycles, the cost of the pod would have been more than the cost of the contents!

This brings me to my first point ... selling things: If you want to sell things for a decent price, start WELL in advance. This is not something to start on two weeks before the move. This is where I gain but DW loses money due to our different approaches.

You can sell to friends. Arrange all your staples (beans, sugar, 409, utensils, ...) in the living room. Invite them over and give them a really good package deal. That is, make sure they come out the "winner". To me this is more satisfying than ...

Freecycle which is the next step ... Post a long list. There are ways to handle freecyclers to eliminate flakes. I presume every is familiar with it. I've posted about it before.

Then craigslist the freecycle spot on a first come first serve if the ad is still here ... basis.

Donating to GoodWill or SA depends on area. Where Californians are picky or snobby, Midwesterners find gold. It really depends.

Some general observations. I described a sinus curve above. I'm embarrassed to note that that's actually a curve with a trend :-P I arrived in the US with a suitcase. Moving 6 months later, I had graduated to a suitcase and a box. A then married DW and we acquired a bunch of "college furniture" so our next move was a medium sized uhaul. Moving into the RV required a lot of downsizing (see above) which we spent a month on doing. In moving to Chicago, we should have sold the bikes instead of spending equivalent cost transporting them + a bunch of volumeious stuff across the country. Moving from the apartment to the house was easy but only because it was across town and could be handled by a few car trips and a small moving van over an afternoon (+ bruises).

TL;DR - lessons learned. Stay detached from stuff. Don't spend money on furniture unless it's built in! (So you don't have to take it with you). Tools are heavy! The more you own the more work you have to do to manage it. Common parts are commonly available, but specialty parts are actually quite pricey to reacquire.

Sorry if this was a hijack.

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Sclass
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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by Sclass »

No worries, good to hear the ideas.

Tools are heavy. I still own a lot of them. I've packed them into a custom made wooden crate used for my last move 12 years ago. I also got some international size pelican suitcases discarded by my last employer. They will go on the bottom of the pile.

I wanted to do a free pile but I didn't want the hassle. I made a big pile for a battered women's shelter who comes by to pick up stuff. They took 90% of the pile but what they left annoyed me.

I actually started a year ago when I sold my motorcycles. It has been a steady downsize since. It'll be interesting to see how we accumulate things after the move. I'm starting to like being mobile.

I was looking for a. 0-80 screw a few nights ago and was sad I no longer owned my extensive organized hardware collection. But I will get used to going to the hardware store. It's a funny trade off.

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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by jacob »

I did the "please take the entire pile" ("please take all") for a while and it worked but I always felt bad about imposing stuff on people that they probably didn't want or which would just end up in a garage or in the trash even if I thought it had value. One way to make it more "valuable" is to offer it outside affluent areas. I had the same issue donating to Goodwill (Pleasanton, CA) as you did. They rejected stuff that would have sold as hot cakes in Indiana. (There might be a business opportunity is picking up free home entertainment centers in CA and shipping them to the Midwest and selling them for a couple of hundred a piece.)

Speaking of weight. Before ERE, I was all into "oversize" and "overbuilt". In my early years, I switched to ultralight weight. This concept of counting grams even for ridiculous things is useful when moving. However, it means that a lot of things will end up being made of cloth, paper, cardboard, slat wood and plastic instead of 3/4" wood and metal. But they'll be lighter. It's hard to make a lightweight tool with the same functionality. But this is THE problem that discourages me from acquiring a drill press or a 400lbs table saw. Storage goes the same way. Instead of a big pine box or a rolling tool box, I'm thinking 5 gal buckets and canvas rolls and inserts.

(I think DIYing my boxes would solve the problem but I'm reluctant to just discard boxes I spent hours building.)

Check out this thread if you didn't already see it
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6255

George the original one
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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by George the original one »

I learned the "sell everything" method of moving from my first real boss. He built houses as a hobby and would move every few years, always upgrading the house. He'd sell everything he could, including his dog!

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Sclass
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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by Sclass »

Hey,

Still cleaning and packing. Getting a lot of calls and invitations to meals with friends I haven't seen in awhile. We sit down, talk, and then they hit me with, "SClass Disneyland has gotten real expensive recently, with hotel and all me and the kids just cannot afford it."

