Is there a way to read the full article? It's particularly interesting because Ive been considering moving from LA to somewhere else, perhaps Flordia.
Slightly off topic but while you're at it I'm curious if you have some advice. I'm a single guy in his mid 20s but dont really like the crazy party lifestyle or workaholic startup culture. Pretty downtempo, looking for a medium/large town or small city where I can have a sense of community and safety at night while still having decent restaurant, art, music options, thick forests nearby would be great too. Ideally somewhere that values charities / philanthropic work. Any suggestions?
I've heard that the Denver CO area is pretty hot right now. Most of the stuff you mention is pretty good there. However I also saw an article about some of the less ethical companies not hiring people there because of salary disclosure regulations. Property values are nuts, but not California nuts... yet.
Just left Denver. The job market is weak for software developers. The housing is not as expensive as California but the pay vs housing costs is probably worse. Remote gig is better than what is available locally. Expect some hostility if your moving in from CA.
I wonder how they're so consistently good at evading the Wall Street Journal's paywall, which is usually strict with no metered free limit and limited exceptions even for Twitter and Facebook shares. Probably the WSJ's website team would like to know too.
I wouldn’t personally choose Florida. I would think Austin, Portland, Denver, Tuscon, Asheville first. Many college towns across the country could give you the things you’re looking for, a big question is what weather you want.
An even better question: what place will continue to have the weather you want after climate change ruins the weather in wide swaths of the US in the next 5-10 years? I would not bet on Austin and Tucson, personally.
Therefore, we moved from the Bay Area to Minneapolis.
While I agree that climate change may have an impact on Tucson in Austin at some point, if your time horizon is the next 5-10 years, I think you'd be okay with either city.
Keep in mind that weather impacts include impact to water resources, and those resources are already becoming highly threatened in much of the west and southwest. That's only going to get worse, and will do so more rapidly than the overall climate impact.
Also, as we've seen in the Bay Area, even the early stages of climate change can have sudden and severe impacts. That's why much of California is now on fire 3-4 months out of the year. Those kinds of impacts will start driving people out of more cities quite soon, and the fear that comes with that will kill property values. I would not want to buy a house in such an area if I could avoid it.
California is a fire hazard because of anti-logging policies. Once they get rid of 90% of their forests, they will be fine.
If they don't, nature will find a way to get rid of those forests one way or another. It's an arid state that underwent a 300 year drought from the 1600s to the 1900s. There was a brief wet period that looks like it's come to an end, and a lot of trees need to go.
Unfortuntately blaming climate change isn't going to help resolve this, and the state seems insistent that the correct solution is getting rid of plastic straws and ICE vehicles even as they are surrounded by over a hundred million dead trees that need to be culled, and the situation is only going to get worse.
So I'd say it might be a better approach to stay away from states that blame all their environmental problems on climate change rather than their own policies.
I always wondered about those dead forests in the US. Like why aren't they pruned or cleared up or and used for making cardboard or something useful rather than looking like a bleak wasteland? But the ones I saw were in Oregon which gets a decent amount of rainfall from what I know? Even more puzzling.
Trees can die because of diseases in addition to droughts. But in California the main culprit is drought(1), and those droughts are not going to stop. It's an arid climate, prone to droughts, so if you don't cut the trees down during wet years, they will burn down during the dry years. So many decades of limiting clear cutting and controlled burns, combined with an unusually wet 20th Century, has turned the state into a tinderbox. It's estimated that the state would need to remove forests equal to the size of Maine to get back to a tinder load comparable to what it had prior to the arrival of settlers, when native americans routinely burned millions of acres each year in order to reduce the forest sizes. History will not look kindly on those who romanticized California's forests.
> California is a fire hazard because of anti-logging policies.
What anti-logging policies? The Federal government owns 57% of the forests. State and local governments own a mere 4%. 39% is in private hands. Of that 39%, 60% (~23% of the total) is owned by timber companies. The remainder (~15% of the total) is held by small landowners. Source: https://lhc.ca.gov/sites/lhc.ca.gov/files/Reports/242/Report...
The Federal government can do whatever it wants. The state has no land to log. And most of the private land is owned by... logging companies, who are definitely not anti-logging.
As with so many things in this state, the problem seems to come down to California's peculiar environmental review laws, which make it easy for outside interests to challenge and delay private projects, including, apparently, forest management projects. See https://www.redding.com/story/news/2019/01/30/california-cal..., which discusses plans to allow aggregation of review approval--not because reviews are costly, per se, but because each nominally independent review multiples the disruptive power of third-party challengers; and https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-31/californ... reporting on the enactment of those plans.
California really just needs to overhaul its environmental review laws; specifically, by removing or at least substantially diminishing the power to independently challenge reviews and review approval through protracted litigation. But that's politically difficult because it's what empowers NIMBYs and activist organizations of all stripes and across the political spectrum. Everybody hates NIMBYs up until the point they're asked to relinquish powers that would allow them (or their favorite organization) to block stuff they don't like. Note that for most challenges concern about the natural environment is just a pretense, which is why when it comes down to real support for reform you can't find any votes, either in the legislature or through referendums. Republicans in Orange County abuse the review process just as much as tree-huggers in Marin County. Any kind of reform is easily spun into a narrative about removing local control--relinquishment of a veto power each and every Californian possesses over the land management practices of every other Californian.
Yes, Federal environmemntal laws also don't serve California or other arid jurisdictions well. I often feel like much of our policies are written by people who think the rest of America is New England and don't understand the needs of arid climates. Just look at how little we care about preserving aquifers versus preserving forests to see the bias.
But in CA you risk being sued even if you have a timber harvest plan on Federal land, and then you need to deal with california district courts. Do you think the Ohlone, when they burned millions of acres each year, cared about whether there was a red-legged frog in one of the areas they were burning? But when you need to drag botanists everywhere to check on each tree and measure the girth of the tree and note all the species around it, it becomes hard to do what you need to do, which is get rid of hundreds of millions of trees every single year to keep these pests in check.
Then there is the issue of local government, which while it doesn't control a lot of land, certainly controls a lot of land around cities, which is relevant for safeguarding lives and property. Take a look at what it takes to cut down a tree in Marin county - god help you if the tree is near a stream or if it is on a lot someone owns
I live in San Francisco and am well aware of the insane amount of red tape and stiff penalties. I learned that the hard way after having to pay $3,000 in penalties and fees for removing a small tree the Friends of the Urban Forest helpfully planted directly atop my water line before we bought the property. (I was misinformed by a contractor about my ability to do so without first obtaining a permit.)
But these things aren't responsible for the systemic problems in this state. They're just what people are familiar with, and what drive the familiar refrains in communities across the world.
Zoning powers do contribute to systemic issues, but that's a different matter and varies locally. When zoning powers matter, it's when the local policies permit easy challenges. In both cases--zoning and CEQA--the fundamental problem is abrogation of Due Process--the orderly and equitable application of the law. Whenever a government makes a decision they're supposed to do so according to the commands of the law (including whatever specific statutes and regulations were promulgated beforehand), and do so in a strictly prescribed manner. Even if the fees are insane and the process slow, it's basically a fixed cost like any other. If the costs of a project pencil out, you proceed; if not, you move on. If too many people move on, it's relatively clear to policy makers and the electorate which hurdles (e.g. anti-logging laws) likely need adjusting. In theory the transparency and predictability make for a self-correcting system.
But when random citizens can interject themselves into the legal process, introducing arbitrary delays and costs, that's an entirely different matter. It creates tremendous uncertainty, much like if you had a capricious king making every decision. Time is money. Even if you know with absolute certainty the final verdict, if you don't know when you'll get that verdict you have no idea what your real costs are. Maybe you can placate the challengers w/ this or that concession or exaction. Either way, going in and until you get a court's final imprimatur, your risk is open ended. So not only do your direct costs increase, indirect costs like financing increase, and in general the uncertainty disrupts capital allocation, whether you're a homeowner or a billion dollar business. Every potential project, no matter how vanilla, turns into a high-risk, speculative venture.
Regulatory litigation over land use and development projects is thebiggest problem facing California, IMO. The impact of everything else is relatively small. Other jurisdictions have the luxury of debating substantive policy. California's basic pathology is on a higher dimension altogether--a regression in the basic operation of orderly society; a government of men, not of laws.
You can see how this plays out w/ companies like Uber. Uber operates in a market not subject to this pathology. And despite their market being otherwise riddled w/ the same degree of red tape and costs, they do just fine. Whether they obey the law or break the law, they know their costs. (Indeed, often breaking the law is the cheaper option.) They could make more revenue w/ fewer regulations, and if the regulatory burden were drastically increased they might need to quit (like they said they would if they couldn't operate their drivers as contractors), but they enjoy an intrinsically business-friendly environment relative to markets dependent on land use and development.
Flagstaff is not at all like this though. I've only driven through, but it's quite beautiful and has much more of a forest than the rest of Arizona. I don't know if it checks the other boxes this person is looking for.
Likewise, there are a lot of nice cities in Belgium that offer various balances of those requirements. I settled on Ghent, but Brussels has more nightlife and local forests at the cost of being dirtier and somewhat uglier. You might also like Liege, which is close to some excellent hiking and thermal baths.
Seconded, this is one of the loveliest parts of the country if you can tolerate the winter. Twin Cities and Madison are both incredibly pleasant, livable with lots to offer and surrounded by some beautiful forests and nature. Madison is a bit smaller and more of a college town.
That's what we just chose. We figure that climate change will probably make the winters at least slightly less severe. :) We hope. Perhaps that's just a dream.
Yes , I strongly recommend you Florida , central and north Florida have the best spots to live in. Sell your place in the west coast and move to Florida, is amazing. https://youtu.be/HeGbDRbodNQ
As someone who grew up there I'm a little biased but I think Portland, OR fits your needs almost exactly. It's a city people move to for the lifestyle - interesting culture, good food, beautiful nature nearby (including plenty of forests) with very reasonable work/life balance. In fact, that's exactly why my parents moved there from San Francisco in the 80's (although at the time the culture and food wasn't nearly as good as it is today)
You're not going to believe me, but if not, it's your loss: Richmond, Virginia. It absolutely ticks all of those boxes, and does so with an offbeat gusto.
If you're not scared of cold weather, some reasonable options might include Burlington, Madison, Duluth, Champaign, and Grand Rapids.
If you want something warmer, maybe Charlottesville or Knoxville?
If you don't mind insufferable heat then Gainesville is reasonable.
I may have miscalibrated what you mean by "small cities." For even smaller places, I'd choose some random upper midwest non-flagship college town (Winona? LaCrosse? Houghton? Valparaiso?).
From Florida. It isn't perfect, it works for me. I wouldn't recommend it for you. AMA, I guess.
But my honest assessment is that everyone wants the same thing. Give me a cheaper house, in a picturesque neighborhood that is all friends...walkable to shopping, and maybe the beach. And no crime. As my realtor put it sarcastically... 'oh you want a little farm in a safe area in downtown Miami...no problem!'
Doesn't exist bud, for any amount of money. Choose a few things you -really- value, and hyperfocus on that.
I looked at Florida earlier this year and decided against it. The “no income tax” thing gives people the wrong idea - it’s not a cheap place to live unless housing is cheap, which is no longer the case. Property tax is similar to the situation in California. The house is reassessed when sold and then you have small increases until you sell. Newcomers bear the brunt of it and long-time residents pay very little. And then homeowners insurance anywhere close to the ocean!!!
Absolutely. Housing wasn't ever 'midwest cheap', but cheap compared to coastal cities. That was generally offset by highish property taxes and insane house insurance rates. As an example, I remember looking up a house in Vero Beach selling for $720k, which I thought was a bit insane for the area. I found it last sold for $280k in 2012. That kind of growth is untenable for any area, and it has no signs of slowing.
Moreso than that, I would only really recommend most parts of Florida to introverts. The people are generally unpleasant and cold compared to anywhere else in the whole Southeast. I think it's a state full of transplants, and well, people with a big family or friend network are less likely to up and leave their home. So we get the loners and the hated, so to speak.
Why not Chattanooga, TN? Great municipal broadband, beautiful hills nearby and amazing forests all around. It has a very laidback vibe too.
I like the vibe in Rayleigh, NC too. Great tech scene, yet not as expensive as Austin/Boston. Smokies are 2 hours to the west, while the Outer Banks are two hours to the east.
Consider college station TX? Weather is still not ideal (occasional tornado and hail) but otherwise cheaper than Austin small enough not to have traffic but with all the basic needs you would have from a biggish city. Also Houston and Austin are both 2 hours away.
I was very pleasantly surprised staying in Oceanside, CA. Small town, amazing surfing and ocean access, biking, very walkable for groceries/food/coffee/bars, felt safe at night, and close enough to San Diego/LA for the crazier stuff.
Minneapolis. You might not like it when it gets down to -20F, but it's easily the nicest city I've ever lived in and clicks all your checkboxes. The first year I lived there I kept kicking myself for not having moved 10 years earlier.
^ I just asked a question about moving across the country and the scam-like feeling I get from every moving company that I've talked to. I can't read the full WSJ article because of the paywall, but the opening paragraphs are exactly the thing that I'm afraid of.
I’m driving 2000 miles to move across the country starting ... tomorrow morning.
After my experience moving in the opposite direction four years ago i opted to not hire a moving company, i bought a used cargo van instead. (2006 Ford E250 with 150,000 miles)
The moving service lost several of my boxes, for years i would occasionally look for something i knew i owned and come to the conclusion that it had been among the lost. The moving company was also hugely expensive. Lots of things were cheaper to throw away and buy new rather than pay to ship.
I spent about $7000 on a moving company in 2017, I bought a van for $8000 and at the end of the week i’ll still have a van.
