NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast - Cross-Country Moving Tips and What a CFPB Shutdown Could Mean for You

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Learn what a CFBP shutdown could mean for consumers, plus how to financially manage a cross-country move — including whether to rent or sell your home. What happens if the CFPB is shut down? Should you sell or rent out your home when moving to a new city? Hosts Sean Pyles and Elizabeth Ayoola discuss the financial decisions involved in relocating, including managing moving expenses and deciding whether to keep or sell a home. But first, NerdWallet Senior News Writer Anna Helhoski joins Sean and Elizabeth to discuss the potential shutdown of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and its impact on consumer rights. Anna interviews Chuck Bell, the program director for advocacy at Consumer Reports, about the CFPB’s role in protecting consumers and what its potential closure could mean for financial regulations and consumer rights. Then, NerdWallet writer Lisa Green joins Sean and Elizabeth to talk to David, a listener with questions around the financial and logistical challenges of a cross-country move. They discuss key considerations for renting versus selling a home, the financial implications of becoming a long-distance landlord, and strategies for covering a down payment on a new home. The Nerds also share insights on budgeting for moving costs, including how to decide between hiring professional movers, using a service like PODS, or selling furniture before relocating. Learn about down payments and calculate how much to put down on a house: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/mortgages/down-payment-calculator In their conversation, the Nerds discuss: cross-country move, sell or rent your home, moving costs, budget for moving, moving expenses, renting out your home, financial planning for moving, real estate investments, property management, home equity loans, HELOC, down payment options, mortgage planning, financial decisions, house rental income, home selling process, cost of moving, moving truck vs movers, PODS vs U-Haul, rental property management, tax implications of renting, home value appreciation, moving to a new state, moving savings tips, renting vs owning, budgeting for relocation, moving with kids, tax write-offs for landlords, credit score for mortgage, home selling costs, home loan options, financial impact of moving, travel expenses, best way to move furniture, and moving insurance. To send the Nerds your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email [e-mail]. Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and tell a friend.

Elizabeth, I remember you moved from Florida to Texas last year. Was that easy? I sure did move for the thousandth time and easy is not an adjective I would use to describe the process, Sean. It was also probably the most expensive thing I've done in my adult life. So it was so expensive that Little Miss Nomad, yes, that's me, has no intentions of moving anytime soon, which is crazy coming from me. Yeah, that's for sure. So today we're going to walk a listener through some of the financial

tips and advice for doing a big across the country move. Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast, where you send us your money questions and we answer them with the help of our genius nerds. I'm Sean Piles. And I'm Elizabeth Ayola. This episode, we're talking about all of the financial decisions that you have to make when you're deciding whether to move, especially when that move can take you 2000 miles away. But first, our money news roundup, where we break down the latest

in the world of finance to help you be smarter with your money. Sean, I don't know if you remember the show we did last week. You mean the one that feels like six weeks ago? Yes, that one. The one where we joked at the top of the show about how there wasn't much news going on out there. Yeah, that definitely was not true. And here we are a week later and the barrage of news out of the Trump administration continues unabated. Honestly, it's hard to keep track, but that's our job. It is.

And so today, we're going to take a closer look at one of those pieces of news, which is the apparent shuddering, at least temporarily, of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Our news colleague, Anna Hilhosky, is here with more. Hey, Anna. Hey, Sean. Hey, Elizabeth. We touched on this in last week's episode, but there have been some new developments since then. So this is the Financial Industry Watchdog,

the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB for short. And it is apparently on the chopping block right now, along with other government agencies that are finding themselves scalpled out of existence. Yeah, that's right. So to recap, the CFPB is an independent government agency and it oversees all aspects of consumer finance. That includes banks, lenders, and other financial institutions. And it was created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession. So in the 13 years since its founding, the Bureau has recouped $19.7 billion for consumers

through enforcement actions. And as a result of the CFPB's enforcement work, some 205 million consumers have been eligible to receive relief. So the CFPB has been good for consumers overall, which is what has made recent actions so confounding. Let's get up to speed here. On January 31st, the head of the CFPB Rohit Chopra was fired

