More moving questions/poll

[VillainV]

6000 GBP doesn't sound like very much to me. But then again, maybe you're not moving a lot of stuff. Keep in mind that your American furniture may or may not fit into a UK home. I think I remember you're moving to London, right? I think you'll find that even a US queen-sized bed is on the large side. Depending on where you live now (house vs. apt) and what kind of place you're moving into (flat vs. terrace), you may or may not have to get some new furniture when you get here.

A few options to think about:

1. Max out your checked baggage amount. The more you can bring in suitcases, the less you'll have to buy when you get here. And it's a fairly cost-effective way of moving stuff :-)

2. You can mail stuff to yourself. This can get spendy, but isn't a bad option if there is stuff that you MUST have right away but don't want to lug on the plane.

3. It will take your stuff, best case, 4-6 weeks to get to you from the time it's picked up in Boston to when it can be delivered to you. Could be closer to 90 days depending on your moving company -- and stuff has to come through customs, which can take a few days. If there are things that you can't live without for that long, you may end up re-purchasing them when you get here...which means you might as well not even move them at all. I'm thinking of things like a bed or a TV.

Keep in mind:

- A lot of electronics are multi-voltage. Check the markings by the plug. Your TV, computer, etc will all work with nothing more than a plug converter (which you can get at any drug store when you get here). Anything with moving parts, a heating element, or a motor (like your DVD player, printer, coffee maker, blender, toaster, lamps) WILL NOT WORK unless you get a transformer, and these are expensive.

- ETA:  About your TV -- yes, there are different formats (NTSC vs. PAL), but HD signals work universally over HDMI, so your American TV will work just fine with a plug converter in the wall, and an HD signal coming in.   You absolutely do not have to buy a new TV when you get here. 

- US linens will most-likely not fit on UK-sized beds. Not a big deal for flat sheets and blankets, but fitted sheets definitely won't work. So if you're going to be getting a new bed when you get here, don't bother bringing linens from your old bed, because they won't work.

- If you have big plates, they might not fit into the cabinets in your new place. I found that older places had slightly shallower cabinets, and the big dinner plates in my set just didn't fit.

- No closets here. Seriously. If you have a lot of clothes and shoes, you probably want to do a big purge before moving. My H and I are lucky that our place came with wardrobes. We each have MAYBE two feet of hanging space, which has to accommodate our coats, dress clothes (dresses/tux), everyday clothes, and work clothes. And this is more than a lot of houses had.

[lolo]

When we moved from the US to the UK, we put our stuff in a storage unit and brought two suitcases each. If you are renting a flat, the furniture is often provided.

On the way back (UK to US), we brought a lot more, in part because our relocation costs were paid the second time. (The first time we funded our own move--I went over to get a master's degree.) But we still checked everything, including packing a massive desktop computer into a suitcase, except a few books that we posted. I think we had ten suitcases in total plus two boxes via post.

I am still amazed that nothing got lost (although only 6/10 made it to our final destination with us--the rest got delayed) and that we didn't get searched by customs. LOL.

[VillainV]

Aug 9, 2014 23:59:35 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Thanks so much, VillainV. Lots of good little tips here--exactly what I need!

I had already thought about maxing my checked luggage. That will be so odd for me as I never travel with anything more than a carry on and dealing with lugging all that stuff on my own is so not appealing. Necessary evil I guess.

DH actually just looked into whether our TV will work there and he says it won't. I'll have him read your post but he's pretty thorough about this stuff so I think we might be stuck getting a new TV.

Someone else mentioned the difference in bed and sheet sizes to me. I think we'll be buying a new bed over there as we're thinking of replacing our current one anyway.

I'll have to measure cabinet depths when I find our permanent place (I'm in corporate housing for the first month). Thanks for that bit of info! We have Denby dishware so maybe there will be some love for the U.K.-produced product, LOL.

I've already started purging clothes, but sounds like I still have more than might fit there. Sigh.

We live in the UK and have 3 American TVs (we live in the middle of nowhere in Norfolk, and can actually afford a house).  One of them is in our living room and has Sky (satellite TV) and connects via HDMI cable.  The other two have Freeview boxes, and connect via HDMI cable.  It's a little harder to find Freeview boxes with HDMI, but they are getting more common.  I think they were like 70-80 pounds each?  

