Major challenge - Preparing to Move

[watchman3135]

I financed my entire move from IL so SC with property tax savings.

Congrats! For the past several years we've been looking a Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and Wyoming and compared to what you get there vs here in Illinois in a home and a yard is pretty significant however property taxes in those states are among the lowest I believe Colorado being the least.

My 2020 PT bill payable 2021 was $7,231. My home is a 2 story 3 car 4 bd with den or 5 bd, 2900 sq ft built in 2005. For many years my home's value has been in the mid 200's which I never complained because as you know, every assessment penny counts here. 2021 hits and wham! It found my neighborhood and worse my home. Market and assessed go from 260k to 350k. Now I know when my 2021 bill arrives I'm going to need a ambulance. I'm taping that bill to my forehead to lite the fire under my rear to get off my a** and start looking for a home in another PT tax friendly state.

 

[Delawaredave5]

My experience

• FB marketplace best
• Craigslist too seedy
• Niche stuff best for eBay
• Kids don't want anything
• Current generation stuff sells for 40-50% of new in reasonable time
• I put small items (less than $40) on front porch and told people to leave money under mat - always worked

 

[ddoorn]

Death Cleaning

There are articles out there on the Swedish tradition of Death Cleaning, which is the art of downsizing our belongings as we age so that there is as little as possible left to clean up after we die

https://www.amazon.com/Gentle-Art-Swedish-Death-Cleaning/dp/1501173243

I’ve been shifting gears in this manner over the past ten years or so.

 

[WhenIsItTime]

Have you sold on eBay before? If so, try tutoring him and selling 3-4 items where both of you work together on it. You can buy supplies in advance (boxes, blank labels, tape, paper for printing order forms) and just walk through how listings work and how things are shipped.

After doing that for 3-4 items, I think you'll get a feel for how much he wants/can do on his own, and how much you'll have to do.

One caveat - if you really care most about top dollar, it's better to use your eBay account than a new one with no reputation. People are likely to avoid someone with very few sales compared to another seller with hundreds.

Agree eBay is good place to determine market value. Seems eBay will keep ~12% in fees and be careful with shipping costs. I like to do reasonable buy-it-now pricing hoping for quick sales. However, recently this has led to a lot of messages from folks making low ball offers. I have access to heavily discounted FedEx and don't want to meet anybody in person, so I prefer this method for anything of value.

 

[sroby2020]

I need to deal with a 40-year accumulation of some treasures, and alot of things probably most accurately described as junk.

You're not alone! We're dealing with a similar accumulation. Little by little taking stuff to Salvation Army about 3 miles away from us. We might be able to sell some, but don't want to deal with a garage sale or other methods of selling. Our kids already have everything they want from our house, so the rest is gonna eventually go away.

 

[Crabbyjerry]

Property taxes

Congrats! For the past several years we've been looking a Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and Wyoming and compared to what you get there vs here in Illinois in a home and a yard is pretty significant however property taxes in those states are among the lowest I believe Colorado being the least.

My 2020 PT bill payable 2021 was $7,231. My home is a 2 story 3 car 4 bd with den or 5 bd, 2900 sq ft built in 2005. For many years my home's value has been in the mid 200's which I never complained because as you know, every assessment penny counts here. 2021 hits and wham! It found my neighborhood and worse my home. Market and assessed go from 260k to 350k. Now I know when my 2021 bill arrives I'm going to need a ambulance. I'm taping that bill to my forehead to lite the fire under my rear to get off my a** and start looking for a home in another PT tax friendly state.

Sad as it is, I would take your tax bill over my New York property we sold. I’d still be there but the 19k a year made me bail. We are thinking of now going out of state to reduce and get away from the out of control homeowner association.i feel bad for my kids that are just starting out. Rent here is unbelievable and I don’t know how anyone can get ahead. Really sad

 

[W2R]

Easy…two words: ESTATE SALE

Keep only sentimental items that can’t be replaced and a professional resale team will come in and clean out every closet/drawer/garage/attic/etc. and organize/price items to sell. You don’t have to lift a finger. I’d advise you to not be at home during the sale. You’ll come home to a broom clean house and they’ll hand you a big check a few days later. We’ve done this for the past two moves and cleared $10K-$20K each time. The Estate Sale company will keep a percentage (30-35%), but they know how to price items to get top dollar. We hired a trusted Realtor to stay at the home during the sale times to hand out brochures and answer questions (and to keep an eye on the process for us). We had the Realtor place a “Coming Soon” sign in the front yard before the sale date.

+1 If I ever move again, I plan to use an Estate Sale company. I think that's a really good idea.