I greet them with silence. Yes, I will be moving to Orange County. No, you cannot use my house as a free hotel for your overpriced not to mention vapid vacation. Three friends whom I haven't hung out with in years showed up when they heard through the grapevine I'd be there soon. They left in disgust and wouldn't return emails for recipes to that great casserole they had brought over. :roll:

Not that I'm unfriendly, I don't like 24hr house guests. I like my space.

I keep hoping these folks are calling to give me a hot tip or pitch an investment but after an hour of chit chat we get to Disneyland Annual pass prices. Puleez. Don't these guys realize I'm anti fake consumerist magic kingdom!?!

And why is it expensive? Because these people have wasted all their discretionary income on the Disneyland lifestyle. Why can't these ordinary folk see what they've done to themselves. It's like people who complain they've lost their high paying jobs to outsourcing and now they have to buy cheaper imported good from Walmart.

Something else unrelated, I've been saving the shelving boards from some of my ikea bookshelves. They make good liners for the bottoms of cardboard boxes that are getting stuffed with pointy stuff like garden tools.

Landlord was notified. Uneventful. They said typical tenants stay two years. We are the nut cases at twelve. Hey, it was a good deal!

My packing strategy is to empty shelves and cabinets into a Home Depot moving box then destroy or dispose of the shelves. A young couple picked up our entertainment center curbside via a craigslist free post. They hauled it in a 2008 Prius! I was impressed the back of the car opened up so much.

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Sclass
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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by Sclass »

While I'm ranting, Disneyland is actually pretty cheap considering the number of people coddling you and fluffing up your ego while you're there. The serious level of fake is not sustainable without serious amounts of minimum wage workers. $100/day is cheap. $100/day for a cheap motel in Anaheim is cheap considering somebody has to come into your room, clean up your mess, provide hot water, bedding, AC, shelter, an overnight car park, and free watery coffee.

These same friends start whining about $3.50 gas to drive to Disneyland. Don't they realize the value they're getting for that gallon? It's the bargain of the century since it includes the I5 freeway blacktop. Not to mention the environmental cost that was tossed in for free that other poor souls on this planet will pay for as they paddle their un motorized boats to empty fisheries for their living. I wanted to force these friends to take a 20 mile walk across Santa Ana to Disneyland and see how they liked $3.50 gas.

Then I start seeing social media posts By my "friends" about how SClass is a snob. He thinks he's better and now he won't help his old friends. good Grief!

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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by llorona »

Your Disneyland rant is highly amusing, especially the part about gas costs. Not only is $3.50/gallon a bargain, traveling in a modern-day vehicle is a tremendous luxury compared to transport options 80-120 years ago. Not to mention the extravagance of having time and disposable income to travel 500 miles to a theme park for a day or two of amusement... Ah, first world problems.

Agreed on the house guests!

Good luck with the move.

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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by George the original one »

Good thing you don't own a truck or they'd be asking you to help them move. Leeches.

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Sclass
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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by Sclass »

Reading the peak oil thread makes me feel like a real estate refugee. I'm leaving to be closer to my aging mother but also to get a much nicer home for the same rent. They call it asset appreciation but it feels a lot like inflation to a retiree renter.

Somehow the heat got turned up enough to make me jump out of the pot.

The Bay Area is an odd place. Prices rise. Salaries have been flat (even the recent rises cannot keep up with the year over year single digit gains in RE). Workers keep moving further out to lousier neighborhoods with long commutes. The old guys in my neighborhood were HP clean room workers (when HP used to make chips). The new people are senior management flush with vested options.

Since I cannot drastically change my retirement income I figured it would be smart to get outta dodge. Flee. Refugee.

Now here is the clincher. I have contemporaries who bought homes early in their careers a town over (Sunnyvale, Mountain View). They got to stay because their mortgages stabilized their housing costs. But they have to work to maintain those payments. And they are tied to their local jobs in tech.

Over here, rents are way cheaper for equivalent mortgages on the same home...so I freed up money to invest.

I have no job nor do I own a home. My rent has skyrocketed (land lord is trying to catch up). But I'm retired so I can move. Had I bought a home I surely wouldn't have taken the risks I did to make up my retirement capital. Liquid capital, not my personal residence.

