dunroving

I presume you are leaving the washer and dryer behind (they won't work here)?

I've learned you can't beat yourself up about the costs of being an expat. If I bother to think through things, I can immediately come up with:

Costs associated with buying and selling houses (realtor fees, lawyer fees, stamp duty, blah, blah)

Losses associated with the exchange rate (if it's in the wrong direction for you - in 2007, the $/£ was $2 = £1; I needed a deposit for my current house so had to exchange $50,000 from the proceeds of my US house sale - the same transaction today, or almost any other time in the past 10-15 years would have netted me an extra £7,000+ !)

Other losses associated with the housing market - it's not always doing the same on both sides of the Atlantic, so it isn't always a wash ...

Losses associated with bad investments (I put my 2000 US house sale proceeds into mutual funds - within a year I had lost over £6,000 of my £8,000!)

Selling and buying crap like washing machines ... you get that picture, right?

Oh, I almost forgot - the cost of transporting all the crap you DIDN'T sell across the Atlantic!!

(But the money we spend transporting our pets is worth every penny)

It's really not worth stressing about the money - if you have to spend it, you have to spend it. When it's gone, no amount of whining will bring it back (I know, I tried whining!)

texas_girl

No, wish we could take them, but we are aware that they won't work. I think you're giving great advice, it's just easier said than done! I'm working on what my friend calls my "sphere of control" if it's not in my "sphere" than I'm not allowed to worry about it. Again, easier said than done, but it helps!

MagsB

I've price checked EVERY single thing before I packed it. If I could replace it cheaper in the UK, I chucked/sold/gave away. Things like pillows and bedding for instance take lots of space in a container and are cheap to replace. While I was busy packing my kitchen stuff I had the Argos website open on the kitchen table and I price checked as I went along. £4.99 for a basic set of crockery meant that the old crockery got thrown out. We were able to reduce our stuff down to about 8 boxes, which are mostly books, photos, my daughter's toys. We're also taking all our framed prints which will hopefully help to make us feel at home. (provided we find a landlord that allows us to put them up!!)

BlueMorpho

Packing like this is a potential way to rid oneself and ones family of years of accumulated garbage, but even if I whittled for months I couldn't get it all down to 8 boxes! I admire your reducibility!

happyglow

and wining doesn't help either - though if you end up in france at least it's cheap

Migrating's an expensive business but I wouldn't have missed the experience for anything. I love that it's taught me what's worth hanging on to and what's not. Mostly it's just stuff that slows you down.

happyglow

Ah but how big are the boxes?

I'm probably going to end up with about 2 cubic metres of stuff that either I'm fond of or that I need and would be impractical to replace. Now I need to get hold of boxes!