Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Moving from East Coast to West Coast

I just moved from the East Coast to the West Coast, under a tight schedule. Hope this article will help someone to settle down a little bit.

(1) Rent an apartment/house to live
Renting an apartment/house without having a look at the place might not be an easy decision. So list some things that you care about, and rank them: distance to working place, neighborhood, price, living space, structure, etc... And in Mountain View, lots of apartments have pools/gyms, so if you love exercise, you could choose such a place. And don't worry if your apartment does not have this, as you might live very near a trail or a park as well.
Craigslist is a good place to look for apartments. Choose some keywords such as "Mountain View" to narrow down your choice. Another useful website is HousingMaps, which has been integrated with Google Map, so you could easily find houses in a specific place on the map. Also, you could choose the price range in this website.

What if you really want to see a place before renting? There is always a way. You could either ask friends or families for a short stay, or find some temporory sublet/room sharing on Craigslist.

(2) Buying airplane tickets
Southwest is a good place to buy airplane tickets. It allows two free baggag, and its price is usually cheaper than others. If you don't have a strict flying date, click the "Try our low fare calender" after your result for the selected date comes, and you could see the prices for the whole month. Usually the prices in different days differ a lot. Usually if you book early, Southwest is a good place to book tickets.

(3) Shipping luggages
Ask the local post office if they have "book special", uaually books are cheaper than other things. And also, if you ship your car, ask the carrier whether you are allowed to carry things in the trunk. If they allow, some light things such as clothes would be a good fit there.

(4) Shipping the car
It's my first time shipping a car, so I care more about online review while comparing their prices. I used the AmeriFright, and it's door to door shipment with a reasonble price. The good thing about it is that you could bid for several times for different prices, and you could choose one you pick. But be aware that a cheaper price may not attract carriers fast enough, so you might need a longer waiting time.

(5) Purchasing furnitures
Many people will prefer to buy furnitures after they see it. For me, I need some furnitures as soon as I moved in, such as mattress or bed. So I searched online and bought a mattress from Macy's and ask for a shipping date as my arrival date. It was during the Labor day when I purchase the mattress, so Macy's has a big discount, with around $300 for a mattress set originally pricing around $1200. If purchasing in other times, you could try some places such as Costco.

(6) High Speed Internet
During the summer, ComcastOffer has some deal, with $19.99/month for half a year, and a little more than $40 for another half a year. But this is only for new customer in their website. If you are an old customer, you could call Comcast directly, they might have the same deal for old customers. And in searching for Internet, research and negotiation would make a difference. After calling Comcast, I find out that I could get a better deal, with $25 each month for 12 months, and a higher speed. So my suggestion is, call the local office and use the online chatting tool provided by Comcast, to know more information about the choices. But one suggestion is, go with a high speed if internet is really important to you, but do a reasearch before you know about the prices.

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