BTW, "Freeview" is basic cable service that you can pull out of the air with an antenna ("aerial"). The actual number of channels depends on your geographic location, but it's usually like 50-60 stations (some are in HD, but most are not).   Most homes and apartment buildings have aerials installed.   You need a special box to unscramble the signal, but you can buy these at any electronic store or even larger Tesco/Morrisons/Sainsburys.   It's "free" because you don't have to pay for a subscription service....but not really, because you pay about 140ish pounds a year in TV tax (which is what pays for the programming).  If you don't watch a ton of TV, Freeview is probably all you'll need.  

Are you and your H big sports fans?  There are ways to get US sports here with some streaming services :-)

[rupertpenny]

We basically only brought what we could get on the plane. I think we nudes up with 8 checked bags and two carry-ons. It was mostly clothes, shoes, and baby stuff. We didn't have much relocation help and this was by far the cheapest way.

We packed up most of our kitchen stuff, some booked, and some sentimental things and stored them at my parent's house. We sold everything else on craigslist. When we got to HK we bought all new stuff at ikea.

I think this was by far the easiest and cheapest thing for us, but we a) had a small rental house furnished with second hand or ikea stuff, b) we knew our new place was going to be tiny and therefore cheap to furnish. I seriously think we spent less than 2000 but you know how small Hong Kong apartments are.

If you're interested in checking bags I'd recommend getting some wheeled duffle bags from wal-mart. They were $15 each and they collapse and zip down for storage. I'm on my phone now but I can link later.

[Deleted]

Aug 9, 2014 22:51:21 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

I'm probably going to be posting a ton of questions over the next few weeks as I'm less than two months from moving to the U.K. from Boston.  I hope you all can stand me

My firm is giving me a £6,000 moving allowance. It will be split between two moves because DH will be 6-9 months behind me in coming over. We have a 3BR house and I'm thinking I won't take much with me in the initial move. Trying to figure out if that figure will cover our costs.

If you did a similar move, how much did it cost? Our entire relocation package totaled around $85,000, but that also included 1 week home finding trip 2 months before we moved, flights, 2 weeks hotel stay plus per diem (for both of us) in Seattle, 3 months temporary housing in London, moving the dog, a 40ft sea container (we only used about 20ft), 500lb air shipment (used about 400lbs), $500 checked luggage, lump sum relocation cash payment in £, movers to pack/unpack, storage for our shipments until we moved into our place, and a few other little things that I know I'm forgetting. 
How big a place did you move from? We moved from a 2800 sq ft, 4 br/3ba house to a 650 sq ft 1br/2ba flat. 
How long did it take for your stuff to arrive? Our sea shipment left about a month before we did and met us in London, our air shipment left a week before we did and met us there as well. Our temporary flat was too small, so everything went into storage for 3 months and we didn't take delivery of any of the stuff until we actually moved into our own place. 
Any movers you'd recommend I look into or avoid? H's company assigned us to this company and they were amazing to deal with. I can give you the contact info of the lady that we worked with. I'd highly, highly recommend them. 

www.rsirelo.com/ 


Do I need to purchase insurance? Moving insurance? If you hire movers I think that's included in the price of the service, but I could be wrong. Nothing of ours was lost or damaged in the move. 

UnderProtest, @uwhuskygirl, lolo, teatimefor2, bryantpark

FWIW, we brought our US queen sheets and bedding and they fit perfectly on a UK king bed. 

And I brought our Crate and Barrel dishes and those fit just fine in the cupboards. Don't bring your baking sheets though because the ovens are a lot smaller and the US baking stuff won't fit in the UK ovens. 

Buy a bunch of slimline hangers before you get here and use that. Our "closet" is about the size of a coat closet in the US. We only have about 2 feet of hanging space for all of our clothes.

Reconsider bringing your US furniture because it may be too big for your UK flat. There's no way our current flat could have held our US couch or TV because it's just too over sized for the spaces in the UK. We literally sold everything before we left and it made life so much easier on this side. 

Someone on here gave me this advice and it worked well:

Carry-On luggage: expensive jewelry, financial documents, trust/wills, etc., photo albums. Our carry-on was insanely heavy but a must.



