Saving Money When Moving

would you dumpster dive to save $75? let me be more specific. would you sort through a local electronic store's dumpster, that only contains boxes and packaging material to save money? i know i would. i've done this several times now, and i estimate that i save about $75 each time by doing so. this week i will be moving for the 7th time in 7 years. that sounds pretty crazy right? i don't move every 12 months and i don't even like moving. life just happens and i go with the flow.

in october of 1999 i moved into student housing that my school offered. there were four of us (me, brad, gerald, matt) living in a 2 bed / 2 bath apartment. each of us had to pay $400 a month. this covered rent, water, electric, and furniture rentals. we all decided that this was too much to pay for a 2 bedroom apartment that we could rent ourselves for $650 at the time. so six months later we moved. 12 months after that gerald "came out of the closet" and moved into an apartment with another friend of his, and brad and i kicked matt out for not paying rent for 3 months, which left two of us. shortly after that one of my two best friends, adam, moved to dallas and lived with us for 8 months in a 3 bedroom apartment that we moved to. 8 months later he decided he didn’t like the city and moved back home. which caused brad and i to downsize back to a 2 bedroom apartment. both i and brad were tired of moving at this point. so we stayed in that apartment for 30 months. due to job locations we decided to move again. we managed to live in that apartment for 18 months before i decided that we should go our separate ways due to brad practically living with his girlfriend and constantly being late with his half of the rent. thus, i moved into a one bedroom apartment. i spent the past year in this one bedroom apartment, and i would continue to live in it, but like i said, life happens.

my younger brother decided a few months back that he wanted to move to dfw to go to school. he found out that his student housing would cost him $350 and he would be sharing a 2 bed/ 2 bath apartment with 3 other guys. he didn't like this idea. so i told him he could live with me for the same price and have his own room. which brings me to my move this week. i don't know exactly how long i'll live in this new apartment with my brother, but i don't see it going more than two or three years.