How Much Does It Really Cost to Move Across the Country? (Two Real-Life Examples)
Unless you’re planning to sell everything you own, moving across the country isn’t cheap. And even if you did sell it all, you’d still spend money on transportation and new belongings when you arrived at your destination. Any way you slice it, you’re inevitably going to have some move related expenses.
So how much does it actually cost to move across the country?
Short answer: it depends… on how far you’re going, how much stuff you have, how you move it, how much you do yourself versus paying others, costs in your particular area, etc.
According to moving.com, a long-distance move can cost anywhere from ~$1,000 to $14,000+, with an average around $5,000 for a 1,000 mile move. That’s a big range! It’s one thing to see averages online, and another to see what real families have actually spent on a big move.
This post breaks down two real cross-country moves our family made. First, from Ohio to Oregon in 2016, and second from Oregon to Virginia in 2022.
Move #1: Ohio → Oregon (~2,400 miles)
When: Late August / Early September 2016
Who: 2 adults, 1 infant, 2 cats
How we moved our stuff: Two shipping containers
How we moved ourselves: Drove our car and stayed in hotels
Starting budget: $7,000 (covered by a job relocation package)
Budget Breakdown
2 storage cubes with additional liability coverage: $2,587
Cubes were loaded/unloaded at the storage facility. Prices go up if you want to load/unload at your residence
Moving supplies: $519
Hotels: $1,187
Meals: $303
This was the amount we actually spent. We were reimbursed based on per diem rates and ended up making some money on this (about $700 worth)
Gas/mileage: $394
Truck rentals (to/from storage): $117
Moving help at destination: $250
This is an estimate. I couldn’t find documentation on how much we spent. We hired two helpers for a few hours to load everything from the cube into our rental truck, and then from our rental truck into our apartment. Mike helped out too and I hung out with E (who was an infant at the time).
Closing costs: $920
Also an estimate and not something we initially planned to get reimbursed for. All of our other moving expenses didn’t quite add up to the full $7k from the job relocation package so we used the remaining funds to cover some of our closing costs from Ohio.
Total: $7,000
We didn’t have much financial wiggle room outside of what my employer reimbursed, so we made sure to stay within that $7K budget. Every expense was planned and tracked, and came in handy for mapping out our budget during our 2nd cross-country move.
Move #2: Oregon → Virginia (~2,800 miles, with a 1-month stop in PA)
When: Mid-May 2022
Who: 2 adults, 1 child, 1 toddler, 1 cat
How we moved our stuff: Two shipping containers + car carrier
How we moved ourselves: Flew cross-country
Starting budget: $12,000 (initial estimate, self-funded)
Budget Breakdown
2 storage cubes with additional liability coverage: $5,099
Loaded at our home in Oregon, stored for 30 days at a storage facility in Virginia, unloaded from the storage facility. Loading at home, storing the cubes for a month, and inflation significantly bumped up this expense.
Car shipping: $2,010
This was a logistical nightmare, not to mention expensive. If we were ever considering shipping a car again, I’d exhaust all other possibilities before choosing this option.
Car rental (while ours was shipped): $524
Moving supplies: $251
Airfare (2 adults, 1 kid, 1 toddler, 1 cat): $1,451
H (toddler at the time) was free and on our laps for our redeye. We thought she’d sleep for most the flight… she didn’t… she cried pretty much the entire time while our cat meowed. A stressful flight for all involved.
Moving help (packing + unloading): $798
We hired 2 people to help pack our shipping containers (with our help) and we hired a full service moving company to move our things into our apartment in Virginia (which felt like such a luxury).
Miscellaneous: $238
Includes airport transportation + an air mattress for after our things were shipped
Total: $10,371
We ended up coming in under budget, mainly because we overestimated car rental and hotel costs. Using Turo instead of a traditional rental company saved us a fair amount of money. We also thought we’d be moving right to Virginia instead of staying with family in PA and we budgeted some additional funds for a hotel stay that didn’t happen. We had been contemplating this move since early 2020 and saved everything we could to prep for the expenses knowing that it was coming eventually.
What’s Not Included
These totals don’t include:
Expenses related to preparing our homes for sale
Regular living expenses (groceries, bills, etc.) during the moving period
Costs related to getting started in our new cities
Key Takeaways
Cross-country moves add up fast. Even when you DIY parts of it, there are plenty of unavoidable (and sneaky!) costs. For us, that looked like needing something to sleep on after our bed was packed, renting a car after ours was shipped back east, and storing our stuff because we couldn’t move into our Virginia apartment right away. There’s always something to spend your money on.
Setting a realistic budget makes a huge difference. In both moves, setting a budget upfront (and tracking every expense) helped lower some of the stress of moving. Knowing what our first move cost was especially helpful when planning our second move six years later.
Shipping your car is pricey and nerve-racking! And purchasing another reliable car after your move can also be expensive and stressful. If you’re able to drive your car (or have someone do it for you), I’d choose that over shipping (or selling and buying a new car) any day.
Hiring help by the hour is a great middle ground. Paying movers to load/unload for a couple of hours saved our backs (and our time) without the price tag of a full-service move. Highly recommend.
A cross-country move becomes its own full time job. Any free time we had was dedicated to the move: packing, selling, donating, prepping our houses, coordinating storage, comparing moving companies, figuring out the car situation… we were truly eating, sleeping, and breathing the move.
Our cross-country moves cost $7,000 and $10,371. Both are pretty realistic examples for families moving several thousand miles with kids and pets. Sure, there are ways we could have cut costs, but most of those would’ve required more time or more stress. Also, selling our homes helped ease some of the financial stressors of a large move, especially during our self-funded move in 2022. If we didn’t have that as an option we’d likely have done things differently.
How about you? How much did your long-distance move cost? What surprises did you run into? I’d love to hear your experience.