Checked luggage: All personal clothing items, perhaps a photo or two from home, power cords for laptops, etc.



Air shipment: Anything you want/need earlier than sea shipment. For us it was my spices, kitchen cooking utensils, lots of baby stuff, home printer.
(We weren't allowed to ship spices/food, but check with your relo person about those restrictions. I did sneak in some tea and they didn't confiscate it or say anything to me.) 


Sea Shipment: Everything else.


If you/your H are NFL fans then my H highly recommends the UK NFL Game Pass: www.nfluk.com/tv-audio/nfl-game-pass 

Games start about 6pm on Sunday and then the night games go until about 3 or 4am. However with the Game Pass H gets all of the games condensed into about 40 minutes, so he'll watch 6pm to midnight, then get up at 6am to finish watching the games before work. 

There's also an MLS pass that you can get that H really likes. 

Things like blenders, Kitchen Aid stand mixers, won't work here with the voltage conversion. With a converter things like sonicare toothbrush and clarisonic have been just fine. 

And since we had so much space in our shipments I literally went to Target, BBB and places like that to get things like drying racks, hangers, and general house stuff like that. Yes, you can get it here, but it sucks having to lug it around on the bus/tube. Also, it was cheaper in dollars than in pounds and we had the space in shipments. It made my life so much easier once moving into our place because I didn't have to figure out where to go get things like that and then figuring out how to get it home. 

I also went to Costco to get giant bottles of Excedrin, Ibuprofen, vitamins, etc... You can't get excedrin here and I can't live without it. The biggest size box you can buy ibuprofen in is like 16 or 24 tablets at a time, and I'm lazy, so Costco seemed like the good choice for me. 

Are you moving pets over? If you are, then I would start talking to your vet sooner rather than later. Even with a pet relocation company it took a good 2.5-3 months to make sure that everything was in order for moving our dog. 

[origami]

Ask away. I just moved 1.5 months ago so I'm glad to have a topic I actually have experience with! I was so confused during the whole process so don't worry about posting too much. I think everyone understands.

If you did a similar move, how much did it cost?

I moved to Asia and unfortunately I don't know how much it cost because Dh's company paid directly, so this may not be helpful, but we did 2 shipments. 1 by air, 1 by sea. Maybe that's a possibility for you. You get the air shipment, then send the sea ship later around the time your DH gets there. Air freight is expensive and we were given a certain weight we had to stay under so I think it is priced by weight. By sea we got a certain sized container and it didn't matter how heavy it was. We used approx 500lbs in the air shipment and took food, kids toys, extra clothes & shoes that didn't fit in the suitcase, some electronics. By sea we sent kitchen stuff, furniture, more stuff for the kids, bikes...basically everything else.

How big a place did you move from?

1800 sq ft. We also moved into an 1800 sq ft place. We did not take beds or a dining room table or a ton of decorative furniture. We did bring over couches, a few chairs, a desk and 1 dresser. I don't know about the UK but furniture is expensive here. I would not want to buy everything new unless I was not moving back. We are currently renting furniture, bed linens, towels, a tv, and kitchen things until our sea shipment arrives. Some of that we will continue renting indefinitely. We bought new dishes here because of the size issue. Our landlord included a bunch of transformers in our lease so that's something to ask about if they do that in the UK. That said, one of the transformers blew a fuse and fried our DVD player and wii. I feel the need to warn everyone to turn on the transformer without anything plugged into it.

How long did it take for your stuff to arrive?

The air shipment is fast. It took 2w for ours but that was because it would not be released to us without an alien registration receipt, which takes about 2w. Hopefully the UK is better than korea about that. Once we had the receipt I think it took 4 days for delivery. Sea shipment is 6-8w door to door (so they say).

Any movers you'd recommend I look into or avoid?

Our movers only work locally, sorry.

Do I need to purchase insurance?

Yes. I'm not even sure we had the option not to.


ETA: you probably know this already but keep your Rx medications with you even if you don't need them daily. Don't ship them.

ETA2: if your shipments will come after you then take a tape measure with you or air ship it. Lest you end up like me waiting 8w in a nearly bare apartment having nothing to measure it with so that you can start buying things.

[UnderProtest]

I honestly don't know how much the move cost.  It was fully paid by my husband's company and I never saw a bill.  It was full service so they packed and unpacked all of our stuff.  