 

[Physics Guy]

While the interior downsizing is daunting I am more worried about dealing with the yard.



4 years ago we moved overseas for work and left our house with my MIL. She's been a great tenant for the inside but she's been ignoring the outside. Given that we weren't yard of the month type people anyway it is now completely overgrown. When we move back in 6 months I'm going to be looking for some sort of landscaping service to throw money at to make it at least presentable.

 

[Kat07]

I'm moving too. I load the U-haul on Monday. I must have rocks in my head for moving across MN in January. Its 29 below here this morning. Its only 15 below in the place we're moving to.

Its just DW and me and DW is anything but a hoarder. We still have plenty of "stuff"

I live in Minnesota too, in Plymouth, a suburb of Minneapolis. Where was it 29 below? I do hope you mean the wind chill and not the actual temperature! It was about 0 as a high here on New Year’s Day and the wind chill was about -35 below, I think. Brrrrr…..Anyways, where are you moving to?

 

[Stormy Kromer]

I am moving as I type this morning. Some advice to all, don't move in MN during January. We pulled a U-haul 7 hours across MN yesterday and have it parked outside ready to unload. It is below zero and blowing up to 50MPH.

I'm 56 and this will be the last move I do on my own. My next move years down the line will be a Sr apartment which will require a huge downsize.

 

[Stormy Kromer]

I live in Minnesota too, in Plymouth, a suburb of Minneapolis. Where was it 29 below? I do hope you mean the wind chill and not the actual temperature! It was about 0 as a high here on New Year’s Day and the wind chill was about -35 below, I think. Brrrrr…..Anyways, where are you moving to?

I had 29 below actual air temp. My friend a few miles away had 40 below, he lives near Embarrass, MN, I'm a little ways NE near the Canada border. I'm moving to my farm in Western MN near the SD border. It's blowing about 50 this morning. I don't know what the air temp is but 50 mph winds at zero feels colder than 29 below with no wind. That's MN for you, but at least we have the Vikings.

 

[brett]

Our experience a few years after a serious downsize is not to to backslide.

Especially so, if like us, you move to a place with a basement or with storage. Too easy to bung unwanted items in storage for 'just in case we might need it or someone may want one'

We have caught ourselves doing this a few times. It has been a few years now and post covid we are going to sort ourselves out and do another clean out.

 

[brett]

Our experience a few years after a serious downsize is not to to backslide.

Especially so, if like us, you move to a place with a basement or with storage. Too easy to bung unwanted items in storage for 'just in case we might need it or someone may want one'

We have caught ourselves doing this a few times. It has been a few years now and post covid we are going to sort ourselves out and do another clean out.

We have come to the conclusion that we have to stay vigilant otherwise we will be back to square one in ten years.

 

[KarenF]

Be ruthless

I know people have said to be ruthless, but really be ruthless. Get down to a couple of sets of towels, and one sheet set for each bed. Get rid of 80% of your clothes. We moved this summer and I sold every dresser I had, plus my Grandma's china cabinet and a bunch of other stuff. When we moved in, I filled up the kitchen cabinets and took 6 boxes of excess kitchen stuff to Goodwill. I am still weeding through and eliminating things. It feels great to not have too much stuff.

 

[watchman3135]

Sad as it is, I would take your tax bill over my New York property we sold. I’d still be there but the 19k a year made me bail. We are thinking of now going out of state to reduce and get away from the out of control homeowner association.i feel bad for my kids that are just starting out. Rent here is unbelievable and I don’t know how anyone can get ahead. Really sad

$19k is insane but would I be incorrect to assume that your home was large at that rate? I constantly check the year to year data and so far NJ still ranks #1 highest in property taxes with IL #2 and NY around #8.

Due to escalating home prices in Colorado, Wyoming has moved ahead. Still, compared to Illinois I will say one thing in that you defiantly get a lot more home and yard here for the same money including a basement than in those west states which I will miss. Now if you ask many People in IL where they'd like to move to, Tennessee or Florida it seems to get a lot of votes probably for the warmer weather and cheaper living. As someone who is looking to move to Wyoming, warmer weather is clearly not the main drive to leave.

Due to rather sudden increases in valuations in my neighborhood, I'm expecting my next 2021 tax bill tax bill to be around $8k and wouldn't be surprised if it was more. It is IL property taxes that gets my goat but it's no surprise considering I'm on this and other financial sites. Given our personalities here, we are all driven to peruse an earlier retirement which includes cutting all costs...at least the ones we can partially control for a while.

