S1 didn’t get his signing bonus until after he started work – and was surprised when about 1/3 was automatically deducted for taxes (fed and state). He had savings in the bank to front the bills, but we were prepared to make a short-term loan if he needed to put down a bigger deposit.
Will your S get a hotel or temp place covered by the employer? Some places will give you two weeks in a temp apartment so one can find a place to live and get set up (esp. in Silicon Valley, where housing is in short supply and not many folks haul their belongings cross-country).
Thank you very much everyone - very useful! And yes, I am probably overthinking, but I would rather overthink now than discover some issues (such as for example those mentioned by @Tiredofsnow) later. I had several bad experiences with our local DMV, but in my case the solution did not require rearranging my class schedule and hopping on a plane to catch the next appointment.
@eastcoascrazy We did consider letting him borrow our car, and I suppose we can still do this in case of emergency. But this does not seem like a good solution as this would require a ~1000 mile drive each way. Buying his new car in his home state would be possible, but this would involve additional taxes and multiple transfer / registration fees.
@CountingDown and @Marian - thank you for the thought. He is aware of taxes, and he earned some money from his previous jobs and internships to cover the gap. But, if necessary, we would be happy to subsidize him. Fortunately, we have no problem supporting the kids financially, they just like to be independent whenever they can. But it looks like we may indeed need to act as guarantors for his apartment lease. The employee did provide a corporate housing during his summer internship, but I believe they expect him to rent an apartment for the real job. He can consider renting the same place (they allow monthly rentals) if needed to. However, I do not expect housing to be the problem in his case, and it seems that he would benefit from renting an apartment early.
@calmom thank you for your input. He will make all the decisions, do all of the required legwork and pay with his own money. But, in our family, it is common to offer and ask each other for help in order to save time, effort, or to avoid costly mistakes. As you can tell from this thread, a long-distance relocation process is not trivial, and there are many possible solutions, so I am happy to collect information for my son. I also plan to help him choose and decorate his new apartment because I can, and because he asked me to. And whenever I need his help (e.g. fixing up gadgets, planing and preparing family events, driving to/from an airport, or simply moving furniture…) I ask him and he does it for me. I understand that other families may have different dynamics, but this helicoptering works just fine for ours, and we’ll happily continue doing this for each other as long as we are asked to (the very thought that I can make my kids do anything against their will makes me smile - they would likely do just the opposite )
@GRITS80 Thank you!!! I have completely forgotten that a dealership can process a registration in another state (even located very far away, such as in your examples), and of course my son has zero experience with buying cars. This is super-useful, and will likely save him a lot of money, since buying from a local dealer reduces the negotiation power. And, since a dealer should be able to deliver his car to another state, there is no reason to buy from a local dealership
I assume that you paid car sales taxes according to the residency states (where the cars were titled), rather than the states where the cars were purchased. True?
My son moved to the Chicago area and needed get an Illinois driver’s license before he could register his car. All info was found online and he did need to go to two different locations to complete the process. The only snag he had was that his car is leased (and out of state) so it required some extra leg work and forms.
As for his apartment lease, he had to have first secured a rental insurance policy. He didn’t realize this, but the rental company “made it easy” for him to just sign up at that time with their insurance man. Had he known (or read the details) he would have been prepared.
For his car insurance we found it less stressful to have him initially go with our same company. Our agent worked with someone near his new home and the transfer was smooth.
I had a blast shopping with my son at Home Goods and Ikea. It was a fun mother / son weekend.
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