How much does it cost to move out of state? This past month, Janene and I moved back to our home in Bellingham, Washington after spending a little over a year in Portland, Oregon. We were able to cut the costs down from $7,000 to $450. Here’s the story…
This past year has seen a lot of change for us. In 2018, the company I was working for in Washington was struggling. Seeing the writing on the wall I started looking for a new job and found one in Portland. So in May 2018, Janene and I packed up all of our things and moved to Portland.
A few months after moving to Portland, I heard that my previous company had closed the office in Washington (talk about good timing!).
We spent the better part of 2018 and 2019 in Portland, but realized that Portland wasn’t for us. Bellingham is our home and we wanted to find our way back there. Luckily, I was able to negotiate an arrangement with my job allowing me to work from home, and Janene was able to get her old job back at the hospital.
After two out of state moves in a little over a year, I don’t plan on moving again anytime soon. But if you are thinking about moving, you’re probably wondering, “What does it cost to move out of state?”
Getting the Estimates
In 2013, Janene and I moved from Alaska to Washington, and then last year we moved from Washington to Oregon. For both moves, my company had paid for the moving costs. However, I wasn’t going to be as lucky this time around. My job was giving me the convenience of working from home, but I was on the hook this time for covering the moving costs.
For some perspective, Bellingham is 268 miles from Portland. From experience from the last two moves, having a full service moving company pack up all our things and move them is actually super convenient. The moving company shows up, packs all your stuff, loads up the truck, and then it all shows up at your new home a few weeks later.
Having been spoiled, I was wanting to use a moving company again for our move back up to Bellingham. Janene called a couple of moving companies, which had two very different approaches for giving estimates.
Moving Company #1
For the estimate, this company had someone show up to our apartment in Portland. He walked around the place and jotted down some notes. After about an hour of looking around, he gave us a quote. My guess was it was going to cost around $1,000 to have the convenience of a moving company take care of our move. Turns out, the estimate was $4,500!
Moving Company #2
Okay so $4,500 seemed outrageous to me. And it’s always good to get more than one quote. So Janene called a second moving company to get another quote. This moving company did not show up to our apartment. Instead, when Janene called, she had to describe pretty much everything we owned to someone over the phone. After spending a half hour on the phone, we got the quote back….
And the price we were quoted was….$7,000!!
Nope, absolutely not, there’s no way I’m spending $7,000 or even $4,500 to move 268 miles. Not happening!
Doing it Yourself
Alright so having a full service moving company take care of our move was no longer an option. It was time to figure out how to get this done ourselves. Time to start looking for a truck. The two major companies out there for renting moving trucks are Uhaul and Penske.
A friend of ours had recently used Penske and said that they were a really good deal. Penske can conveniently provide you a quote on their website. Both a 22 foot and a 26 foot truck were priced at $1,000 for a two day rental. Although $1,000 is still more than I’d like to pay, it doesn’t make my blood boil like the quotes from the moving companies.
Uhaul also provides quotes from their website. The 26 foot truck was priced at $368. Now we’re talking. Going with Uhaul!
Additional Costs
When you’re packing things up yourself, you’ll also have to pay for things like boxes and tape. We purchased both of these at the Uhaul store. The total we paid was $40. Also, fun fact, when you buy your boxes from Uhaul, they’ll buy back any boxes that you don’t use.
You may also need to pay for moving help. We got quotes for this as well and found that it was roughly $100 an hour. We were told that two people could load/unload a 26 foot truck in two hours, so we were quoted $400.
Luckily we had family help us with the move so there’s a sweet $400 saved!
You’ll also need to pay for gas for the Uhaul, which is a serious gas guzzler. I ended up spending $107 for gas to drive roughly 268 miles.
Making the The Move Out of State
Uhaul doesn’t tell you where you’ll be picking up your truck until the day before your move, which is slightly irritating. We found out that our truck was on the other side of Portland….ugh….We made the half hour drive over there and found out that they didn’t actually have the truck. Wow…even more irritating. Thankfully there was another location with a 20 foot truck, but it was yet again on the other side of town.
Uhaul took $50 off from the overall price for the inconvenience, so although it was a bit annoying, we saved a little extra money.
It took four of us around 3 hours to load up all of our stuff and we were on our way.
Yes, that is sweat on my shirt, and no I don’t know why I sweat on my left shoulder and middle belly only.
A note about how big of a truck you need. We have a 3 bedroom 1500 square foot house, and we were barely able to fit everything into a 20 foot truck. We also feel like we don’t have a ton of stuff.
After loading up the Uhaul, we made the drive up to Washington. Having never driven anything bigger than a normal sized truck, I had some reservations about driving a 20 foot Uhaul. But, it was actually super easy to drive. After dealing with some pretty terrible Portland and Seattle traffic, we finally got to Stanwood, Washington where we spent the night at a family member’s house.
The next day we woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed and continued on our way to Bellingham. Unloading the truck took about the same amount of time (3 hours) as loading. And just like that, we saved thousands of dollars moving to a different state.
The Move Out of State: Total Cost
We were able to cut our costs down from our original quote of $4,500 to $465. That’s some serious savings! After it was all said and done there were only three expenses to make our out of state move: A Uhaul truck, fuel for the Uhaul, and boxes & tape.
| Expense | Cost |
| Uhaul Truck | $318 |
| Fuel | $40 |
| Boxes & Tape | $107 |
| Total | $465 |
Have you recently made an out of state move? How much did you spend on your move? Were you able to find ways to cut costs even more than we were able to? Share your stories in the comments!
And check out my path to financial independence, and my fail safe plan on getting there.