Our place in the States was a comparable size to our place here.  While we left our bedroom furniture in storage in the US, our landlord provided beds here for us.  I have had no trouble fitting our sheets and linens on the beds here.  One set of sheets is a bit harder to get on, but it still works.  I think US queen is about the size of the UK king and US double equals UK queen.

We had some of our stuff come by air and some by sea.  I think our air shipment took about two weeks and the sea shipment about four weeks, although we were quoted 3-4 weeks for air and 5-8 for sea.  Yours should be a bit faster since you are either in a port city or close to NYC/NJ as a port.  Part of the time was shipping our stuff from NC to NYC/NJ to get loaded on the boat.

We didn't have a choice, but Victory Movers out of NJ were amazing.  My contact there was wonderful.  She was the only part of the moving process that actually kept me informed instead of my husband.  

Insurance was included in the moving package, hence why they wanted to pack all the stuff.

Other comments: Depending on your price range, your flat may very well be furnished.  Start looking for places online, it will show if they are furnished or not.  This could affect what stuff you even consider to move.  We didn't bring our tv or most electrical items.  We did bring our speakers and surround sound system which we had to send back because it wasn't dual voltage.  We made some hurried, bad decisions toward the end.  Try not to follow in our footsteps.  Definitely bring what you can on the airplane.  I sent my husband ahead and he dealt with living in a sparsely furnished house for 3 weeks.  We had the option of the corporate housing, but we had found the house on a previous trip and were already paying rent, so it seemed stupid.  Oh, and our dishes fit in the cabinets, it may just depend on how new the flat is.

Definitely, purge, purge, purge.  I thought I did a decent job before we put the house on the market, but oh, was I wrong.  We did end up making a big IKEA purchase after we got here to fill in the blanks on furniture and storage items.  They do deliver most items and I found the delivery here to be reasonable.  I think it was 30 pounds for a dresser, large bookshelf, two small dressers, a nightstand, a couple small rugs and a bunch of storage boxes.  Things are cheaper in the US, so we did stock up on a bunch of stuff (diapers, wipes, medicines, toilet paper, etc) before we left, but we weren't paying for moving.  It might not make as much sense for you for the bigger things.  

Truthfully, it might make more financial sense for you to just bring what you can on the airplane (I have yet to see them care about the weight of our bags on the flights back and forth) and then have whatever you are going to move come after your husband moves too.  You should have found a flat by then and will really know how much stuff you will be able to find.  Will he be able to come over here or you go back to Boston in those 6-9 months?

Hope this helps.

 

[frlcb]

It is generally harder to find an unfurnished flat than a furnished one. I agree it would be better to leave furniture at home and move just what you need - do an air and a sea shipment. We moved all our stuff from a 2 bed flat back to the us and it was $10k.

[dutchgirl678]

6000 GBP is about 10000 USD. I think it will be tight. We just packed everything up and the estimate for the move was 8800 USD not including insurance yet. We are still waiting on the final cost and have to pay it. We were given a budget of 7500 EUR which is similar. We used it to pay for our flights (4x1100 USD) and half the moving costs.

We decided to sell all of our electronics except for our Sony PS3 which works over there and can be our Bluray player. We are also taking the Apple TV.

We moved all the big furniture including beds, sofa, bookcases.

[Deleted]

Oh some other things to consider:

Is your relo money inclusive of visa fees and costs associated with that? Ours visa fees came out of our relo package, but was a different line item than shipping. Just double checking that your relo money doesn't include the visa for you and your h?

At the very least, get tax help for the first year. Our taxes were some crazy insane mess that neither of us really understood because we both got paid in 2 currencies and had a bunch of other stuff happen.

And as a side note for your taxes, starting now, write down every time you leave the UK and note if it's for work. This will help with taxes next year because they'll calculate days you spent working in the UK vs. Elsewhere. If you can, keep the list for vacations too. It'll be handy if you go to a country that requires visas.

