Kids Ain't Cheap

But They Sure Are Worth It

4 Tips for Saving When Moving Abroad

| Leave a Comment

Uhaul truck for movingSo, moving is a tough activity!  When I was a kid, I always dreamed of moving from one house to the next, of course always with the provision that I was moving to a progressively better house with each move.  It never occurred to me then, and it didn’t really hit home until the past two years, that moving is a very involved job.  And this becomes even more complicated when you have a very small budget to work with.  Plus, if you’re considering moving aborad, you have some extra elements that you have to take into consideration.

 

Always Start Early

As soon as you have locked down your new house, start to pack up things in your current place. This should be started as soon as possible before the move. Of course, you will be scratching your head thinking, “‘how can this be done when obviously we will still need access to a lot of our things?”  The answer is really quite simple.  Pack all those things you hardly use first. Yes, you will have a lot of them.  I consciously made the effort not to hoard things from my last move so I was surprised still at the amount of knickknacks I had managed to collect, some important, some not so much.  So, start with those things.  Then work your way to the move date slowly packing things along the way.  You will, at some point, need professional movers to get your stuff overseas.  If you pack things yourself, consider talking with the movers ahead of time to make sure that you do things correctly.

 

Clean and Dispose of Things

I always had three containers when I was packing, one for the stuff I was bringing with me, the other for the stuff I was donating, and the last for the stuff I was throwing away.  And, again, I was surprised at how little I was actually considering bringing with me to my new abode. As I packed these now-few items, I always made sure to thoroughly clean them before packing them away.  If you know me well, you would know that I HATE packing and unpacking and, in my college days, resorted to just stuffing things in boxes in a haste to get things packed, only to wince in pain at the effort required to unpack.  This time, the ‘mature me’ packed carefully making unpacking much, much easier to do.  How do you save here? Throwing thing away obviously lessened the amount of things I needed to cart from one location to the next. Donating things even turned out to be a helping hand.  Cleaning things before carefully packing them away took away the need to thoroughly crush and clean things when they came out.  So, not only was I able to save on cleaning implements, but also time and effort.

Remember, the less you pack, the more you save on moving costs to go overseas!

 

The Most Expensive is Not Always The Best

I do not know how it is in other countries but in mine, there are two kinds of movers- the pro’s and the amateur haulers. The pro’s will pack your stuff for you in nice, thick boxes, complete with addictive bubble wrap while you sit, watching them, sipping a cup of tea.  They will also unpack most of your things for you when you get to your new place.  Amateur haulers will physically lift your already-boxed items into a moving truck and then physically bring them down and place them where you want the item. That’s it.  No thick box (you have to buy this yourself), and no bubble wrap. You can imagine how much the price difference is between the two. Now, if you have started your packing relatively early, and if you were meticulous with your packing, all you really need is the physically labor to lift things around and then get it to where you’re going.  So, do not feel bad if you can only afford the cheapest truck.  The point is getting yourself, and your belongings, from point old to point new.

 

Plan For When You Get There

When you move, you always end up needing to buy new things when you move in.  You need to plan ahead, and make sure that you open an offshore bank account.  Before you leave home, make sure that you transfer a nice sum of money to your new offshore account, and confirm that it arrived.  That way, when you get to your final destination, you have cash available to purchase the new items that you’ll need for your home.  Plus, having a bank account in the country you’re going can make it easier to get a cell phone and setup utilities at your new home. Do not forget that moving your money from your home country to your destination can be quite costly. As an alternative, you can use currency services for your international money transfers. Read this expat blog on this topic to learn more.

I found that if you follow these basic things, you will be able to save on so many things. You will keep to a small budget, you will save time and energy, and you will not stress out.

What is moving like in your corner of the world?

Redecorating on a Budget

| Leave a Comment

Painting a room is one way to redecorate on a budgetWhen considering moving to a new house, I am sure your mind will be filled with images of what new and beautiful things you would like to be surrounded with. I know for all three times that I have moved, I have bought one or two decorating magazines to get ideas about how to spruce up the place, add my touch, and make it at least a version of the place of my dreams.

I have also found though that moving on a budget is a trying and frustrating endeavor.  Imagine wanting all these pretty things, and some not even so expensive, only to add up all costs and find that you can afford maybe two of the twenty items you want to implement. If that is not an exercise in frustration I do not know what is.

Again, I have come up with my ways to redecorate on a budget and not only to save on money but also to save on feeling bad that you cannot get everything you want.

1. Recycle, recycle, recycle

This might be making bells ring in the heads of conservationists and environmentalists and, while I am all for saving our planet, I have to admit that that is not the first reason for this point.  When I moved into my second house, I found I greatly lacked in storage space. So, with the help of family, I was able to have new shelves and cabinetry added. Of course, my current house also lacked storage space (as most rental places seeming suffer from) so I ripped all this out and recycled all the wood. I didn’t stick them all in looking the exact same way, naturally, and I had to repairing them to match the paint of my new place, but it was still a whole lot cheaper considering I saved on the wood, the glass, and the fixtures.  I was also able to create a lot of new kinds of shelves and storage apace with all the wood as well.

