We're still in the process of our fourth international move. I won't say it's over yet because we are still waiting on our car, our clothes and possessions (called Unaccompanied Air Baggage, or UAB) that we brought with us to Virginia for our year of training there, and all of our Household Effects (HHE) from our old house in Tirana to arrive before we can finally say the move is over. Our Tirana HHE has been sitting in a warehouse in Antwerp, Belgium, for twelve months. I'm sure you can imagine how anxious we are to get the bulk of our belongings in one place after such a long time.
I'm extremely anxious to begin decorating our new home. While our new place is extremely spacious and decorated in good quality furniture and fabrics, its monochromatic feel just isn't representative of who we are. Now, I don't want that to sound snobby. It's not that I think my personal belongings are better than what the USG provides for us; it's that I want my home to look like MY home. I think anyone in our situation would feel the same. For instance, the color palette is in beige and gold, where my palette runs to bright blues and the like. You can't blame me for wanting to "spice" things up a bit. I feel like beige and gold during the winter months will make the place feel drab and depressing. I'm really looking forward to my new project; so I'll make sure to post before and after photos when I'm done.
While any move--much less an international move--is always an eye-opening event, I think the biggest surprise we've had with this move is how much it's cost us. To be clear, I wouldn't change my life or our decision to join for FS; however, I don't feel like it's clear to the average Entry Level Officer (ELO) when they're joining the State Department how much money having this job will cost them over the life of their career. The hiring package sounds like it's full of perks, and on many levels it absolutely is: free travel to and from post, USG-provided housing (usually it's furnished), great TSP and pension, health insurance, great international schools for your children, possible employment for your spouse (it was a great program) language training, etc. These are all wonderful parts of this job. There is even a Post Transfer Allowance of around $1300 that you get to help offset the costs of the move whenever you PCS. That helps a lot, but I am very sorry to say that it doesn't come close to covering the actual expenses we accrue when doing what we do.
Let's take this particular move, for example; and I will attempt to break it down for you. That might help you to understand this whole process a bit better.
1. Obviously, the actual packing and mover costs are completely covered by the State Department. We are on the hook for the gratuity and whether or not we offer the movers lunch. Depending on the length of the move (the time it takes the movers to pack everything), that can set us back anywhere from $30-$100. It could even be more; it is possible, especially depending on where you live. Combining our packout in Tirana, UAB arrival in Virginia, packout in Virginia, and soon to be HHE and UAB arrival here; I'll estimate that it will end up costing us $150.
2. The plane tickets to and from Post are always covered. When traveling on government orders, we are authorized two 50-lb. bags, rather than the standard one 50-lb. bag. Each additional bag costs between $100-$200. We do eventually get that money back once the officer does their PCS reconciliation; but that $400-$800 we have to fork over for a family of four every time we PCS is a huge chunk of money either on our credit card or out of our savings account. We also pay interest on that money if it's on our card. It can take weeks and weeks to get that money back. My husband and I put everything like that on our card so that we can collect double credit card travel points. It's just something to take into consideration.
3. The most expensive moving cost so far has been our pets. It cost us over $1700 to get two cats and one dog from Tirana, Albania, to our home leave address in New Orleans. That does not include the vet costs associated with the vaccines, microchips, and travel documents we had to obtain to import our animals into the U.S. It does not include the "new patient fees" we had to pay to the vet in Virginia when we needed pet care there. Now, let's talk pet fees just to get one cat (our second cat died this year) and one dog from Virginia to Budapest. Between well-animal visits, vaccines, pet travel certifications ($800), travel to Richmond, Virginia to get the USDA vet to sign off on the pets' health certificates (we drove up and stayed overnight, so around $300), the cost of the USDA signatures ($35 each); we spent approximately $1135 just to get the animals to the airport and certified. Next, we had to pay $300 to get them on the plane. In case you're keeping track, those numbers total up to $3135 in pet fees alone.