and Scott Besant, who is the new treasury secretary, was named the acting director. Now, soon after that, Besant ordered that the bureau cease all investigations and said no new rules or guidance would be issued and it only went downhill from there. Last week, Russell Vogt was confirmed to lead the Office of Management and Budget

and was named acting director of the CFPB. Shortly after that, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOJ, gained access to CFPB headquarters and its computer systems. Later that day, Elon Musk, the billionaire that's leading DOJ, posted on his social platform X, quote, CFPB RIP. Since then, Musk has also reportedly deleted the CFPB's X page, and the CFPB's website's homepage reads, 404, page not found. And over the weekend, Vought posted on X that he had withdrawn any requests for further

funding from the Federal Reserve. Side note, the CFPB is financed through requests to the Fed rather than Congress. On Sunday, the CFPB's 1,600 workers were informed that the agency's headquarters were closed and were ordered to stand down from doing any work. Soon after, the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents CFPB workers, filed a lawsuit against Vote and the OMB. So at this point, it looks like the agency is effectively dead in the water, which leaves a lot of unanswered questions like what does this mean for consumers moving forward? To get a better idea of what happens now, Ana spoke with Chuck Bell. He's the Program Director for Advocacy at Consumer Reports.

Chuck, thank you for joining us on Smart Money. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. So to start off, I'm hoping that you can tell us some of the big accomplishments of the CFPB since its inception. Over the years, the Bureau has worked in a broad range of areas to help advance

the interests of consumers. One of the initial focuses was on creating better disclosures and warnings for dangerous financial products. So they have done a lot to improve the information consumers get about financial products. They have also created a complaints database that's received over 5.6 million complaints from U.S. consumers. So if you get stuck with something like a credit report error, you can complain to the Bureau and they can reach out to the companies on your behalf and help you get that problem resolved. They also supervise a wide range of financial institutions including banks and non-bank financial companies such as mortgage companies, debt collectors, buy now pay later companies, and other fintech companies. We have

an increasing number of digital financial products using artificial intelligence and big data and so forth. And so CFPB is trying to make sure that those products are safe for consumers to use and that they don't present an unreasonable risk of fraud. They've also brought a lot of court cases to get money back for consumers. One example might be the peer-to-peer payment app called Cash App. The CFPB just recently fined them $175 million, including $120 million in restitution for consumers who had lost money on that platform. So those are some examples of how the Bureau's

been working to protect and advance the interests of consumers. It seems pretty clear that the CFPB is objectively helpful for consumers. So what are the criticisms of the CFPB from this administration? Well, I think when you have an agency that is an active watchdog, it's not always going to be popular with the regulated entities. But I think one of the common criticisms you hear is that the agency is too aggressive and it's overreaching. I think on the other hand, if you look at this from the perspective of the customer,

we have 250 million customers here in the United States who need financial services. It's a tremendous number of people that are using financial services. And it is also an area where there's many unfortunate, deceptive, and unfair practices, such as usurious lending rates, credit reporting errors, all kinds of discrimination, harsh debt collection practices. So when the agency puts a stop to some of those practices and creates some guardrails around the financial services economy, many of the companies complain and they're unhappy about it. But I think it's hard to see how the marketplace can really work any other way.

We do need to have a active watchdog that looks over how our financial institutions are performing and also goes to bat for consumers when they're being treated unfairly. During the Biden administration, the CFPB had issued some really huge reforms and made some wins that were related to junk fees, overdraft fees, medical debt on credit reports, privacy protection, payday lending, and buy now pay later. What I'm wondering is where recent actions by the Trump administration leave those new roles, especially those that haven't gone into effect yet, like the medical debt on credit reports. We were already facing some pretty determined industry resistance even under the

Biden administration. For example, the CFPB to protect consumers often makes rules or regulations. And one example of that is last March, they finalized a rule called the credit card late fee rule to reset credit card late fees from an average of $32 for the first late payment and $40 for each subsequent late payment to an average of $8 or slightly higher if a bank could justify a higher cost. And the industry, the banks and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued immediately to try to block that rule and it's been held up with a court injunction ever since. So because under the leadership of director Rohit Chopra, the