Wait, if you could fit all your stuff in that van, you could have just shipped it all via ups? I consolidated whatever I had to 8 boxes (which would have taken a fifth of the space in that van) and mailed it via usps from TX to NY for 400 bucks. It can’t get cheaper and reliable than that?
With the trends in vehicle prices being what they are, they might be able to sell the van on the other side of the trip for more than they bought it for.
Vans don't hold value because they aren't that convenient to daily drive, don't project the image a pickup does while screaming blue collar in a way that makes all the potential yuppie buyers head for the hills. Also the used market is chock full of them because of how vehicle depreciation on taxes works and the fact that all the premium businesses that cater to rich people and moneyed industries generally try not to be seen driving run down 20yro vans.
Like every vehicle they reach a value floor based on condition.
There are notable exceptions, but I would agree in general. Most of those exceptions are vehicles with cult-followings for "vanlife". Like sportswagons, vanagons, westfalias, even sprinters and transits hold a higher value floor than they used to.
If anyone is reading this lamenting being priced out of the Sprinter market for their rad new van build, know that just about any van will do. Sprinters have an image premium, people buy them trying to not look poor while choosing to live in a van and that's bumped the price of the used market up.
>Sprinters have an image premium, people buy them trying to not look poor while choosing to live in a van and that's bumped the price of the used market up.
Yeah, rich people trying to not look poor while recreationaly doing something poor people do out of necessity tends to do all sorts of stupid things to markets when the goods in question are interchangeable between the use cases.
In 2004 we moved from California to New Zealand, since the kids' school years were 6 months out of sync we took a long 4-5 month road trip (or "geography lesson") .... meanwhile we shipped all our stuff ....
We got there on time, found a place to put the stuff, a rental while we looked for a house to buy. It didn't show up on the nominated date .... eventually (maybe a month later) we discovered that the shipping company and the freight forwarding company (both US companies) were having some business spat and all our stuff was being held hostage.
Eventually we had to pay up (effectively twice) and finally received our belongings, by that time we'd bought a house and were on the verge of moving in
Would love to here more. Aside from belongings, what was the process like to emigrate to New Zealand? What kind of work do you do? How did jobs work out?
I'm a kiwi, I'd lived in the US for 20 years, my kids have dual citizenship, my partner is a US citizen but grew up in NZ and so could claim residency easily. I've been working remotely from silicon valley for almost 20 years now
At the moment it's practically impossible to move to NZ, we're closed due to covid. When things open up again there's an online form you can fill out to see if you qualify (you can try it now but not actually apply)
It's not just shipping -- I am moving into a new apartment and every single furniture company is backed up like crazy. My sofa isn't expected until December!
People are definitely on the move. That, plus supply chain issues and raw materials shortages is my guess.
Late 2020, my mom had 14 pods (the size of a medium-sized shed) completely full of stuff from the consolidation of her stuff, her late parents, her late ex-in-laws, and some of mine when moving from Paradise CA (where the cost of insurance more than tripled, taxes were on the rise, cost-of-living increased, area looked like an awful moonscape due to predatory resource extraction (trees) without homeowners' consent, and the numerous idiots, crazy people, angry/aggressive/antisocial Trump supporters, paucity of decent neighbors or any humans, power outages for a week or more, fires and smoke, uncertain future rainfall and drinking water supplies, and she was partially-disabled in basically the middle of nowhere with deer and bear) to near San Marcos TX (I'm in ATX). Since it was the pandemic, I took her on a roadtrip in a reasonably-priced rental SUV with unlimited mileage. California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and the Texas.
Somehow, the movers managed to cram all of that into her new tract house. Over 600 boxes.
If you have any money or credit, get something on the periphery of or in Austin. Traffic will increase and it might suck more as it grows-up like a big city over time, but such properties will only increase in value out of s&d. For example, ATX has plenty of water (it's been raining like crazy) while the West and Southwest are mostly in megadroughts. Houston gets leveled by hurricanes regularly, so that's not a good place to be. The sweet spots to live in the US are now from ATX northwest to just about the border of the middle of eastern New Mexico. It's also the area with the fewest disaster risks and higher solar insolation. If water could be made plentiful there, it would be an ideal area to start a new megacity metro.
The whole notion of hiring movers and consigning all your worldly possessions to some unseen third party just strikes me as utterly bizarre.
Hiring a few extra helpers to load up the U-haul at one end, and then unload it at the other end, I can see! But I've never been more than the length of a van from my stuff during a move, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
I understand feeling that way about some precious possessions, but you can’t trust a professional mover with _anything_ in your house? Sounds like you might be in a minority with possible trust issues.
My assumption is that people do not have many friends nowadays to ask for help with loading that furniture. I am moving 25 miles away and there is no way I hire unseen 3rd party for that. Rent smaller van 2-3 times and do it relaxed by myself with some buddies and beer.
I have a van and not one friend has asked me to help them move. I am almost disappointed. I think people are too socially awkward to ask for help. We are all so independent for the majority of the time that we are out of practice of being neighbourly.
An "uber for friends who you can ask for favors" app could be a solution, but I'm not sure if your friends would be classed as employees or contractors.
There’s a big difference between moving 25 miles away and say 250 miles away (or more). Around town moves I prefer to do as you mentioned and just take my time making a few trips. But the few times I’ve had to move across the country has been a completely different affair.
It may be partly an age thing. There's probably no way I'm going to be able to corral 2 or 3 buddies to help me for a Saturday move for some pizza and beer. Although I've done so when I was younger. When I moved to my current house from an apartment about 30 minutes away, I moved all the smaller items, and hiked someone to move the furniture.
If you calculate in the worth of your time, its an easy choice. Its so much cheaper and faster to just get movers. Safer too if you're worried about your back.
The beauty of the mutually beneficial contract. If your stuff doesn't arrive they don't get paid, or perhaps even keep their job. That's their incentive to not steal your stuff.
This sounds like something more of a North American issue
In other countries it is pretty common to hire people to do your move. Even Japan does that. Or, don't bother with stuff and rent furnished places.
> all your worldly possessions to some unseen third party
You mean like those storage facilities where people lock (and abandon) their stuff frequently? Yes, I wouldn't ship valuable stuff with them, for the most part, your furniture and posessions are valuable (in practice) only to yourself.
And while help from friends is cool, they're not "free work" per se you know. And there's a limit. I'm not helping you take a 3-seater sofa down a flight of stairs, sorry.
But it's also pretty common here to think that if you can do something yourself, you probably should, and save the money. So most people think "I'll move my stuff myself" before either doing that, or looking at their stuff and deciding it's worth paying someone instead.
A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me to help move. My wife and I helped him, but afterwards she said that she was never doing that again and that next time we'd just offer them some money towards the movers.
I didn't argue at the time, but I enjoy helping people move. It's a lot of work, which means it's good exercise, and you spend time with your friend on something that matters to them.
Also, I'm not sure how I'd offer that money without feeling like I'm looking down on them. It feels like a hand-out, not help. So I'll probably never do this, unless they straight up ask for money for a move.
I understood helping friends move when we were students. Money is tight, it's the same city, and everyone moves at roughly the same rate.
I didn't understand why a friend with a good job wanted his friends to drag all his furniture across town and up 4 flights of stairs.
I'm invited to "help move" someone's stuff in September. He has booked movers, and says we'll drink beer while watching them unload, then have a party. That sounds like a good non-student version.
One major one being that people don't/can't drive a massive truck to haul their possessions and would rather leave it in the hands of a professional.
Another one being that they're not driving to the place they're moving to, but instead taking a plane/boat/train/foot/bike to get there. Unless they charter private planes or boats, or pilot them on their own, it's a little unfeasible.
I would have said the same. But then I moved last year at the beginning of the pandemic. There were restrictions already in place in Germany. Basically you were only allowed to meet up with a very limited number of other households. So asking my friends to help out would have meant to also ask them to break the restrictions - and possibly endanger their health. It was a pandemic after all.
So I hired a moving company. Boy, I will never again move myself. Best service I could imagine. Everything done in half a day. No bothering of friends and relatives. No heavy lifting at all for me. Everything insured, so if something breaks, it will be replaced. All furniture in place in the new appartment. And it wasn't that expensive after all.
I also know many people who have seriously hurt themselves while helping friends moving - shot backs, destroyed knees.
I guess it is fine while you are still young and poor, and have few possessions. But as soon as you can afford it, you should pay the professionals to protect your friends from harm.
My wife worked for a company who did this. The packers were dedicated packers, it's what they did. The movers were dedicated movers, moving boxes and large furniture. They were able to do things we wouldn't have thought of - protecting corners and doorways. They also had all the equipment they needed to move heavy/awkward stuff.
I'll personally never move myself again - too much stuff that's still good and would cost too much to replace. And I'm getting too old to want to move a 3BR (aka 1 br and two offices) worth of stuff again. Standing desks are fscking heavy.
Yup. I was moved professionally once and I was amazed at how fast and efficient they were. They damaged a lamp and about 100 lbs in free weights were misplaced for a few weeks (they compensated me then found them later), but that was the extent of any problems I had.
After our experience with a moving company: never again. We boxed it all. They grabbed boxes and larger items. They broke so many things. Took tires and seats off bikes that got lost, wrote our last name on some of our items, broke some furniture, and then couldn’t find a driver to get our stuff to our state for several weeks (3? 5? It feels like maybe longer but it was a couple years back). Tried to make a claim against them, but the way the contract was set up is that they could pretty much do as much damage as they could up to the deductible on the insurance and not have a thing to worry about. We thought of the $5k deductible as a guard against total loss (moving truck burns down or falls in a lake), but it was mostly a license for them to damage our stuff ip to $5k and force us to use their internal processes for claims which paid out a pittance compared to the damage.
I’ll pack and move all my stuff as long as I can. U-Haul ftw.
For a move across town, we've started hiring movers every time - we're at the age where we can't really justify asking our friends to spend an entire day sweating just for pizza.
For a move across the country? There is zero chance I'd trust someone driving an 18 wheeler; too many friends have had their possessions disappear for weeks on end in a warehouse. If I were under a restriction similar to yours, I would rather move the boxes into the truck myself, and pay for the extra time it would take.
Unforunately sometimes you just don't have any choice.
Any also unfortunately it can end in less than ideal circumstances: during our move from UK to Croatia 2 boxes went "missing", one I couldn't have cared less about (except for the cost of replacing it), the other box however had irreplaceable items contained within.
I guess that keeps the number of things that are irreplaceable small as possible; I need to be able to take them everywhere and keep my eye on them always (must fit on/in the nightstand of hotels). Closing in on 50, I finally managed to have 0 non-living objects I care about more than the hassle of ordering them again. Can recommend it; it is a great freedom.
i then go straight to the new location where things are getting unloaded
i even went on a 3 day trip once. i went to the airport and when i came back everything was moved to the new house.
this carried over to my cleaning lady. she almost always comes around when nobody's at home. the feeling that you get especially after a long trip coming home and everything's clean and tidy is priceless.
Not sure where you are from but Americans have mind boggling amount of stuff. There are people in my neighborhood who have 3 car garages attached to their house and yet they park their cars in the driveway because the garages are full of junk.
Yes, I'll ask a few friends to help load my stuff into a van. Then onto a ship. Then they will, out of the goodness of their hearts, spend 30 - 60 days on the ship while it sails around the world, help me unload everything onto a van at the other end, drive potentially five hundred miles or more from the port to the final destination, unload everything, and then finally travel back home. Easy! And I know I've never sailed a ship in my life before, but how hard could it be to sail a ship 15 thousand miles?
And before you say "Well, just sell it and re-purchase it!", I personally have so many items that I want to keep that are not re-purchasable, either due to being out of print, or due to being limited edition, that they would never fit into the checked baggage allowance I'd get on a plane.
That's crazy talk from my point of view. The last time I moved home, it was a half-mile straight line distance and I'd as surely pay for movers to do that as move all the way across the country.
Getting sufficient boxes, tape, packing materials; wrapping items and putting them into boxes; loading boxes via elevators into a van, reversing the process; taking away all the packing materials ... so stressful and physically strenuous.
I'd throw money at that problem all day and all night.
I guess it depends on how attached you are to your worldly possessions and how much of your move you want to coordinate. Last time I moved, I hired a moving firm to move my stuff, except for a few personal items we moved myself in the car. If the moving truck burst into flames, I'd have been happy to get the insurance money and would replace the furniture (I paid extra for all-risk replacement value coverage, not the 50 cents/pound coverage they included for "free").
I didn't really want to drive a U-haul that far towing the car, and worry about stuff getting stolen at overnight stops, we took the scenic route and spent over a week, we had to cut our trip short by a day when the driver called to say he was there already and would be delivering tomorrow.
It was a pretty painless process, we used a service that gave us a few quotes online, and the company we chose supplied all of the labor to load/unload and hired a smaller shuttle truck because the apartment complex we were moving into couldn't fit an 18 wheeler.
No real loss or damage, just a few scratches on a couple pieces of wood furniture, didn't even bother trying to make a claim.
We priced one of the storage pods (they drop a container off, you load it yourself, then they take it to your destination), but it wasn't much cheaper than the moving company and we didn't really had a convenient place to put the container.
I always used to move myself. I had a small Toyota pickup (hilux type) and my method was anything that didn't fit in the bed to allow me to move in one trip was tossed. That was my way of making sure I didn't accumulate too much junk.
Then I took a job halfway across the country and relocation was part of the deal.
They came to my apartment, packed everything up in a few hours, and put it all in a moving van and then drove my truck onto the van. I got on a plane and my stuff arrived a few days later and was put into storage until I needed it. The entire process was so seamless, that I'd happily do it again.