I know you're probably thinking that we didn't have to stay overnight in Richmond, and you're right. We didn't. I'll tell you why we did, though. When an FSO is in language training, he or she is not allowed to take one single day of personal leave for that entire time. In other words, my husband didn't have a vacation day or a mental health day for 11 months straight. We spent that $300 on one night alone. It was a good investment. As for how much we may or may not get back, we expect to get the $300 we spent on plane fees from Virginia to Budapest to be the extend of what we recoup. We will not receive anything for the travel from Tirana to our home leave address because that is not considered a Permanent Change of Station; rather, it's a TDY because we chose that over a move to DC during that year. Oh, and because we were in TDY housing, we had to pay $300 per pet for pet deposits. So add $600 to that $3135. We also had to make sure that our animals could be fed and go to the bathroom immediately upon our arrival to Budapest; so I made sure to order cat food ($12.78), dog food ($12.29), litter ($8.49), and a litter box ($19.99) ahead of time. That added up equals to $53.55 So $3735 + $53.55 - $300 (Richmond Overnight) - $300 plane fees = $3188.55 in pet expenses in one year because of my husband's job. Let that sink in for a moment. I'm not even adding in the money we spent on the pet food, litter box, and litter we had to leave behind due to weight restrictions.
4. Let's move on to food costs. The one way that I was able to save us a little money on our move to Virginia was to box and mail the contents of my spice cabinet to my in-laws' house. That alone saved us several hundred dollars. But I want you to do me a favor and open your refrigerator. Do you see all those condiments, sauces, salad dressings, vegetables, tupperware containers, and meat products? Imagine all of that disappearing overnight. How much would that cost you to replace? Now I want you to multiply that--no doubt, probably very conservative estimate--by two. How much would that cost you? I'd be willing to bet that, very conservatively, your number is around $500. When we know we're leaving a place, sure we try our best to eat from the fridge and the freezer and the pantry only so that we can get rid of everything instead of wasting it. Yeah, that never goes as planned. I am not going to serve my kids popsicles and tuna fish for dinner for two weeks straight. And I don't think I know anyone who would. No, we end up eating out rather than shopping for more groceries to supplement the missing/used up ingredients we're trying to get rid of anyway. And it all costs money.
When we left Tirana, I gave away at least $300 worth of food to my helper. I'd be willing to bet my life it was actually worth more than that after I added cleaning supplies, forgotten pots or pans that didn't get packed up, etc. When we got to Virginia, we had to start all over again. Our initial grocery shopping trip was $600 and we spent $500 more a few days later. That sounds extreme, right? Well, when you're buying everything from cooking oil to ketchup to body soap to laundry detergent and softener and stain remover...it adds up very quickly. Go back to that $500 estimate on filling the fridge alone that I mentioned earlier, and you can start to imagine the kind of expense we're talking about. So you live in Virginia for eleven months and finally have a well-stocked freezer, fridge, and pantry. What do you do next? Well, if you're in the FS, you move!! I stopped really buying groceries a few weeks before we left, and left somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 in groceries in that apartment. No doubt, there were some very happy employees at our complex! But we were out that money. Now, what's next?
Well, now that we're in Budapest, we have a new pantry, freezer, and fridge to stock!!! $300 (food to helper) + $600 (initial shopping trip in VA) + $500 (second shopping trip VA) + $500 (groceries left in apartment) + $300 (initial trip in Budapest) = $2200 in groceries start up and loss this year. *cha ching*
5. We do get reimbursed for the second suitcase for each person, but what if you don't own a second suitcase for each person? Well, you obviously want to be able to max out your 100 lb. per person weight limit; so you have to find a way to buy suitcases and/or duffels. When we started out in the FS, our parents donated a suitcase to us here and there because we honestly couldn't afford the expense of buying them at the time. We bought a couple of suitcases at a FS garage sale in Ecuador for $10/each; and we felt like we'd won the lottery. Obviously, money got a little better over time; so our suitcases have evolved as our standard of living has. A few years ago, we realized that two-pound duffel bags can fit 48 pounds of possessions; so we bought several of those. Wal-Mart had rolling duffels for $12/each, but they lasted an average of two trans-Atlantic flights before ripping beyond what duct tape could repair (no shame in our game). Two of our eight big suitcases bit the dust this year; so we had to invest in two new ones. BJs had a great deal on massive suitcases that only weighed 8 lbs. each. We considered the $80 we paid for each one to be well worth the money. It just so happened the our children's rolling carry-on bags both needed to be replaced; so we got them new ones for the bargain price of $37 each. ($80 x 2) + ($37 x2) = $234 for luggage for this move.