[teatimefor2]

Aug 9, 2014 22:51:21 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

If you did a similar move, how much did it cost?  When we moved to the UK, we were poor students and did it ourselves.  When we moved back, DH's company paid for everything.  Honestly, they covered it all and we never saw a bill.  The company was Anglo-Pacific was the moving company and they were great.  They packed us, took inventory (we had 62 boxes in total) handled customs and unpacked us. I highly recommend as a PP suggested, pack as much as you can to bring with you via plane.  Include a pot, frying pan, towels, etc in case your stuff takes longer than anticipated.  
How big a place did you move from? We were so young, it was so small.
How long did it take for your stuff to arrive?  Seven weeks, overall, I was impressed.
Any movers you'd recommend I look into or avoid?  We had Anglo- Pacific and had a good experience with them. www.anglopacific.co.uk/.  We were also able to move unopened liquids: wine and beer without a problem.  Check about spices, etc.  We were also able to ship medicine without issue as long as it was not opened.
Do I need to purchase insurance?  I think we had moving insurance through the movers, but DH's company handled all of that.  I would request it.

Purge, purge, purge, if you haven't worn it in a year, get rid of it. The same thing with things - coffee mugs, knickknacks, etc. We've moved a fair bit and it's annoying to move and realise that you have just moved crap from one place to another. Our plates were Crate and Barrel and we had zero issue with them fitting.  Several of my British friends have Denby dishes, so I wouldn't worry about that.  

Is your company setting you up with an estate agent?  Do you have an idea of what you want to spend pre month of rent?  Here are two websites to give you an idea: www.rightmove.co.uk/ and www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/flats/london/.  This will give you an idea of the places for rent and if you want to rent furnished or unfurnished.  Most flats rent furnished, but you can find unfurnished flats.  

We went to Office Max/Staples and made our moving folder.  Carry all important documents with you: moving inventory, passports and copies of passports, wills, social security cards, birth certificates, bank details, contact details for your POC in your office, life insurance, everything.  Also carry all necessary medicines, honestly, I found you could get the same or better meds at Boots.  

Since you will be moving separately and you will be in company housing for a month. I would view both furnished and unfurnished apartments and make a decision as to what route you want to take.  Then you can decide what to bring over?  I would just bring over four big suitcases and pay the extra luggage fee for the first month. 

If you both have iPhones, you can facetime as long as you have internet for free, so potentially your DH will be able to view the flats as you do.

Good luck, this is so exciting!  Ask away!

[fbf2006]

We're leaving for London on Tuesday and were given a $7,500 relocation package (not inclusive of visa fees). It seems enough to me. We're not taking any furniture or kitchen items and are keeping them in storage, but will instead just buy stuff at Ikea, if needed. We'll be in a corporate apartment for a month and will then find a furnished one. We will have 6 boxes going through air shipment, mostly toys, books, some clothes. We will fly with 4 big suitcases.

Your husband's visa should be done at the same time yours is being done, even if he's not moving the same time you are.

[pittpurple]

I can't remember - how long are you planning on staying in the UK? Unless it's for several years (or you already have a relocation budget agreed upon for your move back to the states) I would encourage you to bring as little as possible and then use the savings to just buy stuff here. We are just now looking at moving the majority of our stuff over the UK, but we just bought a house and are here semi-permanently.

We self-moved as well (DH's job paid for our flights here and 2 weeks in a B&B to find a flat) so we just had 7 suitcases with us and shipped about 5 boxes of random stuff (most of which wasn't really necessary) after we found a flat. Furnished flats here come with dishes and pots and pans and whatnot so since we had brought some of that stuff, we then needed to use our (tiny) amount of storage space to store the stuff that came with the flat. So unless you're committed to finding an unfurnished place, you should consider that as well. The dishes, etc aren't great, but it's really irritating to have to use all the storage space for that sort of thing.

[bryantpark]

I strongly agree with the furnished apartment option as well. I didn't even think about the fact that you have to move all your stuff home so the 6000 pounds really needs to last you for both moves.

[Cicero]

We had a $5k USD moving allowance when we moved to Prague from the US. Granted, this was six years ago but that amount got us a quarter of a shopping container. We were able to bring a futon, pots/pans, clothing, dishes, all of our kitchen stuff, our full wardrobes, skis, golf clubs, etc. our flat was unfurnished so we just went to IKEA when we got there.

Honestly, having done it both ways--move just some stuff and get what you need when you get there as well as move everything you own--the next time we move we'll be taking minimal stuff and renting a furnished place.