Living in a hotel for a month while my stuff was in storage really drove home the point that I really had no attachment to my "stuff." The only thing I missed was having my weights, so I got a temporary gym membership instead.
My partner and I moved from the US to Scandinavia in 2019. We decided to sell everything (house, cars, items) and only take the most essential and sentimental items with us as checked luggage.
We arrived to a new country with literally everything that we owned. That was a complex feeling that I hope to never forget.
We could have shipped our belongings, or placed them long-term storage, but the cost and complexity didn’t seem advantageous. It was challenging and emotional to sell everything. But we did and I think we are better people for having chosen to go through that experience.
I moved from Scotland to Finland, which involved a few suitcases on a plane, and a pallet of stuff going by sea.
We sold almost everything we owned prior to the move. The things that were carried were things like personal possessions with significant history or memories. Sounds like we approached it in a very similar way to you.
There are definitely moments where I think "I need to repair this pipe, I have a pipe-cutter in my toolbox", then I recall that the toolbox didn't get moved with us. But there aren't many things that I miss.
I made the move from Australia to Germany with little more than a small suitcase and a hiking pack. Looking back it's not something I would repeat.
You've got to be absolutely ruthless about what you sell or dispose of but seriously consider getting a pallet. It took me a long time to replace the stuff I sold for pennies on the dollar.
In the end I didn't find it particularly liberating. Though I think part of that is I went from living independently to relying on furnished apartments for a couple years. Living in a place that's not your own can eventually become grating.
I'd agree with that. We spent a busy few weeks getting basic things setup (sofa, table, tv, book-cases, etc).
Over time I started to get annoyed that because we'd bought things used with no real planning we had different colours/styles/designs all mishmashed together.
There was nothing wrong with any of the things we bought, but over time it did become annoying to live in such a state. I can imagine that if we'd moved into a furnished house we'd have had similar views and even less control about replacing things to match. Feeling more like a caretaker than living in "our home".
You need stuff. Screwdrivers, cloth hangers, spoons ...
I feel like just ditching it all and thinking of your self as unbound to earthly possesions is self-deception, since you just buy it again. It is acctually consumerism and spree shooping.
I think it’s an over correction from being too consumerist. You go from extreme to extreme. I see this with people who didn’t exercise, and now they are all in with the gear and the diets etc.
But I wish there were certain things and spaces that were able to be rented. I don’t need a drill all the time. Sometimes I need a workbench and more clamps.
There’s a lot of community level optimisation we could do.
You need them sure, but you don't need them to be _new_ screwdrivers, clothing hangers or spoons.
When moving, I sell leftover things to people who need them. And then when I arrive, I buy things second hand from people who no longer have a need for them.
Sure, it was the "moving with just a briefcase" I was commenting on mainly, not getting rid of superfluous stuff - which of course by definition you don't need.
I was thinking about a job opportunity that would involve a move recently and started to feel ridiculous when I realized how much of my apprehension had to do with all my stuff, much of which was boxed up and hadn't been touched for years. Then I read the Kondo Marie book and started doing it. An unexpected side benefit is you come to appreciate the possessions you do want to keep a lot more when you separate them out from ones you're keeping around "just in case" that you didn't really want.
My definition of home after spending 9 months in a van travelling in Europe and the US was something along the lines of: the place where I can keep things that I don't use very often but that feel important to my sense of self.
For me personally, one good example of that would be my table saw. I don't use it often (and I certainly did not need it while travelling). But owning a table saw is a part of what makes me feel like me (not to mention it's history in removing part of one of my thumbs). Having a place where the table saw can just be (i.e. not a storage facility) is for me part of what "having a home" is all about.
The same would be true of things like my cookbooks. In the age of the internet, I don't even use them much anymore, and I certainly would not take them with me on any bounded-term move. Having on a shelf at home is part of what makes home actually be "home" rather than just "where I'm living".
I am currently planning a move from Austria back the US and I have decided to sell or dispose of the vast majority of my belongings.
I did less of this moving from the US to Austria and when it came time to move this time I realised that I had a significant pile of boxes which, while opened, went unused in the twenty years I've lived here. I also have an extensive library which, while I read the books when I bought them, I have not returned to the vast majority of them.
I'm still sort of conflicted about this because it's provoking a lot of complex emotions that I was not particularly prepared for.
I've spent a lot of effort moving physical media around that, today, could be digital. I still have a ton of books, most of which I'll never open again, but I like to think that starting over in today's world I'd have much less of that sort of thing.
Maybe you are like me and maybe you are not but I made the exact same decision about my library for the exact same reasons almost a decade ago and while it was liberating for a few years to not have to box and unbox them, I still to this day get sad when I think about it and regret it. I never realized how attached I was to my library, to browsing the labels and briefly remembering the story and its connection to that part of my youth where I read it. Good luck with your move.
My experience may be relevant: 23 years ago my wife and I moved from a fairly large house near the beach in San Diego to a fairly tiny house in the mountains in Central Arizona. Getting rid of excess furniture was easy (I gave my Eames Chair and standing teak chess board to people I really liked), but I had a huge library. For many years I bought about one book a week from the San Diego Technical Bookstore. I got rid of about 60% of my physical books, so I only had two large bookshelves in my home office. After temporarily moving for work, I cut my books down to half a large book shelf, my wife using the other half.
The trick that worked for me was to just keep books that I had a strong emotional attachment to. Some books that I want to refer to I simply re-purchase as eBooks from Google or Kindle. Now half my physical books non-technical (Joseph Campbell, spiritual stuff, favorite literature).
I moved from the US to Norway in 2013. I brought nearly 2 suitcases and mailed a tea set. That's it. Everything else I gave away, and for the most part, I'm happy I did that.
But to be fair, I moved because I married a local, and they already had some stuff and I was able to replace other stuff as I wanted.
I did something similar, I didn't have any obligations, so I gave everything to my family/relatives, and just left. There have been lows and highs but it is also very exhilarating. Given, I was living in an island, so moving to anywhere else required airports, which I really dread, but the freedom is worth it. The Shengen Convention is probably one of the best things Europeans have done for the continent.
Don’t worry. You’ll never forget that feeling of showing up at the airport with all of (what’s left of) your possessions. My wife and I did that ten years ago. I remember those final hours in San Francisco and SFO as crisply as the birth of a child.
Emigrating is one of those adulting on steroids things. For those who’ve never done it, there no way to describe how intense it is: the highs, the lows, etc. Doesn’t matter if you are fluent in the destination language; it just is.
> Emigrating is one of those adulting on steroids things. For those who’ve never done it, there no way to describe how intense it is: the highs, the lows, etc.
For a long time I’ve wondered if something inside me is wired incorrectly, because I always hear this sentiment among my friends but I have never felt it.
Not on the first move from the US to China a decade ago, not on the last one from Hong Kong to Singapore a couple of years ago, and not right now as I think about going to Europe. It just has never struck me as a particularly big thing to move somewhere else.
I'm contemplating moving the family to another country and the biggest emotions I feel are connected to the financial freedom necessary to move.
I grew up in a low-income household, my grades weren't amazing, never got a stipend to study anywhere or go abroad, so being able to make this jump as a result of my own personal development is huge.
> being able to make this jump as a result of my own personal development is huge.
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean here - I got the same "I made this happen" feeling when I boarded that first plane.
The part that I can't easily empathize with is the idea that leaving home and going somewhere else represents some kind of cosmic upheaval of your life. I get it, academically, but I just can't put myself in that headspace.
To give an example, one of my friends back home is going through a quarter-life career crisis. For a variety of reasons I suggested that he take a couple of months off and spend it in Amsterdam - this wouldn't be any problem for him financially or harm his career progression, but it's just a bridge too far for him personally.
When I brought it up, he said "I wouldn't even know where to start."
What seems natural to me - grab your passport, book an AirBnB and a plane ticket - is for many people an emotionally overwhelming roadblock.
I think I do relate a little to you and also a lot more to the parent comment.
I've managed to emigrate due to my own personal development as well, my family didn't have the means for that and my home country's society is very geared to rich folks getting opportunities: in school, universities, time enough to go through a good higher education, etc. I had to fight against all that and other odds stacked against me and finally "made it" out.
At the same time I felt like you sometimes, people would be fretting a lot about how I'm going to move, all by myself, to a new country, continent, hemisphere, culture and language. And it never phased me, I knew I wanted to do it and the thought that someone would be even a little reluctant on doing it was a bit alien.
Nowadays I can empathise with both mindsets, I'm a bit stuck in the middle: moving out was definitely an amazing and enlightening experience over time but I didn't have that awe about it until hindsight kicked in. Most of the feelings I had when moving were all about excitement and getting to experience new things, people, places.
I share the feeling when boarding the plane for moving and thinking "I made this happen" but I feel it much more intensely and beautifully during moments in my new city (that I've been for about 6 years now) where I look around and realise "I'm here and it's surreal I've made it here". This is the feeling I love the most, and it's constant, since I moved I never stopped catching these moments.
I suppose it depends for how long. I do own a house and moved around a bit when I was younger. But I fairly routinely travel for 3 or 4 weeks and, while a couple months would be unusual for me, it wouldn't be anything remarkable and, work-wise, spending some of that time working from Europe wouldn't be an issue other than working some later hours.
> What seems natural to me - grab your passport, book an AirBnB and a plane ticket - is for many people an emotionally overwhelming roadblock.
I too find those 3 steps are pretty easy. The problem is that what comes next - "step out of AirBnB and go to a local restaurant" - is total mindkiller for me.
I’m the same way. Big international moves were never that big of a thing. Why? Because you can always move back, either a week later or a decade later. It’s not a permanent change.
I remember reading some research that suggested that for every year you were "away" from a place that had been home, it would take about a month to adjust when/if you moved back. This accumulated additively up to about 9 years, at which point, "home" would never feel the same again.
So in that sense, it can be a "permanent" change.
I've also found those numbers roughly accurate, even for sub-year extended travel. I spent 6 months teaching in Berlin, and it definitely took a couple of weeks after returning to feel normal again.
Did your family move around a lot as you were growing up? Anecdotally (sample size=2), people who lived in one home from birth to adulthood tend to be more "rooted" and more anxious about moving compared to "military brats" or others who moved a lot, who, when asked "What's your home town?" answer "It depends on what you mean by 'Home town'...".
Nope, I had a very stable home life and most of my family is firmly rooted (albeit in a few different places). I’ve just always had this restless part inside that wanted to get out into the world and was never particularly concerned with the concept of home.
You can also have this experience on a smaller scale without selling anything forever.
Ten years ago I did a 3 months backpack trip in South America with my girlfriend. We left almost everything at home, and during that trip all that mattered to us for the 3 months was in our backpack. Weight and volume was an issue. No room to bring objects unless they has a functional value too. We also experienced stuff being stolen (one camera with the digital pictures, one small bag) and this helps to think about your relationship to objects. That's the kind of life lessons that I did not expect from the trip.
My wife and I have been living like this for the last 10+ years; furnished apartments, short-term contracts, day-to-day essentials purchased locally and sold secondhand when we move.
At first I found it incredibly freeing - and I still do, mostly - but over time I’ve developed this almost nostalgic feeling for a home. Some place that’s filled with my own stuff where I can at least mentally ground myself. The idea of actually having one still seems almost overwhelming, but the concept sounds nice.
Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, or because my family is, or maybe an unsettled life just gets to you after a while.
I've been living the same way for much of the past 30 years. I don't want to completely give up my globetrotting lifestyle, but I crave a home base now. I plan to buy something modest to store things in and use as a primary home, but not so expensive that it precludes locking the doors for a year while I travel or live somewhere else.
If you don't mind me asking, what do you do that allows you to live this kind of lifestyle? Travelling has always been a big goal for me, but making it work with a stable job, and having enough disposable income to afford it is nigh on impossible.
Be careful to clear this with your company first. It can become a tax nightmare and could lead to termination if you’re working at a large organization that doesn’t have a presence where you want to work.
Even within the US, you can't legally just have a nominal postal address somewhere and then live wherever you want. States want their money. A friend of mine was telling me their company is going to start auditing business travel records to make sure that appropriate tax filings are made.
If you're not filing expense reports, will a company "know"? Possibly not. But it seems pretty precarious to expose yourself and the company at risk this way.
They will know through VPN logs - security groups look for anomalous login activity and will want to know why you’re logging in from Detroit when your work location says San Jose.
It also puts your manager at risk to do it - if you tell them, then they know it’s happening and have to do something about it.
People log in from all over the place because of business travel. I doubt that many companies are aggressively data mining where employees are located.
The second point is more significant. Even with almost 100% remote work it's hard to systematically hide where you are from everyone--especially if you do any business travel or expense reimbursement or are in a materially different timezone or climate.
It's true that things are difficult if you don't have primary residency somewhere, but I'm unaware of any obligation to actually stay at the primary residence, so long as you're not de facto residing somewhere else and avoiding legal residency there for tax evasion purposes. Like, you can have a primary residence in NY state, and travel all year long, and so long as you're not actually spending >6 months at a specific residence in another state, and are still paying your NY and federal taxes, I don't think there's any problem. Where things get sketchy is if you're trying to claim NY is your primary residence while living in CA for 9 months of the year. I'm not a lawyer though.
What I'm more familiar with is overseas residency and federal taxes. There are benefits to establishing legal residency outside the US, if you really do live and work outside the US. But then you have to be able to prove it to the IRS. If you can establish a bona fide overseas residency, you get substantial federal tax discounts (like ~$100k tax-free income), and don't have to pay state tax anywhere. But if you spend more than 33 days per year in the US, the burden of proof for establishing a bona fide foreign residency are higher[1].
Edit: update since I can't nest any more replies (to @dragonwriter) below: I sorta changed topics; my paragraph above about foreign residency is only relevant if you're earning foreign income. If you're a US citizen working for a US company, you're not getting away from taxes that way. But you can still save yourself from some personal obligation by setting up a company.