6. When you move overseas to a place like Hungary, which is surrounded on each side by a different country, you want to be able to jump in the car at the drop of a hat and go anywhere you can. Well, you can't do that if your passport is expired. It takes several weeks to get your passport renewed; so we opted to forfeit the year of validity we still had on our tourist passports and get that done while we were still in the States, rather than having to wait weeks and weeks without going anywhere. That cost hurt. There are no government discounts. Price of 4 tourist passports: $110 x 4 = $440.
7. Packing up for a FS move is an incredible test of logistics. We couldn't do it without our digital luggage scale and a whole lot of forethought. In the FS, your belongings are put into four groups: Permanent Storage, Household Effects (HHE), Unaccompanied Air Baggage (UAB), and the personal belongings you put in your suitcases. If you are "overweight" in any of those groups, you have to pay the overage fees. Since no one wants to owe the government money, we have to get pretty inventive at packing and sorting strategies before the movers ever show up. Because our lives revolve around our total allotted weight, we cannot get too attached to possessions, as much of that "sorting" involves donating and selling items that would otherwise make us go over our weight allowances.
Now, my numbers may not be up-to-date; but when my husband joined the FS,we were allowed something like 14,000 TOTAL pounds when you add up UAB, HHE, and the items in our permanent storage. When we move to a furnished post, we are only allowed to take around 7,200 pounds with us. (Now, obviously, those who will be at unaccompanied posts and/or in war zones will get nothing near that amount.) My husband and I have to take into account the cost to keep items (and risk going overweight) vs. the cost we spent on it in the first place. For instance, we are not going to pay an overage fee of $50-$100 or more on a two-pound pair of jeans we bought for $15 at Target. We'll just take the $15 loss on the jeans so we can save $35-$85 in fees. We have even mailed items ahead of time, as that often offsets the costs of overage fees vs. donating brand new items. For this particular move, we were lucky that we decided to do a supplemental HHE shipment (we had weight we hadn't used up) and didn't have to leave anything important behind other than a two-pound jar of peanut butter and two TV switches that let us go back and forth from cable to the Amazon fire TV. Trust me, that's really good. Cost of two-pound jar of peanut butter: $5 + two TV switches: $24 = $29.
8. When you PCS and go into either temporary or permanent housing, there are already some household items waiting for you. Now, these are not items that you're allowed to keep; rather the "Welcome Kit," as it's called, is a very basic kit that will let you get through your first days and weeks (even at times, months) at Post. For a family of four, it has like one of everything you need but not really much more than that. It feels paltry but is more than adequate when you really look at it objectively. Here's what we got. You can see for yourself that it's perfectly adequate. Now, I will say that they always give you the dullest knives in creation. We got lucky on the bedding this time; that's for sure. I won't say where it was, but the blankets in one of our welcome kits were made out of some synthetic material that made us all get rashes and itch like crazy.
Notice that we got things like: a mop/bucket, broom/dustpan, a trash can, a coffee maker, a vacuum, and a toaster. We will have to return all of those items in a few weeks, and I do not have replacements coming in our UAB and HHE shipments. We were lucky in that our last post provided the majority of those things to us because our house came with a "permanent welcome kit." We really appreciated that and made sure those items stayed with the house. I personally don't believe in packing dirty items like trash cans and mops and buckets and moving them to and fro and am not in favor of that; so we always have to buy those items when we arrive. I went ahead and looked online at what appliances cost here, and it looks like prices run similar to the U.S.: coffee maker $37, basic vacuum $50, toaster basic $19, and somewhere around $20 for mop/bucket and broom/dustpan. ($37+$50+$19+$20 = $126) Hey, at least the microwave came with the house!
9. Let's move on to additional vehicle costs. Yes, the State Department pays to move our vehicle one time per PCS. For those of us who decide to call our training time a "TDY," we have to make a choice about our vehicle. We have a few options: move our car from post to post, meaning we will not have it while in D.C.; sell our car before leaving Post and buy another one while we are in the States on TD; move our car from Post to TDY and sell it before leaving the States, then buy once we arrive at our new Post; long-term lease or purchasing something while on TDY. My family decided to sell our car in Albania and then buy something when we got to the States. It all depends on what works best for your family. Because of that decision, we will be here in Budapest until September or so without a car. It could even be October depending on how long it takes to get through Customs and then registered in Hungary. (Thank God for Tesco online grocery shopping.)