Bureau was extremely effective in promulgating new rules, terrain and junk fees, and also bringing enforcement cases against banks and financial companies that had wronged consumers. Right now there's a determined effort under the Trump administration to try to put the agency completely out of business. And last week, as many people may have heard, there were some people from the

Elon Musk's Doge team that entered the CFPB. And at the end of the week, Elon Musk himself tweeted CFPB rest in peace. And we've heard some additional announcements this week that they are indeed thinking of shuttering the agency. They put it under the control of the Office of Management and Budget Director, Russell Vogt. But we think the activities of the CFPB are broadly popular with the American people. And it's hard to see how we can just leave consumers completely unprotected in the very large financial services economy that we have.

And one thing that you mentioned were all of those lawsuits that the CFPB has brought on behalf of consumers. About a month ago, it filed a suit against Capital One that alleged that it misled customers about savings accounts rates, for example. What happens to those lawsuits? That's definitely a risk that the current leadership of the CFPB could decide to not defend the lawsuits and the other types of legal actions that the Bureau has made. That would mean that those cases probably do die, like that they will not go

forward, consumers will be unprotected. There's another really big case against the payment platform Zelle for fraud losses that have occurred on that platform and the failure of the platform to protect its users. So that would be an example of consumers could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution and relief if the CFPB does not pursue those lawsuits and the cases to defend its regulations. Right and there are a lot of current orders to pay fines. Would those still be enforced? I mean it's really unclear that you know there are some things that they can slow down through administrative processes, other things may take an act of Congress, which is probably not out of the question.

Also, some of the recent rules that were finalized in the last six months of the agency's operation, including the overdraft fee rule and the medical debt credit reporting rule, which halts the reporting of medical debt to credit reports, because it's a poor predictor of financial risk for loans and other products. Those can be overturned directly by a majority vote in both chambers of Congress. They have a process called the Congressional Review Act that allows the Congress to invalidate certain rules. So we know that those votes may well be coming, but we will have an opportunity in a democracy for our Congress to vote to keep those rules,

which would be wildly popular with consumers, I would say. So without the CFPB being there, let's say, to oversee large financial institutions, where does that leave consumers? We didn't have a CFPB before 2011. What are some of the risks of not having a government watchdog? It really means that we might be in a marketplace where people are really on their own. And I think that any government that doesn't try to protect customers on some of these issues is going to have a lot to answer for.

So I think the answer is that we would be in an economy that is run by caveat emptor, which means let the buyer beware. And consumers really don't like to operate in an economy. We want to have certain safeguards when we're engaging in banking transactions. And we might see a lot of harm happen to people with no consequences or accountability. Yeah, one of the primary roles of the CFPB has been receiving and assessing complaints from consumers. Six point eight million complaints have been submitted since the CFPB start. So with it on ice, is there anyone to lodge complaints with at this point?

At the current time, the complaint database is still working on the CFPB website. Okay. So yeah, I think consumers should continue to submit complaints if they're having problems with services. It's a really great tool because it's actually a public database and you can see the patterns of complaints that other consumers have submitted. And the CFPB uses that database to look for indicators of what it should investigate or what types of disciplinary actions might be needed. The agency was created by Congress, so I'd assume that it would take an act of Congress

to eliminate it entirely. But does it matter at this point if the Trump administration is dismantling it and down to bare bones? Congress definitely has a very large say in what can happen with this. There are certain things that the executive branch would not be able to discontinue without an act of Congress. On the other hand, there's a lot of special interest money that's been flowing into the Congress from financial companies and particularly crypto companies. And so this agency was created from the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Prior to that crisis, the other federal bank regulators like the Federal Reserve, the FDIC and the OCC did not do a great job handling consumer complaints. And in fact, many of our organizations warned the Federal Reserve about the dangers of predatory mortgage lending that later led to the 8 million home foreclosures. I think we're very concerned that there's no way for the financial services economy to operate effectively without massive harm to consumers unless there is a strong CFPB or some other agency that has a mission of protecting customers. So we would hope that the Congress does not precipitously change the rules here and that they hold the administration accountable for any serious cutbacks in the agency's work.