> you can establish a bona fide overseas residency, you get substantial federal tax discounts (like ~$100k tax-free income), and don't have to pay state tax anywhere.
That’s...not true. State income tax is usually due on dollars earned in the state — it used to be usually the union of (dollars earned by residents) and (dollars earned by work in the state) but a 2015 federal court decision required it to be one or the other, and AFAIK every state with an income tax has chosen the latter over the former because, basically, resident citizens vote in the state while citizens resident in other states, the most common nonresident citizen workers, don’t. So, a bona fide overseas residence doesn't have any effect on state income tax liability.
I'm not a lawyer (or an accountant) either. I believe the threshold varies by state but I don't know if there's anywhere that it's at a level where "normal" transient travel would expose you. I assume the biggest issue is people like consultants who may travel to a work site during the week for months at a time. (Or, as you say, someone who has a permanent address of some sort in a low/no tax state but actually lives most of the time somewhere else.)
I didn't mean to imply that I've been living out of a suitcase for 30 years. I move frequently (every 1-2 years on average; longest stint in one town for the past 30 years was three years); rent furnished houses more often than not; regularly take a year or more off between jobs; travel for months at a time every few years. I don't have or want a stable job (longest job was a little over three years).
I've never had a mortgage; I generally have zero debt (not even car payments); no dependents; usually no pets (I miss having pets, though). I don't own much of anything that I'm not willing to get rid of. I like the idea of having a home base and some permanent material items, but so far I don't like it as much as I like being flexible.
Working in tech offers the option of remotely working from anywhere. I've worked from home (or wherever) at a number of places, going back to the early 90s. I've still spent more time in normal office jobs than remote. Now that covid has permanently altered the landscape, I expect to do it a lot more.
There are unhealthy psychological aspects to all this. I avoid commitment, I feel trapped by obligations and responsibilities, I'm always thinking about what's next instead of being content with what I have. It's not for everyone.
Wow, you're actually the real life version of George Clooney's character in "Up in the Air".
I always thought it was an exaggerated portrayal, but it seems your ways are even more extreme than in the movie.
Such lifestyle is so completely foreign to me, that I'm fascinated. If an alien landed on my lawn tomorrow and said "I fart gold coins", I would have an easier time believing such a thing exists than your lifestyle.
How do you make friends? Can't employers sense that you're going to leave soon? Or is that specifically what they're looking for?
My life isn't glamorous, and much of my itinerant lifestyle has been lonely and depressing. A few times, I moved to cities where I had an established base of friends. A couple times, I managed to make new lifelong friends. Many times, I moved somewhere and never made good friends. It gets harder the older I get, but I think I'd have similar problems even if I hadn't moved as much. As I get older, the biggest challenge with friendships is that people my age have spouses and children. They've grown up and in many ways I haven't. I'm slowing down lately. I used to think I was exploring and trying new things, maybe looking for my place. Now I'm more aware of the negative aspects, like that I'm afraid of commitment, unwilling to settle, unwilling to accept that "this is the rest of my life". I'm still not ready to do that, but I no longer think that it's a universally good thing.
I job-hop more than most people, but it's not completely out of the ordinary in tech work. Many people stay in one area but still change jobs every few years. People used to occasionally question some shorter (1-2 year) job stints on my resume, but I haven't been asked about it in over a decade. I don't think that particular aspect raises eyebrows anymore. There are more tech jobs than people to fill them; it's a job-searcher's market and has been for a long time.
XNA has the worst TSA though historically. I’ve flown out of there over a dozen times and only during Covid times did they not practically want to do a body cavity search. It’s a combination of carrying too much electronics when I fly, with machines which give flakey readings with the swabs, to what seems like trainees who are strict by the letter when it comes to protocol, even when it’s inappropriate to do so. It’s a nice airport otherwise, especially where it’s located, but there’s only so many times you can endure that and not start to hate it.
If you travel enough that you find it to be a burden, just pay for prescreening. If you get TSA PreCheck, which is pretty cheap and easy, you'll get waved-through all the domestic stuff (plus you get to cut in line). If you're primarily concerned with international travel, then Global Entry is amazing. You won't even have to talk to anyone from customs or immigration, and you'll never see a line. Just walk up and slap your hand on the kiosk and off you go. Global Entry is also pretty cheap ($100 for five years), but is more of a pain in the ass to get; you have to schedule an interview, which will take a couple months, pass more-strict background checks, and visit an airport for the interview itself, but all of that will take less time than 1-2 stints in line at the JFK immigration queue.
I already have that, but neither help when they do an ETD swab on your bags and gets a false positive from the machine as I was describing in my reply.
We also have been living like this for about 6 years. The main difference is we have a home in a very low cost of living place where we can keep "home". It's cheap enough that we just spend a few months a year there, but when we're there we can work through those nesting instincts.
I live out of a single backpack and carry-on. Nothing I carry with me is precious. It could all be replaced in an afternoon with Amazon. I rely on furnished rentals and a couple of "stuff caches" in family closets and garages here and there, mostly with things that make life in that specific place a bit nicer. I've also "bought" family things that we get to enjoy while we are there. I own and also don't own a kayak that I use a few weeks a year and a surfboard I use for a few months.
Where do you get furnished short-term apartments at competitive price? Airbnb or something else? Living in furnished apartments has always been my dream (for one reason or another I moved eleven places in the last ten years, even if I’m not a digital nomad at all), but in the US you pay easily a 50%+ premium over a standard yearly lease for an empty apartment.
Not OP, but I’ve been doing this and found that contacting people on AirBNB and making an offer often (after a bit of haggling and false starts) will land a great place for not much more than a regular unfurnished rental. I think a lot of people get into AirBNB dreaming of big $$ but then realize how much work it is to coordinate dozens of different guests each month to maximize $$ and then ultimately like the idea of one renter for a few months to give some relief.
Also, the market of people specifically trying to rent furnished long term rentals is very small and they tend to aim to “executives” that are in town for a period of time before buying their own place. They charge accordingly. It is a big red flag for me to see someone or a company marketing their furnished rental as “executive suites” or similar
The availability of furnished rental depends on local market.
For example in France students need lodging during their studies. So France cities with universities have a strong unfurnished rental market. Of course that's mostly small surfaces.
Note also that in France taxes are different for owners when renting unfurnished.
I rented a room in my house on Airbnb for about two years. Each time a guest leaves we need to clean, switch bedsheets, restock amenities; creating overhead. If done efficiently it cost us 30 minutes of time which was still worth it, but of course we glad to get the occasional renter who wanted to stay for a week or month.
We don't move quite that often - we're usually on two-year cycles, so we just sign standard 1+1 leases. As one of the sibling comments said, the local market heavily influences the housing stock and we've always been in big expat-heavy cities where renting furnished places is pretty common.
It's also a thing to negotiate furnishing with the landlord, e.g. I'll pay an extra $100/mo in rent if you agree to do an Ikea run and you can keep it at the end of the lease.
If I need to be somewhere for <1y but >1m, I'll try to deal directly with AirBnB hosts but sometimes you just have to eat the borderline usurious serviced apartment fees.
When I've needed a furnished apartment, I've done it separately -- rented an apartment, then rented furniture separately. They'll come in and set up the furniture and come and pick it up when you move out.
Last time I rented furniture, it cost around $250/month to furnish a one bedroom apartment. They supplied all of the furniture, we supplied dishes and cookware.
For a longer term lease, it may be cheaper to buy cheap furniture from Ikea, but it's a lot more hassle, it's so much easier to let the rental company come in and set up, then take it all away when you leave.
My current place is rented unfurnished. So I had to buy a sofa so that I could actually entertain guests. Now I have a quite expensive large, sofa that may not fit into my next place and so I'll either have to hope that I can sell it or just end up giving it away to a furniture charity.
If you’re in the US, just put it on Craigslist. I have always been surprised about what people are willing to buy.
I had an incredibly damaged couch that I was ready to throw in the dumpster, and a young dude happily gave me $100 and picked it up with his truck, with no effort from my part.
I got rid of hundreds of items over the years on CL, and I don’t think I ever failed to sell any!
Why not buy a sofa second hand through a thrift store or charity shop? Costs tend to be lower and you can always donate it back when you're done with it.
OP didn't specify the sofa was new but this is a great point that I think about a lot. People talk about rescue dogs and make a big deal out of it but then refuse to buy anything secondhand. My "new" car has 190k miles on it and I love it.
I did this for 6 years and eventually craved a home as well. I agree that it's incredibly freeing in some ways, but every time you buy something you have to consider what happens when you move and that isn't freeing at all.
I like to be able to buy items for projects that enrich me mentally or physically. E.g. I recently bought a 3D printer, I buy kitchen tools to cook more interesting recipes. If I moved abroad now, I'd likely do a big clear out but also ship a lot with me.
What is the distinction? Is a kitchen gizmo a tool or a consumerist item? What hobbies use tools (e.g. building birdhouses) vs consumerist items (snowboarding)?
So I've had a 3D printer for about a year and I haven't gotten into it like I thought I would. Printed a handful of things (a N64 logo, a pikachu-naruto, a few other figures, a couple gifts) but that's about it.
Do you have any recommendations for resources that might get me into it more? I'm not aware of too much outside of just searching for things on Thingiverse.
My suggestion is to get into an unrelated hobby, and you’ll find small opportunities to print things useful to that hobby. Dice shakers or holders for Dungeon and dragons, pick holders for guitar, a case for my belay glasses for climbing, etc
Yeah, my rule of thumb for tools is that I don't get one unless I feel a strong need for one at least twice. This has worked out well. (Although I haven't come to grips with how to do "tool decay" so that they don't pile up. That's a problem for future me to deal with!)
I do have a board game hobby, and keep meaning to print out some card and token holder inserts for several of my games, but just haven't been motivated enough to do that. Good thought, though.
https://www.prusaprinters.org/ has some curated competitions for designs. I've printed several winners. (I have a Prusa, but it's obviously not required.)
I have an RSS feed on the most popular Thingiverse models.
The true value in a 3D printer lies in its ability to prototype a something that you cannot readily buy, something that only exists in your head.
Printing out random doodads from Thingiverse is not only wasteful but unfulfilling. You might as well go raid the dollar store toy aisle.
I would recommend spending some time and learning how to use a CAD software. Fusion360 is a popular choice, although with a bit of a learning curve. TinkerCAD is a good browser based option as well, excellent starting point for beginners.
I know the basics of Blender, which I use for pretty simple models for video game development also, but still pretty basic skills so far. I don't know how well Blender models translate into printable models.
Stuff breaks, see if you can fix it by 3D printing it. I’ve done cupboard handles, window shutter lock handles, belt connectors etc. Also creative objects are fun to do. Get some cheap callipers - they help out.
Design stuff in modeling software. Printing premade models is basically the same as just buying something on Amazon. You have zero control over how it turns out, and you can't iterate through adjustments. That being said, unless you actually have protects that require physical structures, it's going to be hard finding good uses.
To be clear, we do have some stuff that will move with us - coincidentally, one piece of it is a Prusa MK3S and most of the rest would probably be kitchen gear - but if we really wanted to we could get it all in one large checked bag.
> every time you buy something you have to consider what happens when you move
I actually enjoy this part of it. It forces me to be a more thoughtful consumer.
Have you moved around a lot? My partner and I have started doing this. Using airbnb for housing. The experience has been good so far but staying somewhere for less than 60 days seems to be too much moving. It's also made work/taxes a bit complicated since we both work remotely.
We operate on two-year cycles now; the first year or so we did the month-to-month digital nomad thing accidentally because our plans changed at the last minute, and you’re right that it’s just too much.
Taxes are another matter entirely since we do this internationally, but there’s a pretty well-developed network of expat accountants that make it as painless as it can be.
My wife and I did this for 7 years as well. I had a strict "one item in, one item out" rule where for each new item we acquired, one had to be let go. She was not fond of this rule, and I can't say we followed it fully, especially as her photography career (and the amount of equipment it required) took off.
Eventually, we bought a house. It felt like a huge shift from the vagabond lifestyle, but I don't regret it. We still travel a lot, and rent our house out on AirBnb while we are gone.
I think in the end, traveling full time was too much for me. Having a home to go back to and recharge before planning the next trip seems more balanced.
I'm beginning to understand this more and more lately. The problem is with owning things you can't just replace. This could be either because you can't afford to replace it, like many people's cars, or that it holds sentimental value. Those things end up owning you. If your car breaks down you have to fix it. If you break a cherished plate, you cry.
I'm 35 and I still use plates and cutlery that I took from my last student house I moved from when I was 25. The house had accumulated a ton of this stuff over the years and we'd put most of it away in a cupboard. I took some of the better looking stuff. I fully expect all of this stuff to last the rest of my life. If some disaster happens and they all break, I'll replace them with more generic plates and cutlery I don't care about.
I think if you can resist accumulating stuff you care about, you will be far happier. Don't attach sentimental value to things. They are just things. Don't buy things you can't afford to replace outright if you need to, like cars. They quickly become liabilities. A big loss of stuff can be very rewarding as it reminds you of what really matters in life. But you should resist getting into the same situation again.
As my parents are aging, I have bad dreams about what I will have to do with their home and all the stuff it contains as souvenirs are attached to each object as this is were I spent more than 20 years. I have my own home that is already full.
Pick out the most important / sentimental items. Have a yard/estate sale one morning. Hire some movers to load up and take a U-Haul to good will or a donation center, have the donation center pick up large furniture, rent a dumpster for the rest. This can be done over the course of a few days or a week if you want more time for any of the steps.
