Thought some might be interested in the tale of our move from Colorado to Wellington....so here goes...may be multiple parts.
It’ll all work out. This should have been the motto of our move. But not until we arrived would we realize that’d we be able to make it over all the little hurdles that we were about to face.
We’re a family of three (me a Kiwi, wife American and a then 18 month old daughter who now holds US/NZ citizenship) and a pug. We moved from Colorado to Wellington in January 2013. It was a move many years in the making. We’d lived in Phoenix for a few years, and spent the last six years in Colorado. I have a big family, and my wife had lived in NZ for a few years back in 2000, so kind of knew what she was getting into.
We'd thought about moving home for a number of years finally decided to list the house for sale in April 2012. The day before we were to put the house on the market we had a massive leak. Took seven weeks to get repairs done and we think we missed the Spring window which would have helped sell the house. But, it would all work out. We ended up getting a contract on the house in November and closed in January 2013.
Keeping the house clean and organized during the seven or so months was a real pain. We also lost a lot of money on the house which didn’t make it any easier. But we’re getting over that fact, slowly. Things still didn’t feel real after signing the contract. There were still a number of ways the buyer could get out. It wasn’t until we handed over our keys and were in our rental that it started to sink in. Still had a bit of work to do, like ship the pug and sell our cars.
Paper-work
We knew it wasn’t going to be too hard, just a matter of filling out the right forms. The hardest part of the process was getting our daughter’s photo for the NZ passport. We’d read stories of photos being returned. To make a long story short, I set the DSLR on sequence and took a couple of hundred photos one morning, and ended up with one good one. We filed for her passport and citizenship at the same time. Looking at their timeline it could have taken 6 weeks which would have made it tight for us (we always leave things to the last minute). But it would all work out. Ended up with her passport back in the mail in 10 days! Always found the NZ citizenship/passport people really helpful. Filled out a piece of paper and had my wife’s residency in a week or two.
Moving
We closed on our house early Jan but wouldn’t fly out for another two weeks so rented a friends house just up the street. We got quotes from two moving companies and picked one. Paid for them to do all the packing, and was glad we did. Was a pretty simple process. They came in and wrapped/packed on one day, then loaded up the truck on the second. Once the movers had gone and we were in the rental we realized we had way too much stuff. But it would all work out. We ended up shipping a few boxes through the post office. Not a big deal and wasn’t too expensive, and kind of a fact of life. We had to have a few things with us while we were in the rental. I also got given a few gifts from work (artwork) that I wasn’t expecting so they had to be shipped.
Selling the cars:
We had two cars to sell. We listed them on Craigslist but ended up with not enough time so the plan then changed and we were going to sell them to Carmax (dealer that buys cars). We sold my car one week out and picked up a rental, planning on selling the second a few days prior to leaving. The process is really easy which is why we left it late, and we had to have two cars. The evening before we were to drive down and sell the last car, the last big step in the process, the turbo blew. Little did we know it, it would all work out. We pretty much freaked out. We were leaving in three days and had a worthless car. We tried to come up with a plan, give it to a friend? Nothing seemed like it would work. Then my wife said, “ask the dealer (who had it to potentially do the repair) if they want to buy it”. So I did, and they did. They offered us a little more than we owed, which wasn’t great, but beat having a worthless car. The only tricky bit was getting having to drive a few hours to pay off my loan, get the title and back to the dealer, and getting the check from them, all within two days. But…it all worked out.
to be continued......