Chuck Bell, thank you so much for your time today. Hey, thank you so much, Ana. It's great to be here with you. And thank you, Ana. Yes, thank you. Up next, we answer listeners question about preparing financially for a big move to a new city and a new job. But before we get into that, a reminder, listener,

to send us your money questions, especially your questions about tax season 2025. We're working on an episode all about taxes, and we're gonna take on some of your burning tax questions. Maybe you're wondering if you should take the standard deduction or itemize, or whether you can get by with using one of the online filing services, or if you might need to hire a CPA. Leave us a voicemail or text us on the Nerd Hotline at 901-730-6373.

That's 901-730-NERD. Or email us at podcastatnerdwallet.com. Now let's get to this episode's money question. That's coming up in a moment. Stay with us. We're back and answering your money questions to help you make smarter financial decisions. This episode, we're joined by a listener, David, who's planning a big cross-country move with his family and has many questions about the financial and logistical challenges of moving, including whether they should sell or rent out their current home after they move.

David, welcome to Smart Money. Hi, Sean. So to help me tackle your questions, David, I am joined by NerdWallet writer, Lisa Green, who has experience managing rental properties and moving and all sorts of things that you are wondering about. So Lisa, hey, welcome to Smart Money 2. Hey Sean, hi David.

So David, before we get into the conversation, I want to remind you that everything we're about to discuss is just for educational and entertainment purposes. We are not here to give you specific financial or investing advice, but instead provide you with information so that you can make your own smarter financial decisions. Sound good? Sounds great.

Perfect. Let's start by digging into your financial life generally. How do you and your wife manage your household finances? How are you feeling about things financially? Yeah, we manage a lot of things in a unique way. I do feel like that's something different about us is that we've never merged our finances. I take care of the mortgage, she takes care of utilities, and we both kind of have our own separate accounts, which I do feel like might complicate the cross-country move logistics.

Do you end up Venmo-ing each other or finding some way to send cash back and forth when you're covering expenses? I'm proud that we do not Venmo or Zelle each other. I know there are some couples that do, but no, we're not at that level. But we've kind of just always had the you take care of this, I take care of that. We both in general feel that that's a fair way to do it. And what about your income levels? Because I know with some couples, if one person is earning more than another another they might cover certain things and the person is earning less might cover less How does that break down for you guys? I think we're both making about the same amount I might make maybe 10 or 20 percent more But again, we've always done it the way that we do it and I've not felt the need to bring up or cause a major

Change as we prepare for what could be a cross-country move. Right. Yeah. And we'll get into that in just a second here, but I'm wondering also, how do you feel like you're doing financially? Do you think things are going well? Do you think there are areas where things could be better? We're doing very well. I feel very fortunate to have the means to plan for a move like this

and just feel like I have options. I feel like I should start this conversation by just acknowledging that I'm coming at this from a point of privilege even being able to have this conversation and access funds from different accounts and also family is available to help us out if needed. Well it seems like you also worked hard to get to where you are too so you should be proud of that. Thank you. Let's get into your move. You and your wife are thinking of moving with your kids. Where do you want to move and what's motivating this? Yeah, we live in a western state and I grew up in a midwestern state so we're highly considering moving back that way to be closer to family. The state that we currently live in is just one that I never thought would be the best to raise children. Growing up in the

midwest and just seeing how people interact with their neighbors, the weather and the climate is something that I also feel like is better. I live in a desert state and I want to move back to one with four seasons is nice. And again, just the biggest reason was just to be closer to family and a place for my children to know that this is where they're growing up and going to graduate from high school. Yeah, and I assume you have some family out there too? Correct.

