Guidance on the economics of getting a kids' stuff across the country

Parent Cafe
1

<p>There probably is more than one thread on this, but my probably inadequate search didn’t reveal it. </p>

<p>Both of my kids went to college in driving distance of us (in the Northeast). So, we could pack up a van (early on) or an SUV and get their stuff to school – even two trips if necessary. But, our son is going to the West Coast for graduate school. He’s going to sell his car here (old and probably not in shape for a cross-country trip) and will likely buy another one there. We’re wondering about the economics of getting stuff across country. He’ll need a bicycle, which I assume he takes as baggage on his flight. But, he’s got clothes, electronics, some kitchen stuff, etc. He also has sheets and blankets. </p>

<p>Is it cheaper to buy some stuff new (like blankets and sheets) rather than ship?
How do the costs of shipping boxes compare with taking extra bags on a plane?</p>

<p>Thanks for your help. </p>

2

<p>My opinion…buy a bicycle on the west coast…unless there is something REALLY special about this bike.</p>

<p>If your son flies Southwest, he will get two free bags. Pack one large suitcase with his bed linens, towel, and any kitchen stuff you can squeeze in. Pack his clothes in the other suitcase. In addition, he can have one carry on suitcase and a personal item. His computer bag should be his personal item. Then he can also have a carryon bag with the remainder of his electronic stuff in it.</p>

<p>Then buy everything else on the west coast. When our son was in grad school we set a budget of $1000 to cover his move in expenses. Our kid needed some furniture so we had to drive it to him. It doesn’t sound like your kiddo needs furniture…which is good. We bought dishes, pots and pans, kitchen utensils, a printer, rugs, a bookshelf…it all worked out well. We shipped nothing!</p>

<p>If need be, you can ship additional clothes later. Or if you fly with him, you will have two additional checked bags…and really everything will fit!</p>

3

<p>Congrats, to Shawbridge Jr as he embarks on his next journey.</p>

<p>Do you know here he will be living? When D went off to grad school she moved into a building with a doorman . We called the management company which was on site. They had a storage room, so we just shipped everything to her address so it was waiting for her when she got there. You can put in an order to UPS on line, with the number of boxes, dimensions and weight and schedule a time for them to come and pick up your boxes (they will even ship a trunk as long as it is locked). When she finished grad school, we came out for graduation, helped her box and tape everything up, had UPS pick up from her apartment and shipped back to our house.</p>

4

<p>Unless it is a special bicycle, I’d just buy a new one out there. Not worth it to ship. </p>

5

<p>@sybbie719‌, he will be living in a graduate dorm with a kitchen. He lived in an apartment this past year and has some largely forgettable furniture but does have some kitchen equipment. However, he is a very driven kid doesn’t want to think about meals (and wants to meet people). So he wanted to live in a dorm and be on a meal plan. He’s doing a three year dual degree program and will certainly be in a dorm for two years and possibly three. Also real estate is very expensive in the vicinity of his school, so the dorm will be the best choice.</p>

<p>He’ll be on a very big campus – lots of things could be half hour walks. So, a bike is useful. He inherited the bike from me. It is a very light aluminum frame bike that could be carried up stairs easily and would also be great for exercising in the area around the campus (I spent a year of graduate school there back in the dark ages and used to go cycling up in the hills surrounding the campus although I’d guess the traffic is probably a lot worse). @Pizzagirl‌ and @thumper1‌, he could sell the bike here and buy a new one there, but if it is easy to ship, it is one less thing to think about. </p>

<p>Just looked this up. It looks like Virgin America, which flies non-stop charges $25 per bag (up to 10 bags, it seems) and $50 for bikes. JetBlue charges more for the bags (though the first one is free) and the same for bikes. Both have relatively stringent standards for packing. Southwest as you said @thumper1‌ allows 2 bags free, charges $75 for the next one and $50 for subsequent bags, but does not fly non-stop. United charges $100 for a bike but has less stringent packing standards.</p>

<p>How does $25 per bag or box compare with UPS or FedEx ground? </p>

<p>Also, unlike for his undergraduate dorms, he’s asked his mother to come out and help him make his room look OK. He started a company in his senior year and took 2 days off after graduation to move to a new apartment and really did not spend any time fixing it up. During the year, he met a young woman who came back to his apartment and walked into his bedroom and said it looked like a serial killer was living there – mattress on the floor and clothes in boxes. She’s now his GF (it probably also looked like the room of a startup CEO just out of college) but they will split up as he is going west and she is going to Europe. Moreover, he realizes that for half of his program, most of his classmates will be significantly older (after meeting some of them, he said, “Dad, they are adults. They have furniture. They know what wines they like.”) As such, I think he would like to avoid the serial killer decor this time around. </p>

<p>Long story not so short, my wife can also take boxes on the plane and I can if I come out.</p>