Now, what do you think comes after customs and registering the car? If you guessed "insurance," you're right. When we live in the States, we always use USAA for our car insurance; however, they don't cover Hungary. Because of that, we have to use an international company. Unlike insurance in the States where you can pay monthly, international insurance companies--at least all the ones we know of--require you to pay for the entire year up front. Entire year of car insurance = $1300. USAA also has their "touring policy" for those of us not living in the States. It costs $50 per year and covers us in rental cars, acquaintances' cars, and also things like emergency roadside assistance. We don't plan on being in the U.S. for the next three years, but it's worth the cost in case we ever do go back and end up behind the wheel. I'm sure you're guessing that there can't possibly be more fees (my apologies if I'm starting to sound a little bitter in this particular blog entry) associated with this move, but you're wrong. We just moved to Budapest. It often snows in Budapest during the winter; so we have to buy snow tires for our vehicle. I just looked up the cost of snow tires, and it looks like it's going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 for a set of four. Costs of driving a car in Hungary: $1300 for insurance + $800 for snow tires + $50 USAA touring insurance policy = $2150.
I realize that people reading this are probably either in shock or in total disbelief that it cost my husband $8517.55 to do his job this year. But it did. Actually, it cost much more than that when you factor in things like buying fall clothes in advance because the kids are growing so fast but it takes weeks and weeks for purchases to arrive and a new suit because my husband lost weight since he last needed to wear them. This move has actually cost us in the neighborhood of $10,000 this year; but I can't give you concrete verification of all those costs. The things I can verify, I put in this blog entry.
I'm sure most of you know that mid-level USG workers don't make much money at all, especially those whose spouses are unable to work as well. $8500 is a hell of a lot of money for people who rarely have much to spare, and we are lucky we were able to put so much away during our last tour, when I was still allowed to work.
But what if I hadn't been able to work? What if we hadn't had any savings to speak of and had maxed out our credit cards just getting to Post so that my husband could get to work. It's not a crazy question; it's actually happened to us before. We went broke getting to our last post. We maxed out our one credit card getting our animals and luggage on the plane and had only a couple of hundred dollars left in the bank. What saved us was that the commissary would let you charge up to $1000 in groceries and pay it off the next month. Obviously, I didn't buy that much; but we did live on peanut butter sandwiches and mac and cheese for a couple of weeks.
Suffice it to say that what we do isn't always full of glamorous travel and posh living. Sometimes, it's down right scary. Right now, in this moment, we are frightened about our future. And as far as exactly what it's costing us, well...we don't see an end in sight. Please make sure to thank a Foreign Service Officer for their service to our nation if you ever get the chance. It costs them more than you think to serve you.
Now, my numbers may not be up-to-date; but when my husband joined the FS,we were allowed something like 14,000 TOTAL pounds when you add up UAB, HHE, and the items in our permanent storage. When we move to a furnished post, we are only allowed to take around 7,200 pounds with us. (Now, obviously, those who will be at unaccompanied posts and/or in war zones will get nothing near that amount.) My husband and I have to take into account the cost to keep items (and risk going overweight) vs. the cost we spent on it in the first place. For instance, we are not going to pay an overage fee of $50-$100 or more on a two-pound pair of jeans we bought for $15 at Target. We'll just take the $15 loss on the jeans so we can save $35-$85 in fees. We have even mailed items ahead of time, as that often offsets the costs of overage fees vs. donating brand new items. For this particular move, we were lucky that we decided to do a supplemental HHE shipment (we had weight we hadn't used up) and didn't have to leave anything important behind other than a two-pound jar of peanut butter and two TV switches that let us go back and forth from cable to the Amazon fire TV. Trust me, that's really good. Cost of two-pound jar of peanut butter: $5 + two TV switches: $24 = $29.
8. When you PCS and go into either temporary or permanent housing, there are already some household items waiting for you. Now, these are not items that you're allowed to keep; rather the "Welcome Kit," as it's called, is a very basic kit that will let you get through your first days and weeks (even at times, months) at Post. For a family of four, it has like one of everything you need but not really much more than that. It feels paltry but is more than adequate when you really look at it objectively. Here's what we got. You can see for yourself that it's perfectly adequate. Now, I will say that they always give you the dullest knives in creation. We got lucky on the bedding this time; that's for sure. I won't say where it was, but the blankets in one of our welcome kits were made out of some synthetic material that made us all get rashes and itch like crazy.