It’s better if they start doing it now, and clarify what is essential and “the important stuff they’d grab in a house fire” in step one.
I reduced my cutlery to 1 cup, 1 spoon, 1 fork, 1 knife, 1 pot and 1 pan. It's amazing how much easier doing the dishes became when you only have one of each.
When people do these moves between countries and take their belongings (unlike the OP), do they have to pay tax or tariffs to the destination country? Or prove that they paid tax on their belongings already?
Often there are allowances for "reasonable" amounts of personal possessions but sometimes they have to be old enough. I hear some places don't have any allowance at all. And sometime specific things are too much hassle/cost to do at all (e.g. cars).
I did the same five years ago (different locations). The one thing I miss was the blankets I had before moving, I just have never found great replacements. Is there anything you realized was harder to replace than you thought?
I did that moving from US to Switzerland for a postdoc with two children age 2 and 4. We did leave a tote or two of sentimental items at a relative's house. Good times haha.
Edit: And though stressful, it gave me a different perspective of, for instance, people who walk thousands of miles from Honduras with children.
I know this feeling, having moved from the US to Austria, where I lived for 3 years, and moved back, basically selling everything I had twice.
There's a shift in perspective with possessions. I'm less attached to anything, but at the same time, I appreciate the nice things I own more. And there's definitely a lot more, stronger opinions, on what I want, and what should be a part of my "home".
A bunch of opinions have sharpened unpredictably. Like, I hate grass. I don't want something I have to build an irrigation system to maintain. I like owning a single family home, but I don't want it do be this 'castle' where I'm totally isolated from my neighborhood. I hate big garage doors in front. The front of the house is for the doorway and a porch. The car has its place to the side.
Had I not had to rebuild from scratch a couple of times, not sure I'd be this focused.
Moved from Bolivia to Miami with wife and kids with all I owned as well.
I recall that time as oddly freeing. I had my pick of how to build my new home. New beds, dining tables, the works.
We started out with salvation army stuff because we didn't want to commit to expensive things without even knowing the marketplace here. We were TRULY new to the US. Didn't know a single store except Walmart (from what we saw online).
Now we have a very comfortable life but some days I do wish I could light my belongings on fire and start fresh.
These days I see things I purchase as liabilities. I bought this super nintendo classic, oh now I have to take care of this thing. There it sits collecting dust. I don't buy many knick-knacks anymore.
I just want to put out a viable option: ship your stuff via usps. You could probably hire help to pack stuff under your supervision, and get movers you can work with to take them to usps and ship. I’m darn sure it’ll cost less than moving. Also gives you a chance to consolidate!
IIRC, the USPS puts both size and weight limits on their deliveries. You'll do OK shipping trinkets and small electronics, but you'll have to do something about the furniture and appliances (if you are taking the last). You also have a list of things you might have issues shipping (chemicals, for example)
They don’t like to advertise this, but (incredibly heavy) books, magazines, and a/v media can be shipped at absurdly cheap rates via as “media mail.” It is my understanding that every bookstore in America would instantly fold if this service were discontinued.
If one were to go cross country and didn’t mind ditching their furniture, media mail plus a few suitcases full of clothes could make for a very cheap move.
I got rid of my huge bookcase of books I was carting around the country and just got them all for kindle. It was amazing how may boxes and how much weight it all was, and all to carry information, which weighs nothing. I take pictures of important documents before trashing them.
I sold a bunch of books to someone in Hawaii. It was a 40lb box and cost $10 to ship from the East Coast. Took 3-4 weeks to get there. Crazy cheap. Would have been >$100 if not media.
That said, I've had more issues with Media Mail than other services. The final straw was when they lost a large box of books I sent to my nephews, except they found all the box parts with the information to send back to me. I filled out a report with a list of the books (didn't have pictures, unfortunately) and they never found them. No refund, of course.
UPS and other parcel carriers are overpriced for this quantity of stuff.
Depending on volume you're better off doing pallets and LTL freight or buying a shipping container or end of life dry van and paying someone to pick it up and drop it off.
We live in a weird time though. I mean given how crazy production has ramped up, I never would have thought we'd end up in a chip shortage. I also would have thought that last year we'd end up in a financial crisis. I mean we are, but not the stock market. I'm sure we'll see a collapse / correction again in the near future though, especially housing prices on this side of the pond are insane.
Part of the reason the demand is so high is that no one wants to get into a career that looks like it may get automated in the next 25 years. I know a lot of youngish drivers who got out after 5 years because they saw the writing on the wall.
It's not really such an investment in that career, though. The pay is insane for a few weeks of training. They could make money while it lasts, and then move to other low-qualified jobs. If you really make a career out of it, like transporting large loads or dangerous fluids, then it won't be automated in our lifetimes anyway
The pay is not insane compared to the costs (being away from home and missing time with friends/family, morbidity/mortality due to collisions and sitting all day, volatility of income).
Ha, did it twice in three years. From India to Netherlands we shipped about 20% of our belongings. But from Netherlands back to India we just took 6 check in luggage with us in the airplane. We setup everything from ground up in India. It was much better than shipping, unpacking and setting it up.
As someone who is non-American, it seems much simpler in the US just to buy other stuff (new/used) than just cross country hauling of your entire furniture.
I'm sure the essentials can be packed easily.
I think many people are very attached to their furniture. I know I am. It took me years of scouring Craigslist to get the deals I did on my Room & Board furniture. It’s such an expensive brand that I am much better off moving with it than selling it and trying to find the pieces again. (It’d take years, again...)
I don’t presume everyone is this way but I do presume many people might have an attachment to their collection of furniture. If it’s all worn down IKEA handmedowns then it might make sense to not move with it. I certainly see that with college students but after that, many people like what they got and it’s a large cost to give it up and buy new.
And many people don’t like to buy used furniture too - I am someone who is fine with it.
I mean international moving in Europe already costs a small fortune. With 'starter' furniture being as cheap as it is nowadays - thanks ikea - you can buy a whole set of furniture for the same amount as it would cost to move your existing stuff over.
I mean long-term I hope to be able to replace pieces of furniture with non-Ikea stuff. I was really trying with my TV cabinet, tried to get a unit with plenty of storage, but it was all... flimsy-looking, small and inconvenient. Finally bit the bullet, sat at a PC at Ikea and designed a very nice cabinet around a 60 inch TV.
I mean I only got the TV two years later, but it's the thought that counts.
I hope this isn't received the wrong way, but did you notice you started each paragraph with "I mean"? It is your choice of course, but in my opinion your text could live without those two words.
I read his comment without issue and then read yours and was like "what is this guy talking about". Then I reread his comment and it stuck out like a sore thumb. Even more interesting, I didn't decide to respond to your comment until after I had moved on and noticed a few more comments by the same author in other places that my mind refused to filter out the "I mean" start of. I think its like when someone points out a sound you didn't hear and then you can't filter out that sound anymore. Crazy minds we have.
Had a lecturer that made a specific clicking sound at the beginning of every sentence, never had any problem with it. Until a classmate pointed it out, made it almost impossible to follow this man's lectures afterwards
It's frustrating for sure. It seems to be part of our hyper consumerist culture. We always must have "our" treasures and moving always seems to involve a lot of buying stuff for that particular space that then doesn't seem to fit in the next one. The while thing makes moving a huge ordeal. To opt-out of the whole thing, I have had good luck finding medium term furnished rentals meant for vacation or Airbnb.
I was in Europe moving from one house to another and I asked if we would take some small thing we bought with us and was told by my friend, "It belongs to the house." That really helped change my thinking on this, that things belong to the spaces they were purchased for, not to us specifically.
It’s not a Europe vs US thing. For example in Germany it’s still somewhat common for an apartment rental to come with no kitchen and barely any fixtures and you have to supply your own. That would be considered a step too far in the US.
Most of the Asian apartments are furnished, at least it held true in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. There are unfurnished ones of course, but for most properties open for foreigners, they come furnished.
The one doesn't follow from the other. The market norm in Hawai'i (part of America last I checked) is that houses are bought and sold with their contents included.
The furnished apartments I looked at in Asia were pretty sparsely furnished. You still had to have your own bedding, towels, more kitchen stuff if you cook, not to mention your own clothes, papers, etc.
So yes, you can avoid moving furniture, but you still have “stuff”.
What sjf said. Your non-furniture possessions are easy to move. The difficult part of moving is moving or buying furniture, and it's also totally unnecessary.
The last time I moved into a new apartment, I arrived with nothing but a suitcase and a backpack; a mattress ordered from Amazon, with some blankets arrived that same day. Over the course of a year, every piece of furniture arrived by post and was unpacked in my living room (which was a lot). Four years later I moved, with nothing but a backpack and a suitcase again. Most of my belongings were packed into a shipping container and donated to family in Africa. Seeing pictures of their apartment is uncanny, it feels like my apartments 'soul' lives on.
Not entirely sure, since the shipping part was not organized by me. I did give relatives about 1000$ to cover any necessary expenses, which would have been 1/10~ the cost of stuff being shipped. In the end that worked out well, but it took about 7 months from packing to shipping for everything to arrive at their front door. Half of the time waiting was spend, wrapped in a warehouse prior to it being packed into a container.
International shipping can be really, really cheap (not currently, but historically) if a) you aren't in a hurry and b) nothing is particularly temperature or climate sensitive.
This makes me think of the idea of losing one's phone or laptop and not worrying because the hardware was super cheap, and your data is completely safe and transferable.
But for the idea to transfer over to personal belongings, there would have to be some sort of scanning of each personal item in one's home, to the point that AI and 3D printing could print off a perfect copy.
Let's imagine a good friend dies and all you have to remember him is a handmade gift he gave you on your last b-day. Your home catches fire but you can print off a perfect copy. Do you care? And how much do you care?
This is the approach taken in Star Trek it seems. Very few personal possessions in general. Anything you want can be replicated for free. Obviously on the starships, personal furniture isn't encouraged though.
Probably enough that I wouldn't actually make a copy. A perfect copy still isn't the original item.
With that said, the overwhelming majority of belongings don't actually have that kind of sentimental importance. Generally somebody's going to like, say, their favorite chair because it's that model of chair, not because it's that specific chair, and it's only going to have special importance if it's otherwise impossible to replace (thereby permanently losing out on the favored qualities of the favorite chair).
I have a habit of taking a picture of something sentimental before getting rid of it. It's not that I wish to print it back out again, more that if I ever feel go need to scratch the itch down memory lane I'll have something to look at. Seems like a good compromise vs toting around an ever increasing pile of precious garbage. Since I've been playing with a VR headset, I've been sort of wishing there was a way of easily take a 3d scan or volumetric photo so I can revisit a place or item when I want to.
Been moving 5 times in the last 5 years and this is what happened every time (mind you most of the time I was moving continent). This last time I just moved apartment in SF but still sold everything to be able to travel in between. Packed the car with everything we could and threw what we didn’t manage to sell.
I gotta say, it’s getting tiring to buy furniture (especially with the IKEA shortage) but the upside is that you get to get rid of a lot of the things you didn’t really need every time you move.
Also in SF, for some reasons, second hand is really expensive so you can sell stuff for the same price or even more sometimes.
Is there a service you used to do that? If so, could you please share?
I am thinking of moving out in about a year and I would love to donate my belongings to someone in less-developed world instead of donating it to places like Goodwill (and I'm afraid that they'll send most of my donation to landfill)
One reality of moving abroad from the United States (emigrated in 2011): keeping an American phone number and mailing address (with a relative) for all of the antiquated business and government relations that cannot accept foreign equivalents. While you can technically forgo having this communications mooring, you’d be nuts. Try managing the credit reporting bureaus without this. Try keeping a driver license (in case the new domicile doesn’t provide reciprocity). It goes on, and it’ll bite you in weird ways when you can’t afford it to.
I have been using Google Voice for years and it has been ideal for this. I have also heard of T-Mobile digits that does the same thing and since it's also a traditional phone number, it shouldn't have the SMS 2-factor verification issues Google Voice sometimes does. Google Fi might also be a good alternative, but I'm not sure how different it is from Google Voice in practice.
I’ve always used Twilio with a custom twiml app that redirects SMS and voice calls. It can be little fiddly to set up (and it costs money, obviously) but once it’s running it just works.
I would add that I had the same problem as a foreigner moving to the US.
The number of services (both public and private) that require you to have a US phone number was both surprising and impressive.
I've moved cross country a few times, and for the most part it always makes more economic sense to throw everything out and buy it again.
Now I'm planning on traveling abroad and I'm realizing a lot of my junk is only holding me back. Seriously it's just stuff, you can go to a place called stuff Mart and buy more of it. But if you're thinking oh maybe I won't move after all because I'll have to buy more stuff you're cheating yourself
I didn't move cross-country, but moved almost up the entire west coast, and hiring a moving company cost around 10% of what it would have cost to replace all of our furniture and other possessions. We came up with a pretty accurate replacement cost value to make sure we got the right amount of insurance coverage.
Plus it's a extra hassle to get rid all your stuff -- you need to deal with flaky Craigslist people, or try to donate it and then hire someone to haul away what the charities won't accept. "What do you mean you won't take this couch because of that small tear you can't even see!? I was literally using it today!"
When my parents emigrated from the UK to New Zealand (in the seventies) they took their car with them. We came back a year later but they did make a profit on the car.
I lost all my stuff I'd left in a US basement when I couldn't come back and my visa expired. The biggest loss were my college notebooks. It feels like I've lost part of my brain
The problem with scanning is that many of us have a lot of paper most of which we will never look at again. It's probably different today when a lot of things are "born" digital. But for me to scan all the paper I have that I might want to glance at someday would be an enormous undertaking--yes, including school notebooks. In practice, you have to be very selective about what you scan.