That can make things easier. So how do you expect moving to change your finances? Do you think it'll make things easier? Might it actually make things more difficult? I do think the cost of living in the state we're looking at is about five to ten percent less than the state we're currently living in. To me the biggest things with finances is hoping to get a similar salary in the new state, but also just not taking a huge hit in terms of moving costs. When I start to do the basic research about what it will cost to physically move a house of our size with all of our items and two small children, the numbers can be

alarming. But I remind myself that millions of people have done this, but it's just something that's a little scary to start. But you haven't done it. So it's new to you and your wife. Correct. I want to talk a little scary to start. But you haven't done it, so it's new to you and your wife. Correct. I want to talk a little bit about your jobs because that's a big thing to line up when you're moving to a new place. Make sure you have an income coming in. Have you looked into jobs in your potential new home? How has that gone so far?

I think I'm comfortable sharing that I am a high school teacher. I have spoken to a couple schools in the area we're considering moving to. I have had an interview that I'm still waiting to hear back about if that will be a possibility. My wife is a journalist and she has a potential job lined up that she could transfer within the same company. So we're both optimistic that a somewhat easy transition could happen with similar income levels may be adjusted for cost of living. David, can you think of any financial reasons to not move just to stay where you are, or are you really set on this lifestyle change? The biggest one that comes to mind is just that I feel very fortunate to be well respected at my current school.

Just the other day, an administrator approached me already asking about plans for next year. I kind of had to delay install what I even said to that question. So I do think that my current school would notice and acknowledge my loss if I were to decide to leave. So it's more the personal reasons that might be hard saying bye to your colleagues and to your current community. Yeah. And just again, just uprooting the place that I've lived for nearly 20 years to move back to the place where I grew up. But again, it's really just thinking about

being close to family. I have two small children, both in elementary school, and I just think to myself where do I want them to graduate high school? Right, and that kind of move only get harder as they get older. Correct. I was in the same school district from when I was second grade till I graduated, and I feel like that's powerful to just know that this is where I'm growing up. This is where I'm going to graduate from high school. Well, I think I have grilled you enough, David. Let's get to some of your questions for Lisa and me around the move. What concerns do you have?

Where do you want a little bit more information? The biggest one is just what should we do with our current home? We are homeowners. We've got about 10 years until the house will be paid off. The biggest question again, is just renting versus selling. Our current mortgage is about $2,200 per month. A website like Zillow estimates that we could rent it out for $3,000. What are the key factors we should consider specifically related to being

cross-country landlords with little to no property management experience? Well, Lisa, I'll let you take that. Yeah, David, I think that's a great question. I have several rental homes myself, including a couple that I used to live in. And in my experience, keeping a home of previous residents as a rental property has been a really strong investment. You continue benefiting from house values appreciating and your rents will also typically go up over time while your mortgage payment stays the same. So meanwhile while you're enjoying this nice cash flow from your property, tax laws let you depreciate the

property which means that even while you've got positive cash flow money coming in, you may show a loss on paper that can save money on your taxes. And if you ever want to go back to your previous area to visit, check on your property while you're there, and now you have a tax write off for the travel because you had to travel back to check on your property. 10 years from now, when your house is paid off, most or all of that $2,200 monthly mortgage payment will go away and that turns into an income stream for you.

So I would definitely look at trying to hang on to the house and try renting it. So that all sounds pretty cushy and nice, but I imagine it's not all easy, money coming in as you are managing a rental, especially when you're living in a different state. What do you think David should keep in mind to ensure that if they do go this route, that everything is properly maintained and they're getting their rent on time and they're not on the hook for a

mortgage several states away, perhaps, while having a new mortgage. There are some caveats to renting out your house. Tenants don't take care of a property, typically the way you would take care of your own property. And being halfway across the country, it's a little bit hard to keep an eye on it. And vacancies are expensive because you'll lose your rental income at the same time that you have to shoulder expenses for maintenance and repairs between tenants. So you need a cash cushion and most of all I think that you need a property manager, a good property manager. When we were first getting started with rental properties we managed them ourselves, screened the tenants ourselves, dealt with the phone calls