Regarding you kids, my son moved to San Francisco and now at 29 still splits a large $5,000 per month 3 bd room apartment with two other college buddies. He makes good money and doesn't own a car. I see kids doing this more and more right out of college. They will adapt.

 

[gretah]

I read a great tip on getting rid of things - might have been on this forum:


If you have yard sales, group the items in bags or boxes. Put stuff in you know no one will want but you need to get rid of, like small containers of screws, nails, etc. On top in the bag/box put something you know will easily sell: like an electric drill (with the nails & screws) or a Cuisinart food processor. (with some random cooking utensils like spatulas).


Put a sign on each box. $x for all items in box. You MUST take them all with you, including the box (or bag). No haggling on price.




My personal tip for getting rid of things:
When I was sorting through things I like (sorting dresses) I had fun.

But when I was going through every piece of paper in my file cabinets then scanning those not discarded, I was miserable.


So I set a kitchen timer to 30 minutes as I dealt with paper / scanning. When the timer went off, I didn't go back to that chore until the next day.


Helped lots.




Good luck!

 

[Koolau]

+1 If I ever move again, I plan to use an Estate Sale company. I think that's a really good idea.

We did perhaps the next best thing in our BIG downsize. We had an auction house pick up our stuff and sell it. We ID'd each piece or box to "go" and their guys came in and hauled it all off. Next thing we knew we got a good sized check. It does cost for the hauling/storage over and above the auction cost, but was way easier than loading/transporting our stuff. Well worth it and very little difficulty except deciding what to keep/what to sell. YMMV

 

[FLJim]

Congrats! For the past several years we've been looking a Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and Wyoming and compared to what you get there vs here in Illinois in a home and a yard is pretty significant however property taxes in those states are among the lowest I believe Colorado being the least.

My 2020 PT bill payable 2021 was $7,231. My home is a 2 story 3 car 4 bd with den or 5 bd, 2900 sq ft built in 2005. For many years my home's value has been in the mid 200's which I never complained because as you know, every assessment penny counts here. 2021 hits and wham! It found my neighborhood and worse my home. Market and assessed go from 260k to 350k. Now I know when my 2021 bill arrives I'm going to need a ambulance. I'm taping that bill to my forehead to lite the fire under my rear to get off my a** and start looking for a home in another PT tax friendly state.

We left Illinois in 2015 (fearing that they may stop the exodus with either barbed wire or an exit tax!) and bought a house in central Florida. We are assessed at $335K and annual real estate tax is $2,500 including trash pickup. No state income tax, as you know, and we cannot find any snow shovels here at Home Depot, just flowers and shrubs in the garden center _ year around!

 

[Camas Lilly]

Facing a major challenge. My wife and I have decided to move to a small town located in western Michigan on the shores of Lake Michigan. We are having a home built in a brand-new senior community, it is still a soybean field, house won't be ready for at least another year. That is actually good news, I will need that much time to move.

I need to deal with a 40-year accumulation of some treasures, and alot of things probably most accurately described as junk. We've started selling, donating and pitching stuff; but have yet to make a major dent.

Hopefully we get better at it as we go along.

I have had amazing luck on Facebook Marketplace. I've met some really nice people and unloaded an unbelievable amount of "stuff". People will buy almost anything and it has been fun. There really hasn't been anyone coming by that I have been concerned about, but always have two of us here at the house anyway. I usually look up their profile on Facebook so I know a little about them. Most people are trustworthy enough to leave the money on the front porch if you don't want to deal with meeting them. I have been pleasantly surprised.

 

[Koolau]

We left Illinois in 2015 (fearing that they may stop the exodus with either barbed wire or an exit tax!) and bought a house in central Florida. We are assessed at $335K and annual real estate tax is $2,500 including trash pickup. No state income tax, as you know, and we cannot find any snow shovels here at Home Depot, just flowers and shrubs in the garden center _ year around!

My SWAG is that such exits will accelerate in the future. Eventually, those who CAN afford to leave will leave and those who remain will have to pick up the taxes. Not a pretty thought. We are losing folks too - not so much for RE taxes (lowest in the nation) but for j*b opportunity and housing costs. It's problematic for many states and IMHO it will get worse as the differences become more and more stark. YMMV

Returning you now...

 

[Philliefan33]

DH and I are thinking about moving, but haven't made a final decision. A combination of reading this thread and the usual "new year's cleanout" inspired me to tackle some of the things in storage at our house. I went through the bookcase in the (finished) basement and my storage cabinet, setting aside rid of three boxes of stuff to donate and throwing away a big bag.