If the paper is all individual uniform sheets in good shape and you have access to a commercial feeding scanner, it's a lot easier. In my experience though, scanning old piles of paper is rarely like that.
At that time, I became homeless and had to get a job asap in a country where I had few ties. I did manage to transfer ownership of my US car to a friend. I felt more uncomfortable about my car sitting somewhere (which could result in legal problems) than my stuff getting lost, so that took priority. After a few years, I also exchanged my BS credits for an associate's degree. But my notebooks are forever gone
I threw away all of my college notebooks as soon as I graduated. But I can definitely understand some of your feelings here, too. I dutifully held onto them for four years, thinking there may be a time when I’d want to look back on them. At the end though, realizing I’d never looked back on them once, I just threw them away.
I’m sorry you never got to make that choice either way though. I can’t imagine how hard that is.
Thank you, I know this is a first world problem but I do get emotional about this. Especially every time I have to read something scientific and I realize I can't understand it without my notes/cheat sheets/calculator programs
If it makes you feel any better. I kept that junk too for years (25+) after graduating (3 moves). They sat in a box doing nothing but taking up space in my home. On my last move I took what textbooks I could to the library (they did not want it, they already have 8 copies of that sort of thing). My notebooks I would open each one up and realize I had 0 idea what my notes meant. Like no clue. I could see oh this is a calculus class, but what the notes meant out of context of the class and where in the book it referred to? Nothing. I tossed them. I had forgotten they even existed until I opened the box up and sighed in a sarcastic way 'oh good more books that I never use'. The only ones I kept was some ideas I had for programs that were well fleshed out and documented nicely. Plus some nice books on algorithms and graphics. But most of that you can get on the net. Even now 25 years later? That is pretty much out of context of what I was thinking then. I would probably start completely over, notes and all.
I purged about half of my stuff a few years ago. I still have a huge pile of junk. On my next move more of it is 'going away'. It is in the way and takes up space.
It does make me feel better :-) My mind works in a way that when I see my hand-writing and specific note-taking style, ideas come back quickly. I'm the kind of person that uses 4 different colors to take notes and has special signs that only I understand everywhere (for example, I have a sign that means "continues in next second page")
I also have terrible memory, so I instinctively take notes for almost everything. And I periodically review them. I do 1 week reviews, 1 month reviews, 1 year reviews, etc. All my notebooks are nicely stacked. I guess I kind of live in my notes
Fairly typically for an ex-academic, I had accumulated a lot of books over the years, and I moved a lot. After one international move I realized that my books cost more than $5k to move, including boxes that hadn't been opened since the previous move.
A cull happened before the next one, and pretty much every one since.
What is more funny for me is my parents. When I first moved out they 'helped me out'. Sure some of it I still use to this day. But a good portion of it was them getting rid of their stuff.
Another lesson I learned was not to be too quick to take other peoples left overs. I was really bad with computers for a bit on that one. A few trips to a local computer recycler later and that issue was cleared up. That is not even moving international that is this junk is intheway of things I do use. What was a little sad was one large stack of game magazines (2 decades worth). Like 2-3 weeks after I dumpstered the things someone on a forum was asking if anyone had them! doh! I am right now looking at a dumb period where I was buying lots of lego. What am I going to do with that? I have culled the 'easy' stuff. Now it is the 'what am I going to do with that' sort of items... When the reality is I do not really want to spend any more time at all on them. So that junk sits in boxes...
I literally JUST donated the last of the textbooks I was keeping around. I looked up the prices on Amazon and some of these textbooks are still worth a lot of money (or at least offered for sale for a lot of money). This means I can document value for a nice tax break. One of the textbooks was listed for hundreds of dollars.
I kept a couple of the more interesting ones but overall I think I came out ahead with clearing out some dead weight and getting some value.
Donating an item is essentially a net of whatever the value of the item x your marginal tax rate. Definitely worth it over the hassle of selling it yourself, AND puts it into the hands of someone who needs it more.
Moving is one of those things you need to do yourself if you want it done right. Sure you can outsource and get passable results but it's never gonna be as good as if you'd just done it.
Edit: Based on the popularity of this comment and absence or replies I suspect I may have accidentally struck one of those nerves where people don't like what I'm saying but can't come up with a good argument why it's wrong. If people disagree with me I'd be interested as to why.
I agree, if you live in an apartment and don't have much stuff. I can't imagine people moving stuff from an American style 4BR house when they have kids, all on their own.
You might care more about your stuff but you also probably know less about how to do it well (like pretty much any other pro vs DIY decision). Plus it's a tremendous amount of work.
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[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 252 ms ] threadSlightly off topic but while you're at it I'm curious if you have some advice. I'm a single guy in his mid 20s but dont really like the crazy party lifestyle or workaholic startup culture. Pretty downtempo, looking for a medium/large town or small city where I can have a sense of community and safety at night while still having decent restaurant, art, music options, thick forests nearby would be great too. Ideally somewhere that values charities / philanthropic work. Any suggestions?
I will miss the sking and mountains though....
I wonder how they're so consistently good at evading the Wall Street Journal's paywall, which is usually strict with no metered free limit and limited exceptions even for Twitter and Facebook shares. Probably the WSJ's website team would like to know too.
Edit: An even simpler solution:
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/blob/b5...
They might just run that extension actually, since it's popular and regularly updated.
Therefore, we moved from the Bay Area to Minneapolis.
Also, as we've seen in the Bay Area, even the early stages of climate change can have sudden and severe impacts. That's why much of California is now on fire 3-4 months out of the year. Those kinds of impacts will start driving people out of more cities quite soon, and the fear that comes with that will kill property values. I would not want to buy a house in such an area if I could avoid it.
Decades of mismanagement led to choked forests — now it's time to clear them out, fire experts say.
“Forest management is a lot like gardening. You have to keep the forest open and thin," said Mike Rogers, a former Angeles National Forest supervisor.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-l...
If they don't, nature will find a way to get rid of those forests one way or another. It's an arid state that underwent a 300 year drought from the 1600s to the 1900s. There was a brief wet period that looks like it's come to an end, and a lot of trees need to go.
Unfortuntately blaming climate change isn't going to help resolve this, and the state seems insistent that the correct solution is getting rid of plastic straws and ICE vehicles even as they are surrounded by over a hundred million dead trees that need to be culled, and the situation is only going to get worse.
So I'd say it might be a better approach to stay away from states that blame all their environmental problems on climate change rather than their own policies.
(1) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-californias-dr...
What anti-logging policies? The Federal government owns 57% of the forests. State and local governments own a mere 4%. 39% is in private hands. Of that 39%, 60% (~23% of the total) is owned by timber companies. The remainder (~15% of the total) is held by small landowners. Source: https://lhc.ca.gov/sites/lhc.ca.gov/files/Reports/242/Report...
The Federal government can do whatever it wants. The state has no land to log. And most of the private land is owned by... logging companies, who are definitely not anti-logging.
As with so many things in this state, the problem seems to come down to California's peculiar environmental review laws, which make it easy for outside interests to challenge and delay private projects, including, apparently, forest management projects. See https://www.redding.com/story/news/2019/01/30/california-cal..., which discusses plans to allow aggregation of review approval--not because reviews are costly, per se, but because each nominally independent review multiples the disruptive power of third-party challengers; and https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-31/californ... reporting on the enactment of those plans.
California really just needs to overhaul its environmental review laws; specifically, by removing or at least substantially diminishing the power to independently challenge reviews and review approval through protracted litigation. But that's politically difficult because it's what empowers NIMBYs and activist organizations of all stripes and across the political spectrum. Everybody hates NIMBYs up until the point they're asked to relinquish powers that would allow them (or their favorite organization) to block stuff they don't like. Note that for most challenges concern about the natural environment is just a pretense, which is why when it comes down to real support for reform you can't find any votes, either in the legislature or through referendums. Republicans in Orange County abuse the review process just as much as tree-huggers in Marin County. Any kind of reform is easily spun into a narrative about removing local control--relinquishment of a veto power each and every Californian possesses over the land management practices of every other Californian.
But in CA you risk being sued even if you have a timber harvest plan on Federal land, and then you need to deal with california district courts. Do you think the Ohlone, when they burned millions of acres each year, cared about whether there was a red-legged frog in one of the areas they were burning? But when you need to drag botanists everywhere to check on each tree and measure the girth of the tree and note all the species around it, it becomes hard to do what you need to do, which is get rid of hundreds of millions of trees every single year to keep these pests in check.
Then there is the issue of local government, which while it doesn't control a lot of land, certainly controls a lot of land around cities, which is relevant for safeguarding lives and property. Take a look at what it takes to cut down a tree in Marin county - god help you if the tree is near a stream or if it is on a lot someone owns
https://www.marincounty.org/-/media/files/departments/cd/pla...
But these things aren't responsible for the systemic problems in this state. They're just what people are familiar with, and what drive the familiar refrains in communities across the world.
Zoning powers do contribute to systemic issues, but that's a different matter and varies locally. When zoning powers matter, it's when the local policies permit easy challenges. In both cases--zoning and CEQA--the fundamental problem is abrogation of Due Process--the orderly and equitable application of the law. Whenever a government makes a decision they're supposed to do so according to the commands of the law (including whatever specific statutes and regulations were promulgated beforehand), and do so in a strictly prescribed manner. Even if the fees are insane and the process slow, it's basically a fixed cost like any other. If the costs of a project pencil out, you proceed; if not, you move on. If too many people move on, it's relatively clear to policy makers and the electorate which hurdles (e.g. anti-logging laws) likely need adjusting. In theory the transparency and predictability make for a self-correcting system.
But when random citizens can interject themselves into the legal process, introducing arbitrary delays and costs, that's an entirely different matter. It creates tremendous uncertainty, much like if you had a capricious king making every decision. Time is money. Even if you know with absolute certainty the final verdict, if you don't know when you'll get that verdict you have no idea what your real costs are. Maybe you can placate the challengers w/ this or that concession or exaction. Either way, going in and until you get a court's final imprimatur, your risk is open ended. So not only do your direct costs increase, indirect costs like financing increase, and in general the uncertainty disrupts capital allocation, whether you're a homeowner or a billion dollar business. Every potential project, no matter how vanilla, turns into a high-risk, speculative venture.
Regulatory litigation over land use and development projects is the biggest problem facing California, IMO. The impact of everything else is relatively small. Other jurisdictions have the luxury of debating substantive policy. California's basic pathology is on a higher dimension altogether--a regression in the basic operation of orderly society; a government of men, not of laws.
You can see how this plays out w/ companies like Uber. Uber operates in a market not subject to this pathology. And despite their market being otherwise riddled w/ the same degree of red tape and costs, they do just fine. Whether they obey the law or break the law, they know their costs. (Indeed, often breaking the law is the cheaper option.) They could make more revenue w/ fewer regulations, and if the regulatory burden were drastically increased they might need to quit (like they said they would if they couldn't operate their drivers as contractors), but they enjoy an intrinsically business-friendly environment relative to markets dependent on land use and development.
FWIW, here's an example of some anonymous person(s), operating through an unincorporated association, using CEQA to prevent controlled burns in Mill Valley: https://www.marinij.com/2019/12/07/dick-spotswood-lawsuit-to...
Comparing it to where I have lived I think for heat and humidity, it is milder than central Texas / comparable to Rhode Island
Just comparing heat, it is milder than summer in the Central Valley/SoCal. SoCal heatwaves are oppressive.
Air quality in Minneapolis goes down when there are fires in the West, but it is obviously worse for us folks in the West.
If you can handle or even enjoy the winters, it's about as perfect a place as you can choose.
Madison, WI also for something a bit smaller, but similar vibes.
If you want something warmer, maybe Charlottesville or Knoxville?
If you don't mind insufferable heat then Gainesville is reasonable.
I may have miscalibrated what you mean by "small cities." For even smaller places, I'd choose some random upper midwest non-flagship college town (Winona? LaCrosse? Houghton? Valparaiso?).
No Knoxville. Have you looked at housing inflation recently?
But my honest assessment is that everyone wants the same thing. Give me a cheaper house, in a picturesque neighborhood that is all friends...walkable to shopping, and maybe the beach. And no crime. As my realtor put it sarcastically... 'oh you want a little farm in a safe area in downtown Miami...no problem!'
Doesn't exist bud, for any amount of money. Choose a few things you -really- value, and hyperfocus on that.
Moreso than that, I would only really recommend most parts of Florida to introverts. The people are generally unpleasant and cold compared to anywhere else in the whole Southeast. I think it's a state full of transplants, and well, people with a big family or friend network are less likely to up and leave their home. So we get the loners and the hated, so to speak.
I like the vibe in Rayleigh, NC too. Great tech scene, yet not as expensive as Austin/Boston. Smokies are 2 hours to the west, while the Outer Banks are two hours to the east.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal...
There's a version for Chrome also. On Android, I use that extension with Fennec from F-Droid.
Also I did SF->Florida and looked at a bunch of regions. St Petersburg sounds like the type of town you'd like.
There are also various WebExtensions to auto-bypass paywalls, I expect this trick is known by them.
Michigan does have plenty of nice smaller cities though (e.g. Grand Rapids, Lansing, Ann Arbor, St. Joseph, Traverse City, Marquette, Houghton).
^ I just asked a question about moving across the country and the scam-like feeling I get from every moving company that I've talked to. I can't read the full WSJ article because of the paywall, but the opening paragraphs are exactly the thing that I'm afraid of.
After my experience moving in the opposite direction four years ago i opted to not hire a moving company, i bought a used cargo van instead. (2006 Ford E250 with 150,000 miles)
The moving service lost several of my boxes, for years i would occasionally look for something i knew i owned and come to the conclusion that it had been among the lost. The moving company was also hugely expensive. Lots of things were cheaper to throw away and buy new rather than pay to ship.
