Moving To A New Country: People, Pets and Possessions (Part 3, Possessions)

Part three of a three-part series on moving people, pets, and possessions to a new country.

Let’s start with the disclaimer: Your right answer will be different than ours. These answers worked for us, based on our situation. Your choices will be different, for different reasons. So, we’ve included the reasons and lessons learned, so you can make your own best decisions.

Deciding what to take

Americans collect stuff. Lots of it.  This is a great time to Marie Kondo all the junk in the attic! But good decision making will get you a happier result. Get beyond the obvious stuff (yes, get rid of those clothes you were keeping in case you fit into them again someday) and be sure to ask yourself two critical questions:

Can it go?

The USA runs a 110v, 60-cycle electrical system.  Our destination country runs 230v, 50-cycle. This means that:

• Most simple electrical items won’t run here. Yes, you can buy converters and run them, but really consider the costs. This method shortens the life of those electrical devices. Is it worth purchasing a converter to keep your 10 year old hair dryer alive for another 6 months?
• Many older clocks won’t work correctly, as they rely on 60-cycle electrical current to keep time.

That said, some things will work just fine with nothing more than the change of an electrical cord and, in some cases, the flip of a switch.  Newer electronics tend to have either laptop-style power units which convert power down to meet their needs, or to have dual-voltage power supplies that can run on either system just by switching out the power cord. Most such power supplies auto-sense, but some have a small switch that has to be moved from “110” to “220” before plugging them in.

Like many countries, Portugal places some limits on what immigrants can bring. These are primarily designed to avoid, for example, buying electronics in the US where they are less expensive, then using your VISA to bring them as “household goods” and then selling them for profit and without paying VAT (local tax). Check your destination’s regulations – in our case, all items had to have been in our possession for at least six months prior to travelling, and we had to sign a declaration that none would be sold within six months of arrival.

Should it go?

This is a harder question. The “have I touched it in six months” rule seems pretty common – but that doesn’t account for mementos, winter clothes vs summer clothes, that camping gear that you do use all summer but haven’t yet this year.  We replaced this question with “is it worth paying to transport this item across the ocean?” As a result, we:

• Left most of our furniture behind. That daybed in the guest room may or may not fit well into our new space, and can be replaced for less than it costs to ship.
• Converted most of our books to eBooks.  We’re big readers – and books are heavy to ship. So we slimmed our bookshelves down by about 80%, keeping only those books that either didn’t have an eBook version or that we had some specific reason to keep in hard copy.
  • We are movie people and have a lot of DVDs. We strip them to our media server and store the discs – but the discs are our licensing, so we kept them all.  However, we don’t keep original cases – discs go in sleeved protectors and into a storage bin – so this was less volume than it otherwise might have been. They still weigh a lot though, and move costs are based on volume and weight.
• Eliminated a lot of decorative stuff – pictures on the wall, things that sit on shelves. If its only purpose was to be looked at, we decided there would be lots to see at our destination.
  • We also scanned photos and documents, eliminating file cabinets and shelves of albums.

Deciding how to send it

There are lots of options for how to move your stuff, but they fall into one of three categories, based on how much stuff you’re taking with you.

If you’ve gone minimalist

The last expensive way to move your stuff is just to take it with you. Pack an extra suitcase and pay the luggage fee. It’s less expensive than many options, and it’s the least complicated method. Replace your little suitcase with a 3 to 4-foot travelling duffels and pay the oversized / overweight bag fee.

Some folks look into mailing their goods. This can be expensive, and can result in your having to pay customs fees for “importing” your goods, which can significantly drive up the price in ways you won’t know til they arrive.  At the very least, check into a forum filled with people in your destination country and ask what that looks like. I have rarely seen folks end up happy with that decision but it’s very situational.

If you’ve pared down to essentials, but it’s too much to pack

If all of your stuff will fit in one or two lift-vans, you might want to consider a self-shipping service like UPakWeShip. (I’ll use their process to illustrate but there are others. Do your research and due diligence – we’re talking about all your worldly possessions, here. Your point of origin and destination will impact what may be your best options.)

You’ll pay a flat, pre-quoted rate to ship your stuff. The company will drop off a pallet and the “edge” material (basically, cardboard walls to turn your pallet into a box). it’s your job to pack all your stuff in boxes and stack it on the pallet in a nice neat pile that doesn’t exceed the edges or risk toppling. A couple of days later they will come pick it up and ship it off to your new home.

