Terri Ramsey Beavers 
There are a lot of aspects of a move that add to the general stress that people experience when they have to move from one location to another. All of these different factors contribute to making moving house a highly rated stress factor as shown by different studies. We can read about it here.
While there are indeed many factors that contribute to this stress, one of these is the cost of the move or we should rather say the unexpected costs that a move can throw up. This is what we will be focusing on in this article.
Not understanding the different cost implications before jumping headlong into the process can result in unwanted and unforeseen expenses that will add stress to the other stress factors that are already being experienced. To ensure that this does not happen and that you have a good idea of the different options before you and the things that can increase or reduce your cost, we will do a short expose of the subject right here.
Factors that will Affect Your cost
There are many factors that will affect what you will have to pay for a move. Though some will be more obvious than others, we will try to cover as many of both the obvious and not too obvious ones here.
Here we go…
Distance
This is something that most people can easily understand. The farther you are moving away from your current location, the higher your costs will be for obvious reasons. Once the distance is about 400 mile and above, you can consider it a long distance move.
Interstate
Aside from actual distance in miles, there is also the issue of crossing state lines. Regardless of the actual distance, if you are crossing state lines, you may find that some companies will charge you more.
Amount of Stuff Being Moved
This again is something that should be generally understandable. If you have a lot of stuff to move, you will invariably require a larger van or truck which will directly mean more by way of payments.
Chosen Moving Method
Lastly for this article, one major cost determinant is the method you choose for the move. There are different methods you can adopt and each will require different levels of financial commitment. You can check out a few examples for yourself here: .
How to Cut Down Your Cost
Having looked at a few factors that can contribute to what your move will cost you, let’s also try to suggest a few tips that can generally help you save.
Determine Your Budget
Get started by knowing exactly how much you can afford to spend moving your stuff to your new location. Once you have this sorted out, you can then begin to look at the other factors like your moving method and others. This will help you know exactly which you can opt for.
Reduce Your Stuff
The next thing you need to do is truly examine the stuff you want to move. This is a great opportunity to thoroughly sort through your stuff to choose only the essentials. You can either give things you don’t need away or sell them to raise some extra funds. Either way, having less items to move means less cost to you.
Consider a Self-Move
If your move is within the same state and not too far out, you may want to consider a self-move. This could either mean loading up your car for a couple of trips or hiring a small van and overseeing the move yourself. You can also do a self-move for a long distance or interstate trip. It will however require more planning.
Schedule Your Move Right
The time you schedule your move for is very important. To ensure you enjoy maximum savings, go for a week day since weekends will be more expensive. You should also consider moving before or after summer to further reduce your cost.
The idea is that a moving when most folks will either not be available to schedule their move or not find convenient will mean targeting the period that the moving companies will have less demands on their time. To ensure that some funds keep coming in during these lean periods, they will be willing to take less than they will usually have taken.
Since your goal is to save as much as you can, you should totally explore this opportunity.
Carefully Choose Your Moving Company
This is one other very important factor to note. You should carefully research moving companies. Pencil down a couple of them that look promising and then ask for quotes from them. You can easily find cheap moving companies which will further help reduce your cost.
It is however important that you are careful not to just pick any company solely on the basis of cost. You should be sure to check other factors like the company’s reputation, ability to deliver, professionalism and more. You want something affordable but you also want the job to get done and done well.
Get Friends and Family to Help
One of the areas that can cost you some money is hiring hands to help with the packing and loading. If you can get your family members and friends to help with this you will end up saving yourself both some stress and funds. Depending on the type of move you have opted for, you can even get some of them to actually help you out through the entire process. Remember that there will be need for unloading and unpacking when you get to your new location.
Conclusion
We’ve all agreed that moving can be really stressful. We however can reduce this stress by doing everything necessary to handle each aspect of the process in such a way as to make it a lot easier.
A good example is the issue of cost that we have looked at. By carefully going through and implementing the tips we have shared above, you will be able to know exactly what costs you want to bear before getting started. This way, you won’t experience any stress-causing expense surprises.