I spent about $7000 on a moving company in 2017, I bought a van for $8000 and at the end of the week i’ll still have a van.
Like every vehicle they reach a value floor based on condition.
If anyone is reading this lamenting being priced out of the Sprinter market for their rad new van build, know that just about any van will do. Sprinters have an image premium, people buy them trying to not look poor while choosing to live in a van and that's bumped the price of the used market up.
Yeah, rich people trying to not look poor while recreationaly doing something poor people do out of necessity tends to do all sorts of stupid things to markets when the goods in question are interchangeable between the use cases.
We got there on time, found a place to put the stuff, a rental while we looked for a house to buy. It didn't show up on the nominated date .... eventually (maybe a month later) we discovered that the shipping company and the freight forwarding company (both US companies) were having some business spat and all our stuff was being held hostage.
Eventually we had to pay up (effectively twice) and finally received our belongings, by that time we'd bought a house and were on the verge of moving in
People are definitely on the move. That, plus supply chain issues and raw materials shortages is my guess.
Somehow, the movers managed to cram all of that into her new tract house. Over 600 boxes.
If you have any money or credit, get something on the periphery of or in Austin. Traffic will increase and it might suck more as it grows-up like a big city over time, but such properties will only increase in value out of s&d. For example, ATX has plenty of water (it's been raining like crazy) while the West and Southwest are mostly in megadroughts. Houston gets leveled by hurricanes regularly, so that's not a good place to be. The sweet spots to live in the US are now from ATX northwest to just about the border of the middle of eastern New Mexico. It's also the area with the fewest disaster risks and higher solar insolation. If water could be made plentiful there, it would be an ideal area to start a new megacity metro.
Hiring a few extra helpers to load up the U-haul at one end, and then unload it at the other end, I can see! But I've never been more than the length of a van from my stuff during a move, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
</satire>
Have you tried telling your friends that they can call you if they need help moving?
In other countries it is pretty common to hire people to do your move. Even Japan does that. Or, don't bother with stuff and rent furnished places.
> all your worldly possessions to some unseen third party
You mean like those storage facilities where people lock (and abandon) their stuff frequently? Yes, I wouldn't ship valuable stuff with them, for the most part, your furniture and posessions are valuable (in practice) only to yourself.
And while help from friends is cool, they're not "free work" per se you know. And there's a limit. I'm not helping you take a 3-seater sofa down a flight of stairs, sorry.
But it's also pretty common here to think that if you can do something yourself, you probably should, and save the money. So most people think "I'll move my stuff myself" before either doing that, or looking at their stuff and deciding it's worth paying someone instead.
A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me to help move. My wife and I helped him, but afterwards she said that she was never doing that again and that next time we'd just offer them some money towards the movers.
I didn't argue at the time, but I enjoy helping people move. It's a lot of work, which means it's good exercise, and you spend time with your friend on something that matters to them.
Also, I'm not sure how I'd offer that money without feeling like I'm looking down on them. It feels like a hand-out, not help. So I'll probably never do this, unless they straight up ask for money for a move.
I didn't understand why a friend with a good job wanted his friends to drag all his furniture across town and up 4 flights of stairs.
I'm invited to "help move" someone's stuff in September. He has booked movers, and says we'll drink beer while watching them unload, then have a party. That sounds like a good non-student version.
One major one being that people don't/can't drive a massive truck to haul their possessions and would rather leave it in the hands of a professional.
Another one being that they're not driving to the place they're moving to, but instead taking a plane/boat/train/foot/bike to get there. Unless they charter private planes or boats, or pilot them on their own, it's a little unfeasible.
So I hired a moving company. Boy, I will never again move myself. Best service I could imagine. Everything done in half a day. No bothering of friends and relatives. No heavy lifting at all for me. Everything insured, so if something breaks, it will be replaced. All furniture in place in the new appartment. And it wasn't that expensive after all.
I guess it is fine while you are still young and poor, and have few possessions. But as soon as you can afford it, you should pay the professionals to protect your friends from harm.
My wife worked for a company who did this. The packers were dedicated packers, it's what they did. The movers were dedicated movers, moving boxes and large furniture. They were able to do things we wouldn't have thought of - protecting corners and doorways. They also had all the equipment they needed to move heavy/awkward stuff.
I'll personally never move myself again - too much stuff that's still good and would cost too much to replace. And I'm getting too old to want to move a 3BR (aka 1 br and two offices) worth of stuff again. Standing desks are fscking heavy.
I’ll pack and move all my stuff as long as I can. U-Haul ftw.
For a move across the country? There is zero chance I'd trust someone driving an 18 wheeler; too many friends have had their possessions disappear for weeks on end in a warehouse. If I were under a restriction similar to yours, I would rather move the boxes into the truck myself, and pay for the extra time it would take.
Any also unfortunately it can end in less than ideal circumstances: during our move from UK to Croatia 2 boxes went "missing", one I couldn't have cared less about (except for the cost of replacing it), the other box however had irreplaceable items contained within.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0RX59G2jaA
Seeing their rigour and discipline is like a visual ASMR video.
this is what i do:
i hire the movers
i go to a restaurant to dine and work
i then go straight to the new location where things are getting unloaded
i even went on a 3 day trip once. i went to the airport and when i came back everything was moved to the new house.
this carried over to my cleaning lady. she almost always comes around when nobody's at home. the feeling that you get especially after a long trip coming home and everything's clean and tidy is priceless.
things like these are totally worth it imo.
And before you say "Well, just sell it and re-purchase it!", I personally have so many items that I want to keep that are not re-purchasable, either due to being out of print, or due to being limited edition, that they would never fit into the checked baggage allowance I'd get on a plane.
Getting sufficient boxes, tape, packing materials; wrapping items and putting them into boxes; loading boxes via elevators into a van, reversing the process; taking away all the packing materials ... so stressful and physically strenuous.
I'd throw money at that problem all day and all night.
I didn't really want to drive a U-haul that far towing the car, and worry about stuff getting stolen at overnight stops, we took the scenic route and spent over a week, we had to cut our trip short by a day when the driver called to say he was there already and would be delivering tomorrow.
It was a pretty painless process, we used a service that gave us a few quotes online, and the company we chose supplied all of the labor to load/unload and hired a smaller shuttle truck because the apartment complex we were moving into couldn't fit an 18 wheeler.
No real loss or damage, just a few scratches on a couple pieces of wood furniture, didn't even bother trying to make a claim.
We priced one of the storage pods (they drop a container off, you load it yourself, then they take it to your destination), but it wasn't much cheaper than the moving company and we didn't really had a convenient place to put the container.
I always used to move myself. I had a small Toyota pickup (hilux type) and my method was anything that didn't fit in the bed to allow me to move in one trip was tossed. That was my way of making sure I didn't accumulate too much junk.
Then I took a job halfway across the country and relocation was part of the deal.
They came to my apartment, packed everything up in a few hours, and put it all in a moving van and then drove my truck onto the van. I got on a plane and my stuff arrived a few days later and was put into storage until I needed it. The entire process was so seamless, that I'd happily do it again.
Living in a hotel for a month while my stuff was in storage really drove home the point that I really had no attachment to my "stuff." The only thing I missed was having my weights, so I got a temporary gym membership instead.
We arrived to a new country with literally everything that we owned. That was a complex feeling that I hope to never forget.
We could have shipped our belongings, or placed them long-term storage, but the cost and complexity didn’t seem advantageous. It was challenging and emotional to sell everything. But we did and I think we are better people for having chosen to go through that experience.
We sold almost everything we owned prior to the move. The things that were carried were things like personal possessions with significant history or memories. Sounds like we approached it in a very similar way to you.
There are definitely moments where I think "I need to repair this pipe, I have a pipe-cutter in my toolbox", then I recall that the toolbox didn't get moved with us. But there aren't many things that I miss.
You've got to be absolutely ruthless about what you sell or dispose of but seriously consider getting a pallet. It took me a long time to replace the stuff I sold for pennies on the dollar.
In the end I didn't find it particularly liberating. Though I think part of that is I went from living independently to relying on furnished apartments for a couple years. Living in a place that's not your own can eventually become grating.
Over time I started to get annoyed that because we'd bought things used with no real planning we had different colours/styles/designs all mishmashed together.
There was nothing wrong with any of the things we bought, but over time it did become annoying to live in such a state. I can imagine that if we'd moved into a furnished house we'd have had similar views and even less control about replacing things to match. Feeling more like a caretaker than living in "our home".
You need stuff. Screwdrivers, cloth hangers, spoons ...
I feel like just ditching it all and thinking of your self as unbound to earthly possesions is self-deception, since you just buy it again. It is acctually consumerism and spree shooping.
But I wish there were certain things and spaces that were able to be rented. I don’t need a drill all the time. Sometimes I need a workbench and more clamps.
There’s a lot of community level optimisation we could do.
And many towns and cities have tool lending libraries.
When moving, I sell leftover things to people who need them. And then when I arrive, I buy things second hand from people who no longer have a need for them.
For me personally, one good example of that would be my table saw. I don't use it often (and I certainly did not need it while travelling). But owning a table saw is a part of what makes me feel like me (not to mention it's history in removing part of one of my thumbs). Having a place where the table saw can just be (i.e. not a storage facility) is for me part of what "having a home" is all about.
The same would be true of things like my cookbooks. In the age of the internet, I don't even use them much anymore, and I certainly would not take them with me on any bounded-term move. Having on a shelf at home is part of what makes home actually be "home" rather than just "where I'm living".
I did less of this moving from the US to Austria and when it came time to move this time I realised that I had a significant pile of boxes which, while opened, went unused in the twenty years I've lived here. I also have an extensive library which, while I read the books when I bought them, I have not returned to the vast majority of them.
I'm still sort of conflicted about this because it's provoking a lot of complex emotions that I was not particularly prepared for.
The trick that worked for me was to just keep books that I had a strong emotional attachment to. Some books that I want to refer to I simply re-purchase as eBooks from Google or Kindle. Now half my physical books non-technical (Joseph Campbell, spiritual stuff, favorite literature).
But to be fair, I moved because I married a local, and they already had some stuff and I was able to replace other stuff as I wanted.
Emigrating is one of those adulting on steroids things. For those who’ve never done it, there no way to describe how intense it is: the highs, the lows, etc. Doesn’t matter if you are fluent in the destination language; it just is.
For a long time I’ve wondered if something inside me is wired incorrectly, because I always hear this sentiment among my friends but I have never felt it.
Not on the first move from the US to China a decade ago, not on the last one from Hong Kong to Singapore a couple of years ago, and not right now as I think about going to Europe. It just has never struck me as a particularly big thing to move somewhere else.
I'm contemplating moving the family to another country and the biggest emotions I feel are connected to the financial freedom necessary to move.
I grew up in a low-income household, my grades weren't amazing, never got a stipend to study anywhere or go abroad, so being able to make this jump as a result of my own personal development is huge.
Luggage or not is beside the point for me though.
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean here - I got the same "I made this happen" feeling when I boarded that first plane.
The part that I can't easily empathize with is the idea that leaving home and going somewhere else represents some kind of cosmic upheaval of your life. I get it, academically, but I just can't put myself in that headspace.
To give an example, one of my friends back home is going through a quarter-life career crisis. For a variety of reasons I suggested that he take a couple of months off and spend it in Amsterdam - this wouldn't be any problem for him financially or harm his career progression, but it's just a bridge too far for him personally.
When I brought it up, he said "I wouldn't even know where to start."
What seems natural to me - grab your passport, book an AirBnB and a plane ticket - is for many people an emotionally overwhelming roadblock.
I've managed to emigrate due to my own personal development as well, my family didn't have the means for that and my home country's society is very geared to rich folks getting opportunities: in school, universities, time enough to go through a good higher education, etc. I had to fight against all that and other odds stacked against me and finally "made it" out.
At the same time I felt like you sometimes, people would be fretting a lot about how I'm going to move, all by myself, to a new country, continent, hemisphere, culture and language. And it never phased me, I knew I wanted to do it and the thought that someone would be even a little reluctant on doing it was a bit alien.
Nowadays I can empathise with both mindsets, I'm a bit stuck in the middle: moving out was definitely an amazing and enlightening experience over time but I didn't have that awe about it until hindsight kicked in. Most of the feelings I had when moving were all about excitement and getting to experience new things, people, places.
I share the feeling when boarding the plane for moving and thinking "I made this happen" but I feel it much more intensely and beautifully during moments in my new city (that I've been for about 6 years now) where I look around and realise "I'm here and it's surreal I've made it here". This is the feeling I love the most, and it's constant, since I moved I never stopped catching these moments.
I too find those 3 steps are pretty easy. The problem is that what comes next - "step out of AirBnB and go to a local restaurant" - is total mindkiller for me.
I used to be pretty awkward about this too until I really got it through my head that we’re all just characters in someone else’s play.
So in that sense, it can be a "permanent" change.
I've also found those numbers roughly accurate, even for sub-year extended travel. I spent 6 months teaching in Berlin, and it definitely took a couple of weeks after returning to feel normal again.
Ten years ago I did a 3 months backpack trip in South America with my girlfriend. We left almost everything at home, and during that trip all that mattered to us for the 3 months was in our backpack. Weight and volume was an issue. No room to bring objects unless they has a functional value too. We also experienced stuff being stolen (one camera with the digital pictures, one small bag) and this helps to think about your relationship to objects. That's the kind of life lessons that I did not expect from the trip.
At first I found it incredibly freeing - and I still do, mostly - but over time I’ve developed this almost nostalgic feeling for a home. Some place that’s filled with my own stuff where I can at least mentally ground myself. The idea of actually having one still seems almost overwhelming, but the concept sounds nice.
Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, or because my family is, or maybe an unsettled life just gets to you after a while.
You don't have to be a youtuber to have that lifestyle.
If you're not filing expense reports, will a company "know"? Possibly not. But it seems pretty precarious to expose yourself and the company at risk this way.
It also puts your manager at risk to do it - if you tell them, then they know it’s happening and have to do something about it.
The second point is more significant. Even with almost 100% remote work it's hard to systematically hide where you are from everyone--especially if you do any business travel or expense reimbursement or are in a materially different timezone or climate.
What I'm more familiar with is overseas residency and federal taxes. There are benefits to establishing legal residency outside the US, if you really do live and work outside the US. But then you have to be able to prove it to the IRS. If you can establish a bona fide overseas residency, you get substantial federal tax discounts (like ~$100k tax-free income), and don't have to pay state tax anywhere. But if you spend more than 33 days per year in the US, the burden of proof for establishing a bona fide foreign residency are higher[1].
Edit: update since I can't nest any more replies (to @dragonwriter) below: I sorta changed topics; my paragraph above about foreign residency is only relevant if you're earning foreign income. If you're a US citizen working for a US company, you're not getting away from taxes that way. But you can still save yourself from some personal obligation by setting up a company.
[1]: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...
That’s...not true. State income tax is usually due on dollars earned in the state — it used to be usually the union of (dollars earned by residents) and (dollars earned by work in the state) but a 2015 federal court decision required it to be one or the other, and AFAIK every state with an income tax has chosen the latter over the former because, basically, resident citizens vote in the state while citizens resident in other states, the most common nonresident citizen workers, don’t. So, a bona fide overseas residence doesn't have any effect on state income tax liability.
ADDED: It appears that the threshold is essentially non-existent in many states. https://www.concur.com/newsroom/article/what-are-state-tax-i... (I think this is the solution my friend's company is actually using.)
I've never had a mortgage; I generally have zero debt (not even car payments); no dependents; usually no pets (I miss having pets, though). I don't own much of anything that I'm not willing to get rid of. I like the idea of having a home base and some permanent material items, but so far I don't like it as much as I like being flexible.
Working in tech offers the option of remotely working from anywhere. I've worked from home (or wherever) at a number of places, going back to the early 90s. I've still spent more time in normal office jobs than remote. Now that covid has permanently altered the landscape, I expect to do it a lot more.
There are unhealthy psychological aspects to all this. I avoid commitment, I feel trapped by obligations and responsibilities, I'm always thinking about what's next instead of being content with what I have. It's not for everyone.
I always thought it was an exaggerated portrayal, but it seems your ways are even more extreme than in the movie.
Such lifestyle is so completely foreign to me, that I'm fascinated. If an alien landed on my lawn tomorrow and said "I fart gold coins", I would have an easier time believing such a thing exists than your lifestyle.
How do you make friends? Can't employers sense that you're going to leave soon? Or is that specifically what they're looking for?
I job-hop more than most people, but it's not completely out of the ordinary in tech work. Many people stay in one area but still change jobs every few years. People used to occasionally question some shorter (1-2 year) job stints on my resume, but I haven't been asked about it in over a decade. I don't think that particular aspect raises eyebrows anymore. There are more tech jobs than people to fill them; it's a job-searcher's market and has been for a long time.
I live out of a single backpack and carry-on. Nothing I carry with me is precious. It could all be replaced in an afternoon with Amazon. I rely on furnished rentals and a couple of "stuff caches" in family closets and garages here and there, mostly with things that make life in that specific place a bit nicer. I've also "bought" family things that we get to enjoy while we are there. I own and also don't own a kayak that I use a few weeks a year and a surfboard I use for a few months.
Also, the market of people specifically trying to rent furnished long term rentals is very small and they tend to aim to “executives” that are in town for a period of time before buying their own place. They charge accordingly. It is a big red flag for me to see someone or a company marketing their furnished rental as “executive suites” or similar
For example in France students need lodging during their studies. So France cities with universities have a strong unfurnished rental market. Of course that's mostly small surfaces.
Note also that in France taxes are different for owners when renting unfurnished.
It's also a thing to negotiate furnishing with the landlord, e.g. I'll pay an extra $100/mo in rent if you agree to do an Ikea run and you can keep it at the end of the lease.
If I need to be somewhere for <1y but >1m, I'll try to deal directly with AirBnB hosts but sometimes you just have to eat the borderline usurious serviced apartment fees.
Last time I rented furniture, it cost around $250/month to furnish a one bedroom apartment. They supplied all of the furniture, we supplied dishes and cookware.
For a longer term lease, it may be cheaper to buy cheap furniture from Ikea, but it's a lot more hassle, it's so much easier to let the rental company come in and set up, then take it all away when you leave.
Having my own mattress is a must though.
I had an incredibly damaged couch that I was ready to throw in the dumpster, and a young dude happily gave me $100 and picked it up with his truck, with no effort from my part.
I got rid of hundreds of items over the years on CL, and I don’t think I ever failed to sell any!
I like to be able to buy items for projects that enrich me mentally or physically. E.g. I recently bought a 3D printer, I buy kitchen tools to cook more interesting recipes. If I moved abroad now, I'd likely do a big clear out but also ship a lot with me.
There's a distinction to be made for tools vs consumerist items.
Do you have any recommendations for resources that might get me into it more? I'm not aware of too much outside of just searching for things on Thingiverse.
I have an RSS feed on the most popular Thingiverse models.
https://www.thingiverse.com/rss/featured
It looks like I've changed the default update interval on the second link to 12 hours; perhaps it was producing too much stuff otherwise.
Printing out random doodads from Thingiverse is not only wasteful but unfulfilling. You might as well go raid the dollar store toy aisle.
I would recommend spending some time and learning how to use a CAD software. Fusion360 is a popular choice, although with a bit of a learning curve. TinkerCAD is a good browser based option as well, excellent starting point for beginners.
> every time you buy something you have to consider what happens when you move
I actually enjoy this part of it. It forces me to be a more thoughtful consumer.
Taxes are another matter entirely since we do this internationally, but there’s a pretty well-developed network of expat accountants that make it as painless as it can be.
Eventually, we bought a house. It felt like a huge shift from the vagabond lifestyle, but I don't regret it. We still travel a lot, and rent our house out on AirBnb while we are gone.
I think in the end, traveling full time was too much for me. Having a home to go back to and recharge before planning the next trip seems more balanced.
https://youtu.be/3jus-OaJV8E?t=400
I'm beginning to understand this more and more lately. The problem is with owning things you can't just replace. This could be either because you can't afford to replace it, like many people's cars, or that it holds sentimental value. Those things end up owning you. If your car breaks down you have to fix it. If you break a cherished plate, you cry.
I'm 35 and I still use plates and cutlery that I took from my last student house I moved from when I was 25. The house had accumulated a ton of this stuff over the years and we'd put most of it away in a cupboard. I took some of the better looking stuff. I fully expect all of this stuff to last the rest of my life. If some disaster happens and they all break, I'll replace them with more generic plates and cutlery I don't care about.
I think if you can resist accumulating stuff you care about, you will be far happier. Don't attach sentimental value to things. They are just things. Don't buy things you can't afford to replace outright if you need to, like cars. They quickly become liabilities. A big loss of stuff can be very rewarding as it reminds you of what really matters in life. But you should resist getting into the same situation again.
It’s better if they start doing it now, and clarify what is essential and “the important stuff they’d grab in a house fire” in step one.
Often there are allowances for "reasonable" amounts of personal possessions but sometimes they have to be old enough. I hear some places don't have any allowance at all. And sometime specific things are too much hassle/cost to do at all (e.g. cars).
Edit: And though stressful, it gave me a different perspective of, for instance, people who walk thousands of miles from Honduras with children.
There's a shift in perspective with possessions. I'm less attached to anything, but at the same time, I appreciate the nice things I own more. And there's definitely a lot more, stronger opinions, on what I want, and what should be a part of my "home".
A bunch of opinions have sharpened unpredictably. Like, I hate grass. I don't want something I have to build an irrigation system to maintain. I like owning a single family home, but I don't want it do be this 'castle' where I'm totally isolated from my neighborhood. I hate big garage doors in front. The front of the house is for the doorway and a porch. The car has its place to the side.
Had I not had to rebuild from scratch a couple of times, not sure I'd be this focused.
I recall that time as oddly freeing. I had my pick of how to build my new home. New beds, dining tables, the works.
We started out with salvation army stuff because we didn't want to commit to expensive things without even knowing the marketplace here. We were TRULY new to the US. Didn't know a single store except Walmart (from what we saw online).
Now we have a very comfortable life but some days I do wish I could light my belongings on fire and start fresh.
These days I see things I purchase as liabilities. I bought this super nintendo classic, oh now I have to take care of this thing. There it sits collecting dust. I don't buy many knick-knacks anymore.
If one were to go cross country and didn’t mind ditching their furniture, media mail plus a few suitcases full of clothes could make for a very cheap move.
I sold a bunch of books to someone in Hawaii. It was a 40lb box and cost $10 to ship from the East Coast. Took 3-4 weeks to get there. Crazy cheap. Would have been >$100 if not media.
Depending on volume you're better off doing pallets and LTL freight or buying a shipping container or end of life dry van and paying someone to pick it up and drop it off.
SIX is a lot!
I don’t presume everyone is this way but I do presume many people might have an attachment to their collection of furniture. If it’s all worn down IKEA handmedowns then it might make sense to not move with it. I certainly see that with college students but after that, many people like what they got and it’s a large cost to give it up and buy new. And many people don’t like to buy used furniture too - I am someone who is fine with it.
I mean long-term I hope to be able to replace pieces of furniture with non-Ikea stuff. I was really trying with my TV cabinet, tried to get a unit with plenty of storage, but it was all... flimsy-looking, small and inconvenient. Finally bit the bullet, sat at a PC at Ikea and designed a very nice cabinet around a 60 inch TV.
I mean I only got the TV two years later, but it's the thought that counts.
I was in Europe moving from one house to another and I asked if we would take some small thing we bought with us and was told by my friend, "It belongs to the house." That really helped change my thinking on this, that things belong to the spaces they were purchased for, not to us specifically.
So yes, you can avoid moving furniture, but you still have “stuff”.
If you live like a bachelor sure.
But for the idea to transfer over to personal belongings, there would have to be some sort of scanning of each personal item in one's home, to the point that AI and 3D printing could print off a perfect copy.
Let's imagine a good friend dies and all you have to remember him is a handmade gift he gave you on your last b-day. Your home catches fire but you can print off a perfect copy. Do you care? And how much do you care?
Probably enough that I wouldn't actually make a copy. A perfect copy still isn't the original item.
With that said, the overwhelming majority of belongings don't actually have that kind of sentimental importance. Generally somebody's going to like, say, their favorite chair because it's that model of chair, not because it's that specific chair, and it's only going to have special importance if it's otherwise impossible to replace (thereby permanently losing out on the favored qualities of the favorite chair).
I gotta say, it’s getting tiring to buy furniture (especially with the IKEA shortage) but the upside is that you get to get rid of a lot of the things you didn’t really need every time you move.
Also in SF, for some reasons, second hand is really expensive so you can sell stuff for the same price or even more sometimes.
I am thinking of moving out in about a year and I would love to donate my belongings to someone in less-developed world instead of donating it to places like Goodwill (and I'm afraid that they'll send most of my donation to landfill)
Their credit don't expire, as long as I make a call/SMS every six months. If I lose the SIM, I can order one for €5 us shipping if I keep my PUK code.
When KPN starts eSIM, that would solve that issue as well.
Many countries have prepaid services with longer credit validity. Choose a bigger carrier because they have better roaming arrangements.
Incoming SMS are free (boo SMS 2FA), and I spend ~€1 a year to keep the number alive.
For mail, I use https://www.virtualpostmail.com/
Now I'm planning on traveling abroad and I'm realizing a lot of my junk is only holding me back. Seriously it's just stuff, you can go to a place called stuff Mart and buy more of it. But if you're thinking oh maybe I won't move after all because I'll have to buy more stuff you're cheating yourself
Plus it's a extra hassle to get rid all your stuff -- you need to deal with flaky Craigslist people, or try to donate it and then hire someone to haul away what the charities won't accept. "What do you mean you won't take this couch because of that small tear you can't even see!? I was literally using it today!"
Then OCR it all and it'll appear in your local search results
I’m sorry you never got to make that choice either way though. I can’t imagine how hard that is.
I purged about half of my stuff a few years ago. I still have a huge pile of junk. On my next move more of it is 'going away'. It is in the way and takes up space.
But you're probably right
A cull happened before the next one, and pretty much every one since.
Another lesson I learned was not to be too quick to take other peoples left overs. I was really bad with computers for a bit on that one. A few trips to a local computer recycler later and that issue was cleared up. That is not even moving international that is this junk is in the way of things I do use. What was a little sad was one large stack of game magazines (2 decades worth). Like 2-3 weeks after I dumpstered the things someone on a forum was asking if anyone had them! doh! I am right now looking at a dumb period where I was buying lots of lego. What am I going to do with that? I have culled the 'easy' stuff. Now it is the 'what am I going to do with that' sort of items... When the reality is I do not really want to spend any more time at all on them. So that junk sits in boxes...
I kept a couple of the more interesting ones but overall I think I came out ahead with clearing out some dead weight and getting some value.
Donating an item is essentially a net of whatever the value of the item x your marginal tax rate. Definitely worth it over the hassle of selling it yourself, AND puts it into the hands of someone who needs it more.
Edit: Based on the popularity of this comment and absence or replies I suspect I may have accidentally struck one of those nerves where people don't like what I'm saying but can't come up with a good argument why it's wrong. If people disagree with me I'd be interested as to why.