I don't know what's right or wrong anymore. If I'm so smart why am I run outta town. But I'm free of the tech prison. I'll know more when I get to the promised land next month.

we're goin to Disneyland !

KevinW
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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by KevinW »

Sclass wrote:While I'm ranting, Disneyland is actually pretty cheap considering the number of people coddling you and fluffing up your ego while you're there.
Yes, I actually think the Disney theme parks are cheap relative to the service they provide, at least for people that actually enjoy that kind of service: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2213

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Sclass
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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by Sclass »

Dumped more stuff. This time I dumped my desk and workbench. They are folding tables with particle board tops from Office Depot. Particle board tops got cut into toothpicks and tossed. Steel legs went into a big dumpster behind...hah Office Depot.

To make one of these tables into a good solid workbench I L-bracket them to the studs in the wall. They get very stiff if you do this.

Below the desks I have those roll around sterlite plastic drawers. When I get around to emptying those I'll hit the dumpster again. Maybe at Target this time since I bought them at Target.

I kept my desk chair. It was a dining chair from my college dorm. I'll be tossing that icky thing soon too.

House is looking awfully empty. Mostly Home Depot boxes filled with my necessities.

Luck would have it my CV boot started leaking on my Mercedes. I was hoping the superficial cracks would wait till I settled in OC. Wrong. And the crate of special auto tools to do this job is already in OC. I bit the bullet and ordered all the specialty tools for a CV boot R&R and have them coming in next week. $200 of tools and parts but it is worth it for a vintage Mercedes axel...not cheap at the professional shop. I kept some cheap jacks and stands as throw downs just in case I had such an emergency. Insurance.

Funny how $1 is not the same $1 for me thirty years ago. The tools are chump change. I'll probably give them to a fellow MB owner in the hood...as if they can reboot their CVs.

To entertain myself I've been buying old Swiss Army knives on eBay. TSA confiscations. I get them for $6 each. They clean up well in the ultrasound cleaner and I get a kick out of sharpening them to a razors edge on my whetstones. Very zen activity before I go to sleep. I am excited by the whole Swiss Army Knife customizing hobby online and hope to do some custom handles when I get my CNC mill back online. Maybe a hobby business there...buy TSA knives, clean, add bling handles, and custom tool combos to order, sell. Apparently a lot of people don't like the stock tool combos so there may be a market for a guy with a big box of misc tools and a rivet less handle that can be disassembled and reconfigured with a hex driver.

Oh to be up against a deadline. I feel like a college kid before finals getting distracted. Time to pack my kitchenware. Hmmm do I really need a Simac Il Gelataio?

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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by Sclass »

Pod packing tips. My stuff in 7'x7'x8'

Image

Use some old boards to support box tops. You can pile heavier stuff higher if you spread out the weight. I saved shelf tops for this.

Image

A ratcheting strap around the middle of the boxes will keep them from bulging. It helps to use boxes of the same size. Similar size boxes pack better.

Image

Cooking a little breakfast. I remembered to not pack my coffee but I boxed up my pots, camp stove, microwave. I felt a little like a student making oatmeal this way. Instant oatmeal only. I should have kept a pot out. I have one fork, one spoon, a couple of bowls and some cups. Worse than camping. I should have thought a little more about the endgame. It's easy to forget things. I should have looked at the living out of a suitcase blog entry which covers a lot of the must have items. Like a towel.

I had to make a button out of a zip tie and a plastic fork handle yesterday when my pants button popped. I've been using my swiss army knife (EDC) and a big leatherman tool as my "tools". Luckily there is a Walmart nearby.

Image

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Sclass
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renting worries

Post by Sclass »

Ok. I'm out of my old rental. Pod has gone to storage. I'm staying at a friend's vacant home.

Now it's time to find a rental. I've been shopping around using Zillow and Orange County Craigslist and found a couple of places that look interesting.

Now the problem I've been anticipating for awhile. Income. When I rented my last place 12 years ago I was a model member of the robot army with a 9-7 job. Now I'm technically unemployed living off my investments. On one of the property managers websites they said they want six months of account statements, credit check and place of employment/income verification and if self employed income statement with profit and loss.