Notice that we got things like: a mop/bucket, broom/dustpan, a trash can, a coffee maker, a vacuum, and a toaster. We will have to return all of those items in a few weeks, and I do not have replacements coming in our UAB and HHE shipments. We were lucky in that our last post provided the majority of those things to us because our house came with a "permanent welcome kit." We really appreciated that and made sure those items stayed with the house. I personally don't believe in packing dirty items like trash cans and mops and buckets and moving them to and fro and am not in favor of that; so we always have to buy those items when we arrive. I went ahead and looked online at what appliances cost here, and it looks like prices run similar to the U.S.: coffee maker $37, basic vacuum $50, toaster basic $19, and somewhere around $20 for mop/bucket and broom/dustpan. ($37+$50+$19+$20 = $126) Hey, at least the microwave came with the house!
9. Let's move on to additional vehicle costs. Yes, the State Department pays to move our vehicle one time per PCS. For those of us who decide to call our training time a "TDY," we have to make a choice about our vehicle. We have a few options: move our car from post to post, meaning we will not have it while in D.C.; sell our car before leaving Post and buy another one while we are in the States on TD; move our car from Post to TDY and sell it before leaving the States, then buy once we arrive at our new Post; long-term lease or purchasing something while on TDY. My family decided to sell our car in Albania and then buy something when we got to the States. It all depends on what works best for your family. Because of that decision, we will be here in Budapest until September or so without a car. It could even be October depending on how long it takes to get through Customs and then registered in Hungary. (Thank God for Tesco online grocery shopping.)
Now, what do you think comes after customs and registering the car? If you guessed "insurance," you're right. When we live in the States, we always use USAA for our car insurance; however, they don't cover Hungary. Because of that, we have to use an international company. Unlike insurance in the States where you can pay monthly, international insurance companies--at least all the ones we know of--require you to pay for the entire year up front. Entire year of car insurance = $1300. USAA also has their "touring policy" for those of us not living in the States. It costs $50 per year and covers us in rental cars, acquaintances' cars, and also things like emergency roadside assistance. We don't plan on being in the U.S. for the next three years, but it's worth the cost in case we ever do go back and end up behind the wheel. I'm sure you're guessing that there can't possibly be more fees (my apologies if I'm starting to sound a little bitter in this particular blog entry) associated with this move, but you're wrong. We just moved to Budapest. It often snows in Budapest during the winter; so we have to buy snow tires for our vehicle. I just looked up the cost of snow tires, and it looks like it's going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 for a set of four. Costs of driving a car in Hungary: $1300 for insurance + $800 for snow tires + $50 USAA touring insurance policy = $2150.
I realize that people reading this are probably either in shock or in total disbelief that it cost my husband $8517.55 to do his job this year. But it did. Actually, it cost much more than that when you factor in things like buying fall clothes in advance because the kids are growing so fast but it takes weeks and weeks for purchases to arrive and a new suit because my husband lost weight since he last needed to wear them. This move has actually cost us in the neighborhood of $10,000 this year; but I can't give you concrete verification of all those costs. The things I can verify, I put in this blog entry.
I'm sure most of you know that mid-level USG workers don't make much money at all, especially those whose spouses are unable to work as well. $8500 is a hell of a lot of money for people who rarely have much to spare, and we are lucky we were able to put so much away during our last tour, when I was still allowed to work.
But what if I hadn't been able to work? What if we hadn't had any savings to speak of and had maxed out our credit cards just getting to Post so that my husband could get to work. It's not a crazy question; it's actually happened to us before. We went broke getting to our last post. We maxed out our one credit card getting our animals and luggage on the plane and had only a couple of hundred dollars left in the bank. What saved us was that the commissary would let you charge up to $1000 in groceries and pay it off the next month. Obviously, I didn't buy that much; but we did live on peanut butter sandwiches and mac and cheese for a couple of weeks.
Suffice it to say that what we do isn't always full of glamorous travel and posh living. Sometimes, it's down right scary. Right now, in this moment, we are frightened about our future. And as far as exactly what it's costing us, well...we don't see an end in sight. Please make sure to thank a Foreign Service Officer for their service to our nation if you ever get the chance. It costs them more than you think to serve you.