ourselves about something being broken and then we finally hired a property manager and we have not really had to deal with those kinds of issues at all. The property manager will typically charge about 10% of their rental income and for that they will find and screen your tenants, they will collect your rents, they'll handle the maintenance, keep records, and send you money every month. I think that this is especially important for a long distance rental because you don't want

to get a call in the middle of the night about a clogged toilet 2,000 miles away. The property manager will be equipped to handle things like that. And Lisa, one thing I'm thinking about is savings. It strikes me that you or anyone, you know, David, anyone who's looking to have a rental property in another state or even in the state that they are in would probably want to have more in savings to cover a month where maybe they

don't have a tenant or there is some sort of maintenance that needs to be done to the property. How have you thought about this with your own rental properties? Absolutely, it's good to have a cash cushion. Another option is to kind of tap into the equity in the property that you already own. When we were first getting started, one of the first things that we did was set up a home equity line of credit on the house that we lived in. That gave us a way to get

money if we needed it when something broke or we had a vacancy. If you want to go that route, I would suggest you may want to get that home equity line of credit set up on the house that you're currently in while you're still living in it. It's going to be easier and you'll get better terms as an owner occupant to get that home equity line of credit set up. And then typically you can just continue to keep it even after you move out of the house. That's what we did. So David, how is this sounding to you?

Feasible, difficult, stressful? Yeah, I'm glad she mentioned that recommending a property manager. I will admit that I'm not the most handy homeowner myself, so having to deal with the middle-of-the-night phone call 2,000 miles away, that obviously is something that would be a challenge in itself. So I was strongly considering the property management option, and again Lisa, I think if we do go that route that may be a strong consideration. Our properties, our rental properties are not out of state,

but they are probably over an hour from where we live. And since we've had a property manager in place, we really essentially have not had to drive that hour and go up there at all. It's been a life changer. And David, you're planning on buying a new home when you move, is that correct? I think that is the long-term goal

Yes, we did consider possibly renting or we're fortunate to have family who would take us in for the first weeks or probably even Month or two if needed But yeah, one of my other biggest questions was just how to access funds for a down payment for a new home I do feel fortunate that I do have a good amount of money saved across different account types a Roth IRA taxable investments, a 403B, and cryptocurrencies. But if 50 to, let's just say 50,000 to 150,000 or more down payment was needed, I was just curious what should we consider in terms of tax implications, withdrawing strategies,

or just selecting which of those accounts to draw from. I currently don't have a large liquid down payment available, but with a couple months notice I'm just curious Lisa, your advice for where I could access a large down payment if needed. I can touch on the tax part quickly. One thing to note around Roth IRAs is that you can take your contributions out, but you'll likely have a pretty sizable tax bill on earnings. And in general, withdrawing funds from a retirement account is likely to leave you with a tax bill and potentially penalties too.

If you need to sell investments, look into your taxable brokerage account because that is probably going to be the most tax advantaged way to do it. If you've held the investments for longer than a year, you'll be taxed at a favorable long-term capital gains rate, which is lower than your income tax rate most likely. So that might be the best way to go potentially if you need to sell investments. I'm wondering how you personally have thought out which option might be best for you. Have you maybe put together some sort of nerdy spreadsheet where you're listing each option and what it might cost you in terms of taxes or interest rate, any of those things? I do have the nerdy spreadsheet, but no, I have not taken the next step to really see

the tax implications or exactly where I want to draw this money from. I just want to minimize the tax bill from potentially tapping into these accounts that in theory are for long-term growth, but this is obviously a major life change. And I know that having access to this is definitely a time to use it. And I think running those numbers will provide you a lot of clarity. So I would say add some meat to that spreadsheet,

see what the bottom line is for each option. And David, how are you thinking about timing here too? Are you planning to move in the next few months? Are you planning to put your house maybe up for rent soon? How are you considering that? As a teacher, the goal is to obviously finish out the school year, which for me here would be the end of May. I wouldn't need to, for my job, I would have a nice about two months, June and July, to get out there. But I just think the logistics of the move are also the most daunting. It's just should we hire professional movers, use a service like Pods or U-Haul, or we also

consider just selling a lot of our belongings and starting fresh. I did get a quote from a few of these options, but I'm just curious if anyone else on the call has an idea for where should we start in terms of physically getting a four or five bedroom house with two small children 2,000 miles away. Think about what you do and don't need at your current home and also whether it would just be more expensive to haul it to a new place versus getting rid of it and maybe buying something in your new location. Lisa, how have you handled that with your various moves?