Seriously I try to keep my "income" very low for tax purposes. I also have good years and bad years. On paper I look like a mess.

So...how do I convince these managers and owners that I'm not a risk?

I recall Ego mentioning one year ready cash. I prepared that documentation. Any tips from the landlords would be appreciated. Like magic words.

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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by Ego »

When you find a place, tell the agent that you have retired on savings and investments. Ask how they would like you to enter it on their online application. If they don't know what to do, you might suggest that you spoke with a property manager who told you that the industry standard is to divide cash + investments by 36 months then enter that amount under "other monthly income". Show them copies of your statements. Shouldn't be a problem.

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Sclass
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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by Sclass »

Thanks Ego. I'll set aside the appropriate amount of money to get the right monthly income amount.

I'm not terribly comfortable telling anyone how much I have. Right now I set up an account with $150k. That comes out to about $4k using your equation.

This is really another topic but I have to say telling anyone you have money can have unintended consequences. I've shipwrecked some of my closest friendships over the last couple of years while explaining my financial situation to those who seemed concerned about my wellbeing. Odd how delicate a line there is between people who like you when they think you are below them to being the object of their resentment and envy. Another thread when I have time.

Thanks for the tips again. A few clicks of a mouse and I'll have things fine tuned.

mfi
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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by mfi »

Some years ago I rented an apartment (from Equity Residential) in another state over the internet with a credit card without visiting the place in person. I think they ran a credit check, but did not ask for income verification since all monthly rent/fees/deposit were charged to my card.

Another time I rented from a private individual who asked only for double security deposit. Retired thirty-something living off investment income seemed risky for his taste. He also called previous landlords for references, but I always pay on time.

Lastly, I own a single-member LLC for occasional consulting work. As another potential option, the LLC could hire me as an employee/contractor and extend an offer of employment on company letterhead with the appropriate level of compensation. A new job is usually a very reasonable excuse for moving/relocation across town or across the country....

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Sclass
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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by Sclass »

Mfi-
Great idea on the job offer from the LLC. My SO suggested we could ask our business partners (We are in a nearby LLC) to employ us. I said no because I didn't want to go there with our partners. But, I don't have to take the job...never thought of it this way.

Thanks.

Looks like we have some activity with an owner/manager of a property. We got to meet in person and I explained the situation and they just wanted to see three months of bank statements and a credit check. I'll keep my fingers crossed and see what they say about my application.

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Sclass
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Re: Sclass's moving journal

Post by Sclass »

Renting without a job is hard. I rank it alost as high as getting pre ACA healthcare without a job.

Last night a landlord interviewing me dropped me right at the point of lease signing. "I don't feel comfortable. You're too young to be retired. Your checking account shows you spend almost nothing. People need 3x rent to live. You live on 2x rent. I've never seen anyone like you in all my years of property management. I don't care if you have a million dollars (yes, it got down to showing statements and now this guy has three months copies of my financial paperwork in his possession...it just escalated to this from showing three years rent, to ten years rent, to twenty years rent and so on). You are marginal and cannot really afford my home. Maybe you should look for something cheaper. Blah blah blah."

So I put myself in his shoes. Yes, my lifestyle isn't like anyone he knows. Also I make a higher yield than anyone he knows. It wasn't a good time to say "look man, if I only could get 3% like you I wouldn't be me and I'd be you."

So it fell apart. Right before my eyes. Can we go back to where we were gonna sign? No. Goodbye. Wow. I have decades of his rent in the bank. I can buy the house and a few more. What gives?

Well, I started to play back the evening. I felt jealousy from him. We are from a similar background and he started thinking out loud of how we got from our childhood to where we are now. Big mistake saying I was retired. I felt like I was talking to my cousins "wtf yer retired??!!"

I checked his rentals on zillow. Underwater. Even on zillow for crying out loud. He demanded two months rent as deposit a month before move in. Red flags waving alarms blaring. The discussion fell apart when I asked if I could pay a 25% holding deposit and the security deposit upon move in. No I couldnt.

So im starting over with another landlord. My social security number, bank statements, DOB, copies of our drivers licenses etc might as well be taped to the wall of a gas station restroom.

I really wanted that place. I wanted it too much and gave too much info. Now I get to keep searching and watch my online banking alerts hourly for the next few years.

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