The best part was that when DH came downstairs to see what I was doing, he joined in. He is definitely the pack rat around here, but he willingly tossed / donated enough things to clear about six linear feet of storage shelves. Which was quickly filled with other stuff that was just piled on the floor, but the storage room looks better!

If we decide to move, we can lean out a lot of stuff by insisting that the daughters come get their things. I will not move their "treasures" to a new house -- if they want it, they can store it.

 

[HarryHawk]

I have had amazing luck on Facebook Marketplace. I've met some really nice people and unloaded an unbelievable amount of "stuff". People will buy almost anything and it has been fun. There really hasn't been anyone coming by that I have been concerned about, but always have two of us here at the house anyway. I usually look up their profile on Facebook so I know a little about them. Most people are trustworthy enough to leave the money on the front porch if you don't want to deal with meeting them. I have been pleasantly surprised.

I agree that Facebook Marketplace is a good resource, I also use Nextdoor and Craigslist. I have enjoyed most of the people with whom I've interacted.

I meet all the buyers at our local Police Station. They have an area marked for online transactions. The Police Station is easy to find and easy to get to off the expressway. To be honest, I mainly meet there more to provide a safe and comfortable place for my buyers.

I personally would not feel comfortable sending my wife to a stranger's house with a couple hundred dollars in cash to make a purchase. That goes double for folks who work and have to meet after dark.

JUst the other day a great young man I met said how happy he was when I told him I wanted to meet at the Police Station, he said he instantly knew it wasn't any sort of scam.

 

[kgtest]

I agree that Facebook Marketplace is a good resource, I also use Nextdoor and Craigslist. I have enjoyed most of the people with whom I've interacted.

I meet all the buyers at our local Police Station. They have an area marked for online transactions. The Police Station is easy to find and easy to get to off the expressway. To be honest, I mainly meet there more to provide a safe and comfortable place for my buyers.

I personally would not feel comfortable sending my wife to a stranger's house with a couple hundred dollars in cash to make a purchase. That goes double for folks who work and have to meet after dark.

JUst the other day a great young man I met said how happy he was when I told him I wanted to meet at the Police Station, he said he instantly knew it wasn't any sort of scam.

I also do marketplace deals at the local police station. It's the only way to do it. I would never put DW in a position to transact money with a stranger from Marketplace and do all the sales myself. I've had pretty good luck, I once sold an old coaxial cable, and a completely broken AV receiver. I was shocked people wanted to pay money for those 2 items.

 

[Camas Lilly]

I agree that Facebook Marketplace is a good resource, I also use Nextdoor and Craigslist. I have enjoyed most of the people with whom I've interacted.

I meet all the buyers at our local Police Station. They have an area marked for online transactions. The Police Station is easy to find and easy to get to off the expressway. To be honest, I mainly meet there more to provide a safe and comfortable place for my buyers.

I personally would not feel comfortable sending my wife to a stranger's house with a couple hundred dollars in cash to make a purchase. That goes double for folks who work and have to meet after dark.

JUst the other day a great young man I met said how happy he was when I told him I wanted to meet at the Police Station, he said he instantly knew it wasn't any sort of scam.

Good advice! We are pretty far out, so it doesn't make sense on a lot of smaller items items. Plus there are two of us here pretty much 24/7. Nonetheless, I have met some at McDonalds, Post Office, etc. mostly due to distance for the buyer. All depends on your situation I guess. One thing about FB, is most of the time you can look up the buyer's profile and get a sense of who they are.

 

[FLJim]

DH and I are thinking about moving, but haven't made a final decision. A combination of reading this thread and the usual "new year's cleanout" inspired me to tackle some of the things in storage at our house. I went through the bookcase in the (finished) basement and my storage cabinet, setting aside rid of three boxes of stuff to donate and throwing away a big bag.

The best part was that when DH came downstairs to see what I was doing, he joined in. He is definitely the pack rat around here, but he willingly tossed / donated enough things to clear about six linear feet of storage shelves. Which was quickly filled with other stuff that was just piled on the floor, but the storage room looks better!

If we decide to move, we can lean out a lot of stuff by insisting that the daughters come get their things. I will not move their "treasures" to a new house -- if they want it, they can store it.

+1 on "the kids can store their treasures." And the difficult part for mom & dad is that maybe the kids don't want very much of what mom and dad think is valuable, desirable, or sentimental. Tastes change from generation to generation. Which is why some re-sale shops are chocked-full of "valuable" knick-knacks that don't sell. For mom and dad it can be a tough pill to swallow that your 'collections' have little value and nobody wants them.