These services are the least expensive “movers”, but be sure to do your homework. Since they are just shippers, not traditional movers, you’ll need to ensure that you understand:

• How and whether to insure your shipment
• What may be required at customs on the far end
  • Sometimes this requires an inventory and paperwork from the consulate in your origin country that have to be done before you leave!
• What provisions are made to get your pallet from the customs warehouse to your new home – and whether you are the one responsible for making those arrangements.
  • If someone else is doing it, you’ll need to understand what their vehicle access looks like, whether there are required parking permits for large trucks – or whether a large truck can even get onto the street. If you’re in an apartment, you’ll need to know whether there is a freight elevator and whether there is a service fee to use it or reservations are required.
• Whether delivery drivers will open the pallet and bring boxes to your residence – and if so, will they take the pallet away with them? Or do you need to learn how to dispose of a pallet in your new country?
• Likewise, when you unpack there will be a lot of cardboard and packing materials. Is recycling required in your new country? Are there limits on how much stuff or are there fees?  If there’s a neighborhood recycling bin, are there limits on how much you are allowed to stuff into it? If not, are there customs and norms about how much is polite to stuff into it without making it unusable for the entire neighborhood? What day is it collected? Can you at least wait to put your stuff out til that morning so you don’t start out by annoying all of your new neighbors?

Be sure to read all the fine print.  What liability is inherent to the carrier? What happens if the ship sinks?  Understand what is and isn’t covered and the impact to you – then decide whether and what to insure.

The biggest surprise expense here comes from not understanding the customs process and responsibilities. If you haven’t done your paperwork exactly the way your new country wants it, things get held up, and that costs you more than time.  If customs holds your belongings, you’ll be charged demurrage fees – basically, the costs of storing your stuff in the customs warehouse. These fees are generally backbreaking – hundreds per day – and you have zero control over how long your stuff sits there.  You can literally rack up thousands of dollars in unexpected charges in a week. Demurrage increases every day and once your stuff is finally released, you can’t pick it up til the fees are paid. But the fees rise every day you don’t retrieve it.

If you have a lot of stuff

You can work with shipping companies to ship an entire container, or to share one with others who have only a partial container (groupage, in which multiple peoples’ lift-vans will be loaded into one container for shipping). As with the prior option, customs and insurance are considerations – be sure you are well prepared!. If you are sharing container space, your timing will be impacted by how quickly that container is filled.  If you’re going to a popular destination, that’s not generally an issue but if you’re going someplace obscure, it could take weeks. This, of course, will impact how long it takes for your goods to reach you.

If you have a lot of stuff, and the luxury of just hiring people to deal with it for you

We took the more expensive route of hiring a professional mover to handle it.  It has been a poor experience, but given the same circumstances I’d probably do it again. Having the customs and delivery elements handled, and being able to arrange where our goods landed were worth it in our circumstance, but it definitely had its down side as well.

We started with a national/international moving company that we knew had a branch in our town, and their international page led us to Crown, with whom they partner for these things. In the end, Crown used a different mover, who came in from a different city an hour away. (If you are charged hourly rates for workers, it will generally include travel time.)

Being on the west coast, we had effectively two moves happening – one overland movement of goods within the US, and then the international shipment from the east coast.  The first part of this move went well and kept about the timeline we expected. We were promptly informed when our goods left Seattle, when they arrived in New Jersey, and when they were loaded onto a ship for Rotterdam, and given a link (that never worked) to track our vessel’s progress across the ocean.

Yes, Rotterdam. This was one of the benefits for us of using this path. Customs in our destination country seem to be a little variable/unpredictable. While we paid a bit more to send our goods this way, we could easily have racked that up in demurrage, just by having done “the right things, but not necessarily the thing this particular customs agent wanted.” Or been charged VAT on things that ought not to be subject to it, but the customs agent has the final word on that. Portugal has a bit of a reputation for not being particularly systems/process oriented, and that can make even government processes highly individual. A bad throw of the dice and shipping directly to Portugal could have cost much more. (Again: due diligence. Know your destination country. Make decisions that fit your situation.)