2. Do-it-yourself

A lot of people need to have professionals do things for them.  I have to admit, my mom is one of these people. I watched as she sat and started mentally computing all the funds needed to pay pro’s to create an office nook, redecorate a certain Room, etc.  I had to break to her gently how she all of moi as her professional everything for this move. So, I put together an office nook by myself (using again old furniture, some repainted, some fixed up) and with little to almost no cost.  She was quite inspired because she was able to create a clothes line for laundry all by herself using my old lines and some handy foliage in the lot beside us. So now I don’t even need to buy steel racks for hanging!  Those cost about 4k rounded off per piece. That is a lot of money.  It is 2k shy of the cost of a .5 HP air conditioner.  But I digress. The point is, whenever and wherever you can, with whatever you have on hand, try to make/create what you need on your own. All you really need is a little creativity, your two hands, and some basic office tools.

3. Reinvention

This point is connected to points one and two.  As you recycle and start on your D.I.Y. tasks, you can also reinvent.  So, as I mentioned previously, I was able to create new kinds of storage from the old cabinet wood I brought with me from my old house.  And you can get as creative as you want.  I used old storage boxes as the table for my printer since my office is under the attic stairs and requires low and small furniture.  I used old plastic shower or bathroom racks as spice racks.  I just needed to take them apart to make them separate pieces, then paint them.  I used an old plastic trolley, took it off its wheels, took the three levels apart and created two separate, small shoe racks for the kids shoes- again, something that would fit a smaller space.

The point is, to save on professional fees, to forgo the heartache of letting go of signature pieces that you love but just cannot afford, try to look at what you have and get creative.  Priming, repainting, and reconnecting parts can all be done for a very minimal cost and taking things apart to make new things costs nothing at all.

What budget tips for redecorating can you share?

Kindergarten….WHAT!!!!

| Leave a Comment

I can’t believe Harrison, my oldest boy, is going to Kindergarten in one week!  If you read my last post you know there are a lot of changes going on.  Shortly after Kindergarten starts, we are going to be moving to a brand new house, a brand new school district and a brand new Day Care.  It’s a lot of changes for these two little guys to deal with.  Luckily, our new school district is letting Harrison start even though he won’t be living in the school district for a few more weeks.

I spent part of today looking for tips on getting kids ready for school and I found this list of articles to be pretty helpful.

Do you have any tips for when your child starts kindergarten?

Almost There…. Almost There…. I Hope!

| Leave a Comment

For Sale Sign for HouseFor the last couple of months my wife and I have been working very hard to get our house ready to sell. I mentioned in an earlier blog post that we are are buying my Mother-In-Law’s house. It’s where my wife grew up and it’s surrounded by her family and their family farm. I can’t wait. I love the property and get along with her family very well.

A lot of work involved in preparing a home for sale

Unfortunately, our house is old and had 30 different projects we either started or meant to start to improve it. We really felt like most of these projects needed to be done so the house was the best we could make it before we put it up for sale. Unfortunately, it seems like every time we finished a project, it created 5 more either because they needed to be done or fixing one thing broke another thing.

It’s been a real struggle with real challenges that needed to be overcome. We both work full time and want to make sure we get in as much quality family time as we can with the kids. I have 3 herniated discs, one of which is really bad, so I have to be very careful about what I lift and make sure I don’t overdue it. And of course, we needed to get all these projects done on a strict budget. We had some big ticket items that were unavoidable like a new roof and new gutters so we tried our best to do all of the work that we could do ourselves.

I am happy to say that we are almost done. Another good weekends worth of effort and I think we can finally call the realtor and get this house on the market. Let’s just hope that after all this hard work and money, it sells quickly and at a good price.

Have you ever prepared a home for sale? How much work did you have to do to get it ready?

Things to Consider Before Moving

| Leave a Comment

Uhaul truck for movingOk, so it’s been ages since my last post and with good reason.  I had been in the middle of moving to a new house and my goodness!  It was very difficult this time around.  The last time I moved was almost 2 years ago and it was decidedly easier then.  I am assuming this is because I really did everything from scratch by myself this time around as opposed to having help from my family the first time.

Anyway, from my previous post I recall mentioning that I was considering moving a ways away from when I used to live because I found the area nicer, aesthetically, and more peaceful.  Well, this is where it all went wrong.

So I spent a whole day in the area looking for possible houses and here started my spending. I needed to rent a van because I don’t own a car and this was expensive.  We viewed a total of 7 houses and only 2 were nice enough to consider.  The rent, at first, also seemed doable.

