FFLC Transition and Moving Update

Man, this past month has flown by! There has been little fallout at work with them knowing I’m leaving, now if only the home life was as stress-free. There has been so much going on around our house that it has been a madhouse. We have had to keep our current house ready for showings, hosted an open house, closed on our new house, set up moving companies, and more. It has been a whirlwind of activity around here. On the one hand, we feel like we have got things well under control, yet on the other, it feels like we’ve just been hemorrhaging cash. We’ve been doing a good job of keeping things tight, but man, so much little stuff comes up here and there with moving.  Here’s a more detailed rundown of how things have been doing with the transition so far.

Home Selling

Our current house has been on the market for just over 2 months, and it is going slow… Like, zero showings, and only 2 people attending an open house kind of slow. Yipe! The pictures, are good, and the pricing is good, but homes in our neighborhood in our price range and size have just been slow to move due to competition with the 5 new subdivisions being built north of us. We’re priced competitively at the lower end of the comps, so dropping the price won’t help much if there aren’t buyers for it.

To get the house and yard ready for showing, we added some sod to the backyard, which was ~$300, maids which have been coming every 2-3 weeks ($150/visit), new kitchen mats, and entry/welcome mats (~$60 but at least we get to take those with us), and other miscellaneous things that haven’t even been tracked well. Oops… On the plus side, we’ve made well over $500 getting rid of different items around the house as we decluttered, downsized, and minimalized our possessions, so I guess it’s not all bad.

Home Buying

We just closed on our new house this past Monday! Woohoo!! That went smoothly and due to the mortgage restrictions using just Mrs. SSC’s new salary, we ended up putting about 2/3 down on the new house. We were tempted to buy it outright, but ultimately went with a small loan. We’ll most likely pay it off or come close to it once our current house sells. If it sells… Much like our current house, this house is older and except for the roof and furnace, most appliances are 8-16 years old based on the manufacture dates from the serial numbers. As a bonus, the seller left their refrigerator, woohoo!! While it is older, it still works and we won’t have to bring ours now if we want to leave it with the house.

Then there is the yard. Not a yard as much as an overgrown forest that hasn’t been tended to in about 4-5 years. It is pretty overgrown with underbrush and saplings and I know what my first month or so of work will be when we get there. I’m currently researching brush cutters, which are basically souped up weed eaters with a metal blade on them. Oh yeah!!

Backyard panorama – the green wall of doom!
Along the Green Wall of Doom!
Looking past the Green Wall of Doom!
More peeks into the trees…
The “tame” part of the yard
Inside the forest
You can see the house from here!!

Fortunately, even though it’s 2 wooded acres, that’s about all I need for new equipment. I already have a chainsaw, and there isn’t enough grass to warrant anything larger than my walk behind mower, so hooray money saved there too!

With a new house comes a new fence, as in there is not an existing fence and we need one for the dogs and children. We got that sorted and marked out with our fence guy on Monday and willb e fencing in ~80’ straight back from the house, ~80’ across the back of the house and then ~100’ back down to enclose the whole back and W side of the house. Plus, we got him lined up to come through and clear the underbrush, small saplings and existing tree branches up to 6’ high. When we get there, we will have a nice’ish place for the kids and dogs to go explore. That all comes with a cost though, which is ~$7500 for the fence and clearing work. Money well spent in my opinion, because I still have over 1.5 acres to clear on my own…

When it gets done, prepare to see some kickass “after” pictures! I can’t wait because it is going to be badd ass once I get it trimmed up a little and get it walkable. There won’t be any grass back there, but some nice glens for a fire-pit, swings, and more.

Moving…

That brings us to the moving and relocation logistics. I had 4 different companies come out and give us an in home estimate for moving. All the quotes except for Allied came in at “not to exceed $12600” with actual cost being around $11,500. However, the price could go higher, or lower depending on actual weight and boxes packed.  The Allied quote came in at a flat rate of $10,900 regardless of whether they under or over estimated the weight and packing materials needed. When I asked about the big price discrepancy from the other companies, the estimator said, “Well, you guys have way less stuff than most homes of your size. You won’t need that many boxes.” So hooray for getting rid of so much and paring so much stuff down.

Clearly we chose them, but then the fun part began. They weren’t an approved vendor for the University Mrs. SSC is relocating to and since we get $10k covered for moving, we wanted them approved to make it easier for direct billing. After a week or so of emails back and forth, we found out we had to use a different “approved” Allied vendor. I contacted them, and got a quote that was almost $1k higher than the previous company’s quote. At this point, we decided we should just pay out of pocket and submit the invoice for reimbursement and use the cheaper company. Our reasoning is that it would be less stress, we know what we will pay in the end, and hooray for being mostly FI and able to have that as a choice.

Moving Cost Reductions

When I brought this up with the new Allied vendor, naturally, they freaked about losing the contract. I called them and spent an hour discussing how we could lower their cost and had her run variations using our previous companies estimates. For the most part, they came in less than the flat rate quote, or at least within a couple hundred dollars of it. After running different variations of those estimates, I decided we could do some of the packing and moving ourselves.

The biggest cost savings is moving our 2 tv’s ourselves. They would be over $500 to get crated and uncrated at the new house and that is for a 10 and 11 yr old tv. Not worth it in my opinion, so we will move them ourselves. We’ll also move our weights, stained glass and other fragile items, mainly things that would cost extra to get moved or add significantly to the weight of the truck. Packing “dumb/non-breakable” items like our wardrobes, books and similar also shaved about $500 off of the estimate. That seems like a good investment for $50 of boxes and an hr or less of time. Plus, if we can get it below $10k, we won’t pay anything out of pocket as the University will cover it. That is an added incentive for sure.

Summary

That is what has been going on with us the last few months. We’re in the thick of it now with only 4 weeks until our move date. I have 19 more actual work days before I leave August 2, yes I’m using a lot of vacation between now and then. Mrs. SSC starts teaching her summer course this weekend and it doesn’t wrap up until the 18 when we immediately head to the new locale. Until then, we need our house to sell and have some patience while we wait until the move date.

What’s been going on in your world? Hopefully it isn’t as stressful as our current state. Let us know, we’d love to hear about it!