6

<p>It has been our experience that a box of any significance costs at least $25 to mail, so checked baggage is a better deal especially if you get them close to the 50 pound allowance. For the bike, call a bike shop. They have the boxes and they will even pack it for a fee. </p>

7

<p>We have taken advantage of:</p>

<p>Target Red Card shopping online…free shipping
Wal-mart Site to Store (or free shipping to the location for purchases over $50)
ordering online at BBB and then picking up at other city’s store.</p>

<p>I hate shipping stuff myself because it can be sooo pricey. </p>

<p>I love both Target.com and Walmart.com. Walmart.com has a gazillion more things than any store could possibly hold. I got a fab gate-leg table for one of my vacation rentals…the pkg shipped free because it was over the $50 limit. </p>

8

<p>When our kids moved into the dorm from HI, we went with them. We could each take two bags and a carry on and personal item. The kids really didn’t want or need all that much. They preferred buying junker bikes at bargain prices so they wouldn’t be tempting for thieves and were able to sell the bikes for the price they originally paid for them.</p>

<p>Neither kid really had that much stuff to ship and all the clothing and bedding we just packed into suitcases–some linens and clothing. We bought a multi-function printer at their campus, as well as small household items. S & D bought stuff from IKEA and S also shopped Craigslist.</p>

<p>When S moved from West to East coasts, his employer paid his moving costs. He still sold a lot of the bulkier stuff as he had no need for 3 tube TVs and other bulky items that he could just as easily buy on Craigslist of Ikea when he got to the East Coast. He did sell the junker bike and bought a nice 3rd-hand one from a friend who was leaving the East Coast.</p>

<p>When I went to college and law school, I always liked being a minimalist–made moving and life a LOT easier.</p>

9

<p>Both my kids moved from west coast to east coast. I suggest that you pack his clothes to take on his flight but ship nothing and buy everything new in the West coast. He could get matching new linens, towels and blankets so his room would look nice.
They can get a rental car and pick up everything he needs ordered online through Target and other stores. I think his school is close to a huge shopping center where one can buy just about everything.</p>

10

<p>I have done this move back and forth before and after grad school. I would say let your son figure it out. He is in grad school after all. He should do most of the packing and planning. It builds character and self-confidence.</p>

11

<p>How many boxes? I would not take a bunch of boxes on the plane. How would you get them from the plane to the dorm? </p>

12

<p>Having done multiple moves over a lifetime (13 different houses), it’s almost always cheaper, easier, and more enjoyable to get rid of almost everything, move only the stuff you LOVE, and then acquire new stuff.</p>

<p>Books should be sent USPS book rate. It takes forever, but it’s very cheap. (Media mail for a standard book box weighing 25 pounds is about $13.)</p>

<p>As for the bike, don’t forget to factor in the cost of readying the bike for shipping. It’s not just $50, it’s getting the bike packed in a bike box (unless you have one) and then reassembled at the destination. And it can be very challenging to deal with a bike box at the destination, unless you have a friend with an SUV/minivan or you’ve made specific arrangements with a shuttle company. Does the bike fit your son well? Is it in good condition with no major repairs needed? If both of those are true, it’s probably worthwhile to send it; otherwise, it might not be. </p>

13

<p>Thanks all for the good advice. </p>

<p>@dmd77‌, my son likes to keep things simple so buying new stuff would be psychologically costly relative to shipping old stuff. He abhors shopping and lots of administrative stuff. Finds it mentally taxing. I might sound a bit overprotective here, but avoiding things like shopping is a coping mechanism that he’s created. He’s a truly gifted kid with severe dyslexia and a number of other related things. Despite the LD’s, he has been extremely successful in HS, getting into an elite school, graduatingwith no B’s in four years while doing a triple major with hard courses, writing a summa thesis while starting a company during his senior year, raising seed money before graduating, and now bringing in a very distinguished guy to take over after 1.5 years. And, he’s now heading to the best school in the world for what he wants to study. The way he does it is intense focus – he just ignores the other stuff if at all possible (hence the serial killer decor). Sorry to have bragged here, but you can see why we don’t like to mess with his coping mechanisms if we don’t have to. So, if he can avoid shopping, he will. </p>

<p>Probably good advice generally @dmd77‌ and @seabreeze‌, but might be harder here. Good to know that the USPS rate is less than the Virgin America rate. His mom will handle sheets and blankets at BB&B. Kitchen stuff from WM, Target or Amazon Prime? Maybe. Nonetheless, he will still have to go through his stuff to take that which he will want for daily living, athletic stuff, backpacking and general outdoor gear, and job interview clothes. There is little material stuff that he loves – probably only electronics. When we ask him what he wants for his birthday, he says, “If I need something, you guys get it for me. Therefore, if I haven’t asked for it, I don’t need it. So, I’d prefer it if you didn’t get me anything.” In recent years, he has asked us for plane tickets for a backpacking trip.</p>