It was when I was staring at my spreadsheet and doing my budget projections did I realize that both houses were out of the question and not because of their rent but because of all the expenses that come with living in an area.  So, I have created a short list of ‘real considerations’ when thinking about moving.

1. Location

This is important because you do not consider transferring from where you are to somewhere worse. As much as possible, always make the move be to a better place.  This is where things become subjective because ‘better’ is different for everyone.  Some people think that the beauty of a neighborhood makes things better; some think it is in the neighbors themselves; some think it is the crime rate; some think it’s how urban or rural the area is. For me, it is about peace and safety.  In Manila, you can live in very quiet, private subdivisions but pay a whole lot, or live in vibrant, alive corners and not pay as much.  I wanted a happy middle.  Whatever your criterion is, make sure it is something substantial and something you really count as important to living.

2.  Cost of Living

This is really important and this is what ultimately made me change my mind when it came to the big move.  Cost of living is basically what you spend in actuality to make living in an area possible. So, this includes what you spend on groceries from your local supermarket, what you spend on cooking gas, what you spend on commute to work, what you spend on taxes, what you spend on schooling for your kids (I you have kids) or for yourself (if you are studying).  Where I live, private schools are still considered better than public schools and tuition fees for these schools vary so it is important to find one that will fit your budget and still fulfill all your desires for your child’s education.  This is all the more important in a single income household like mine.  While number 1 may be a positive, while you may think you have found the perfect house, this can fall apart if you find you ultimately cannot afford to live in that area.

3. Availability of Resources

Now, this is simple and can be connected to points 1 and 2.  Questions that may fall under this point are: How far is it to your place of work? How hard is the commute? How far is the nearest hospital? How far is the school? Is there a local market?  Are there 24/7 drug stores?  The list of questions can also change depending on what you term as resources and how important these resources are to you.

After looking at these three points, I was able to conclude that my first plan was a bad idea.  So, I changed course and did a new search and discover session for a house in the general vicinity of where I used to live but better.  This is how the move turned from a simple 2 week exercise to a whole month!  And we aren’t even finished because, even if we have moved, we haven’t completely set ourselves up to be a fully functioning, smooth running household.  But that is another post.

What are your considerations when moving?  Are they different from what I stated?

Considerations Before Moving

| Leave a Comment

Uhaul truck for movingOk, so it has been a while since I last posted and there is good reason for this.  See, I’ve decided fairly recently, to move to a new house.  Let me go over this decision with a little more detail.

It started about a year ago. I’ve always liked the area where my brother lives, which is about 15km away from the capitol city. It is a nice neighborhood with good, smaller schools, all the amenities you need, it is secure, quite picturesque in some areas, and quite secure as well.

So, I’ve been thinking about ways to be able to move there because of all the things I mentioned above but there were considerations I needed to go through first. Very important considerations for a single mom of two kids.

1. Cost

Much as I loved my brother’s area, it was definitely more expensive than where I am currently living.  It would take an additional 20k to move there.  It would mean an additional amount for commute expense, an additional amount for rent, and for water.  In dollars, that would mean an additional $466 a month.  That is not easy to do since that amount is a little higher than entry level salaries for a lot of jobs here.  I had to figure out how to make an extra 20k on top of the salary I get from my full time job.

2. Schools

My kids already have a school where we are now. It is just a preschool but, since my kids are only preschool age, it give me time to look around and budget for a big kids school.  Schools in my brother’s area were more expensive and were fewer in choice but the chances of getting a school with a good reputation for good education is easier. Public schooling in my country generally is not so great.  there are a handful of public schools that are considered very good so you can imagine what you need to do to get a spot there.  Ironic huh?  So, if you want to give your kids a good chance at making it in the future, you have to spend for schooling.

Those were the top considerations for moving to another area, specifically that area where my brother stays.  Needless to say, I suspended that thought and set it aside, thinking that I would not need to go back to it for another year or so at the least.

Well, turns out my parents were looking to move as well and decided to look in that same area.  Since it would suit all parties involved, we decided to join forces.  Because of that, we were able to come up with a good enough budget to sustain a household.

So, important things to think about when scouting for a change of address (as I have come to know and understand it from my experience):

1. cost of commute and utilities- some areas, being farther away from the business district, cost more to get out of and back to at the end of the day.  For the same reason, proximity to the capitol city, some utilities may cost more or less.  So there has to be room in the budget for these considerations.

2. cost of schooling- this is important if you have kids.  There is no use in moving to a place where you can afford the standard of living but not the schooling.

3. cost of food and shelter-  this has to be considered because it is part of budgeting your cost of living.

All three points are not ranked in order of importance because I think they are all equally essential.  Of course, I am currently in the process of moving so there are many things I am sure to learn as I go along.

I am interested to know what your considerations are if you think about making a move.  Are they any different from mine?

I will do my best to track this journey and to note the budget considerations as I go along.

What things do you consider before moving?