7 Tips to Keep Your Budget on Track During the Moving Process
Moving from one place to the next is always a very stressful experience. When you are moving into a new home, it often makes sense to hire professional movers to help you with the process. Movers can make sure that your personal belongings are packed securely, transported to a new home, and are placed in the appropriate areas of your new property. As an added benefit, you can save a lot of time and stress.
While hiring movers is often a good idea, you may also find that it is expensive. Further, if you are not careful, your moving costs can quickly escalate beyond your initial budget. Fortunately, there are seven tips that you can follow that could help you to control your moving costs.
Shop Around and Negotiate
When you are looking to hire professional movers and move into a new home, one of the best things that you could do would be to shop around and negotiate rates. There are many different moving companies in most major cities for someone to choose from. Because of this, you could end up saving money if you are willing to shop around to get multiple quotes from a variety of different moving companies. You could then use these quotes to negotiate lower rates and get services. This could end up helping you to save a lot of money off of your total moving costs from companies such as Brisbane Removals Platinum Furniture.
Plan Ahead
When it comes to moving, one of the worst decisions that you can make is to wait too long to start planning. Most people know that they will have to move at least four to six weeks in advance. It is important that you start your planning process as soon as you know that your moving date is approaching. If you do not book your moving plans in advance, you will find that many movers are not available to help and those that are available will charge you a premium for booking last minute. Instead, you should try to start shopping as soon as possible to make sure you have time to carefully consider and research all of your options.
Do Some Work Yourself
When you are trying to move into a new home, you may find that there are service providers that can help you with all aspects of your move. This can include putting all of your belongings into boxes, carefully packing up your belongings with the proper materials, moving your items, and finally unpacking everything. While it will be nice to have this much work done for you, you will also quickly find that these service providers tend to charge by the hour. This means that you will end up spending a lot of extra money for some services that you could easily do by yourself. If you start planning far ahead in advance, you should have plenty of time to get a lot of the less labor-intensive work done, which could save you some money.
Buy Materials in Bulk
If you do try to do some of the work on your own, you quickly will find that it can be very expensive simply to purchase all of the supplies that you need. Between the costs of buying boxes, moving tape, and related accessories and equipment, you easily could end up spending hundreds of dollars. While you may find that it is very expensive to go to your local store and purchase these items, you could save money by buying in bulk. All of the bulk retail superstores have most of the moving supplies and other items that you will need. Additionally, you could contact the local grocery stores and other retailers to see if they have extra boxes that they could give to you for free.
Enlist Some Free Help
While you can try to do as much work as you can on your own, you may find that it is impossible to get it all done. Instead, a good option would be to enlist the help from some friends and family to help you with the move. Even having a friend come over for a couple hours could go a long way. Also, if you have kids in your home, it could be helpful to get a friend that could watch them for you. This will allow you to focus on packing and moving as opposed to running after your kids.
Look for Items to Sell
Whenever you are moving into a new home, you should also consider it an opportunity to start clearing out your older personal items. You should go through your closet, old furniture, and storage areas of your home and carefully consider what you need to bring with to your next home and what can be gotten rid of. When you find items that you can get rid of, you could make some money for your move by either selling them or donating them and getting a tax deduction. Further, when there are less items that you need to move, you could save money off of your packing materials and moving expenses.
Get a Fixed Rate
Finally, when you are trying to save money on your move, you should try to get a fixed rate for any services that you hire out for. When you start receiving quotes from moving companies, you may find that they provide you with an estimated price, but it will have language that allows for fluctuations in total costs. Unfortunately, there is always a chance that the moving company did not estimate the total time and work that it would take to move your personal items. You could then be hit with a surprise bill that is far more than the initial quote. A better option is to ask for a more detailed quote and a fixed rate to ensure you are not surprised at the end.