<p>Moving to the west coast will no doubt be a growing experience. He is in fact a little anxious about it as he liked being able to stop off at home for R&R weekends every once in a while. </p>

<p>How to get the stuff from airport to dorm? Uber SUV or something similar, I’d guess. </p>

<p>The bike fits him well. He is a little taller than me but it is a big frame. Right size for him. I will look but I think it is in very good condition. I doubt he’d buy as nice a bike for himself if he was out there (it was probably $2K new and was very happy with it but I inherited my current bike of my nephew who was a bike racer rising from provincial to national levels and wanted yet a better bike and had souped the one i now have in every conceivable way, much of it probably lost on me). Now that I think of it, I bought a used Peugeot when I arrived at the same school many years ago. Not a great one, but good enough. Need to ponder this one. I’m assuming you wouldn’t ship a bike via USPS or UPS.</p>

<p>One thing we are discovering is the substantial added cost of having someone a continent away instead of 1.5 hours away. Flying. Shipping. Medical insurance (ours is great in the region but not out there). </p>

14

<p>My son went to college about a 30 hour drive away. He got a one way rental and hauled stuff out there one year, taking his brother with him for the drive, and little brother got a one way plane ticket home. Don’t know if it was worth it or not with the junk he took, but he seemed to think so, and my younger son helped him with the driving, moving in, setting, got to stay there for a while and they had the use of the van for a day or so. I do the one way rental thing for my kids who went to school 5-8 hours away, and it is very cost effective, as I drive there at the beginning of the school year with the student, saving on airfare to the school, filling it up with all needed, spend the day using the car as needed, including getting me to the airport and then flying one way home.</p>

<p>But we sent things (often not worth the cost of shipping, but…), he hauled thing in a suitcase paying the extra luggage charge (a few times we got upgrades with frequent flyer miles and that was a bonanza of sorts0, and he bought while there. </p>

<p>Friends of ours had a car shipped from PA to CA and felt it was worth it as the car was not a junker and they did not feel like getting into the market of buying. Check out the prices to have it shipped. </p>

15

<p>

</p>

<p>In the West coast and CA especially, we don’t have the public transportation system you have in the east coast.Unless his school is in the city of San Francisco, I suggest they rent a car from the airport because the stores you mentioned upthread are only accessible by car.</p>

16

<p>When S1 moved to the west coast, we shipped 10 boxes. Cost $265. He also took two large suitcases and flew Southwest. He and DIL hit IKEA for furniture once they got there, but they were moving into an apt., not a dorm.</p>

<p>We still have some of his stuff here, boxed and in the basement. They expect to move back this direction in the next few years, so once they do that, they can take custody of what’s left here!</p>

<p>@jym626’s S put a bike on a plane and had a number of issues, IIRC. </p>

17

<p>My thought on the bike. Bikes on college campuses can easily disappear. if the bike has sentimental meaning to him don’t send it. My youngest brought her first mountain bike to college her 2nd year of school. The bike was 8 yrs old and a small frame. It wasn’t worth much to anyone but her. It was taken from the back porch of a friends house. My D is still sad. Sh loved that bike.
Get a good lock.</p>

18

<p>Shawbridge, if I had the kid you’re describing (actually, I do, minus the dyslexia), I’d simply handle the move for him–go on the plane with him, set up the living space, buy what’s needed, etc. I still think it’d be cheaper and easier than dealing with moving stuff. Not to mention that every time I move stuff it gets broken/damaged/etc.</p>

19

<p>SoCal to NE colleges.</p>

<p>Fedex Ground or UPS… Ship to dorm or to hotel that you will be staying for drop off in the fall. Amazon Prime.</p>

<p>Purchased new at the other end, all but the bedding which we checked as baggage on the plane. (Most anything a college kid “needs” they don’t need for awhile, except bedding, which is necessary on Day 1.</p>

20

<p>OK…if the mom is going too…fly southwest. You will have FOUR checked bags, two carry on bags, and two personal items.</p>

<p>When DD went to college, she filled one suitcase with linens…including towels, quoit, one set of sheets. Second suitcase had supplies. In your son’s case, he could include the kitchen "stuff " he wants to take. Third and fourth suitcases had clothing, shoes, toiletries, hair dryer, etc. Carryon bag for me held MY things needed for the trip. My DD’s carryon held her electronic “stuff”, cables, small speakers for iPod, all medications, and a complete change of clothing. My personal item was an instrument case holding two instruments. DDs was her computer bag.</p>

<p>When we got to the west coast, we purchased bulky items (we ordered them at the BBB here and picked up there), mattress pad, pillows, desk lamp desk chair pad, etc. we made a run to target for remaining toiletries and a small TV.</p>

<p>Poof. Done!</p>