The estimate was that goods would generally take 6-8 weeks to arrive. Our goods reached Rotterdam 6 weeks after “move day”. A week later, they had cleared customs. We were informed of that by the Dutch moving company, who then took the items to their warehouse. That was 10 days ago and we’re still waiting on word about when our goods might arrive.  Our Crown customer service rep has basically ceased to exist unless called upon directly. The mover here advised us of additional fees that apply to our delivery (even though Crown explicitly told us there would be no such fees). Payment of several hundred euros was required before any delivery scheduling would be undertaken, of course.  They confirmed they received the money three days ago; we’re still waiting to hear what happens next and when. Today is precisely two months from the day our goods were carried away. On arrival, they’ll deliver the boxes to our apartment (additional fee for not being on the ground floor), and carry our few items of furniture up the stairs (additional fee), then take the lift-vans with them when they go.

Almost every risk mitigated has a financial cost. I started researching two years before we left, which gave us time to estimate and put aside the funds for our chosen solution. The “project triangle” applies: time, money, results – you can have any two of the three.

Transition Considerations

Something we didn’t hear much about from others was about the “in between time”. When you move across town, or even state to state, it’s a matter of days or maybe a week or two. You go into “travel mode” for a bit, live out of a suitcase, and you spend nearly as much time travelling as your goods do. But for an international move, you’re going to be in “travel mode” for a lot longer. Think about this before your pack your goods.

Examples:

• We lived in our old house for three weeks after our goods were packed and taken away. That’s a long time to eat from paper plates or do takeout. We’ve been in our new home for over a month now, and so far haven’t seen a paper plate in the grocery store. We took that into consideration, in addition to the “cost to ship vs replace” formula, and decided to just get new dishes and pots and pans when we arrived.  Our old dishes and cookware went to Goodwill the day we left town, and we ordered replacements  at the start of our travels so they’d be there shortly after we arrived. We sent our flatware, but carried a cheap set of “service for four” in our luggage so we’d have utensils til our goods arrive.
• Since our time at destination waiting for our goods was going to be longer than our time waiting to leave, we kept mostly clothes suited to our destination climate. Those last couple of weeks were a little uncomfortable and we stayed indoors a lot, but settling in here has been much easier with climate-appropriate clothes – especially since we don’t always have the luxury of just huddling at home as we attend to arrival business and needs.
• We updated our internet security to use authenticator apps and security keys wherever practical. But for those that wouldn’t use anything but a cell phone, we switched them all to one number, then found a soft-phone company that would allow us to use our US number in our destination country. Keeping that one number alive costs us about $12/month, and allows us to receive those MFA codes, as well as letting family and friends call/text us at a US number. The app is installed on both of our phones, so either of us can see or answer messages.
• It can be an effort to switch streaming services to a new country. We may not want to, since most content is released in the US first. But it poses a dilemma.
  • Our TV knows it is in Portugal, so our Amazon Prime account is useless – we can get Amazon content and things we have purchased, but their stream-for-free content is licensed for the US, and won’t play.
  • We can pay for a VPN subscription so that we can make our web browser appear to be in the US (no laws appear to address that so it is presently legal, but we’ll have to keep an eye on any legal changes). But that’s harder to watch together than the living room TV.
  • So now we’re in the process of weighing the elements to decide whether to keep US prime or cancel it and sign up for an EU-based account.
• We downloaded our medical records data but our destination country doesn’t have centralized records. We’ll save that data, and once we have established our relationships and history here, will go back and close accounts where we can, or change the passwords to “as long and complicated as possible” elsewhere to limit exposure.
• While we have no intention of returning to the USA, we’ve kept our credit union account. Having a US bank presence will make it easier to pay taxes and conduct any unexpected business that may arise. But we’ve also left a trusted partner with a Power of Attorney to assist us in some business affairs.
• Something we didn’t do for transition but should have: arranged to have wills and medical directive documents drawn up and ready to sign the moment we arrived.  Our US directives are no good here, and though our wills might be recognized, what we really need to do is have a local will that expressly states our desire to have those things adjudicated based on home-country law (which Portugal allows). But by the time we’ve done that, why not just write a Portuguese will that does the same thing? Much simpler for our executor later.

More than anything: once you know your plan, budget it. This stuff is expensive. Our planning process was 2-3 years, and part of that timeline was “not moving forward until the savings account had enough in it to cover the budgeted costs.” The decision to fly first class added several months to our timeline. Likewise the decision to use a moving company. Each expense meant additional savings. We started the visa process the day our spreadsheet showed that we had more savings than budgeted expenses, and it has been a whirlwind of activity ever since. Once that engine revs up, there’s no time to still be figuring it all out. Time spent preparing, researching, and understanding what you will need will ensure you’re prepared with the right answers for you, and if you’re presented with a choice or option that you didn’t expect, will prepare you to choose well on the fly.