I can share a story from my sister's situation. She lived in one state and had just bought a new house and furnished the new house in that state when she got a grandchild in another state and decided to move to be near that baby. So since she had just purchased all of this new furniture, of course she thought the thing to do would be to take it with her. And that turned out to be not perhaps exactly her best move. She hauled all of that furniture down there and then it didn't fit the vibe of the house. It didn't fit the vibe of the new state, which was coastal rather than inland.

It just didn't work. She ended up having to get rid of the furniture down there and get new furniture. You got to match the furniture to the vibe of where your house is. Otherwise, the feng shui is off. Exactly. The table just won't fit in that corner here, you know? David, how have you thought about that with your wife? Have you had discussions of like, okay, like, we really don't want to have to move the sectional 2000 miles. Have you even gotten that far yet? No, not gotten that far.

I don't know if it comes across on the call, but Feng Shui is not in my vocabulary. That is not something that I think about. My wife, definitely I could see her once we find a place to live, realizing that, yeah, the couch or, yeah, a large piece of furniture just doesn't fit so this is helpful feedback I do think there's maybe an argument to sell and start fresh once we see what we need really just bringing the basics I feel like would really make this a lot easier that's something that I want to emphasize too is how can you make this move easier for you because you and your wife will be moving 2,000 miles you said

with two young kids there are going to be all sorts of logistics to figure out around like snack time and bathroom breaks and where all of your stuff is in the car and how do you load up the car that I think to the extent that you can take steps to make that process easier for you, you will appreciate it afterward and especially while you're doing it. Have you also looked into the cost of like movers or using pods or you hauls? Have you mapped out what those expenses might be too? I did reach out to pods I did get a quote from them for one of their largest containers I haven't looked into you hauls or professional movers yet

But I feel like the pods or the you haul option is gonna be the least expensive So yes, I have started that process, but again, just taking that next step is daunting. I'll toss out one more thought on your furnishings as well. You have a fully furnished home that you are thinking of renting out. There are opportunities to rent it out with the furnishings in it. I think this is a bit of a niche, but there are short-term rentals for travelers, for traveling nurses, for vacationers, etc. It may not be suitable for your location, but it's certainly something you could think of.

I hadn't considered that. That's great advice, Lisa. Thank you. Yeah, that would obviously make it way easier if we didn't have to sell anything and can maybe just charge a little bit extra giving them a fully furnished house. And the depreciation on the furniture in the home could potentially be a tax write-off too. So David, I know we've run through a lot of different aspects of moving and selling and renting and managing a rental property. How are you thinking about all of this right now?

Yeah, at this point, it's really just waiting to see if the job offer I'm looking for ends up coming through from the state we're looking to move to. So that's really where we're at. The timing as a schoolteacher, this is where we're entering kind of the time of the year when staff starts letting administrators know whether or not they plan to return. So I'm kind of just playing the waiting game right now to see if this works out. But I know if it does we're gonna have to be frantically planning the move. So I really appreciate this advice. Well we're happy to talk about it with you and I

hope it's a little bit of solace that you know there are steps that you can take now to plan for your move and try to make it as easy as possible but at a certain point every move has a certain level of chaos and there's not a lot you can do about that. Prepared for the chaos. Well thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us about your situation. I hope that it was helpful. Very helpful. I'm a huge fan. Thank you so much for having me. And Lisa, thank you for also coming on and sharing your insights.

Yes, thank you for having me, Sean. And that's all we have for this episode. Remember listener that we are here to answer your money questions. So turn to the nerds and call or text us your questions at 901-730-6373. You can also email us at podcastatnerdwallet.com. You can follow us Smart Money on your favorite podcast app including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and iHeartRadio to automatically download new episodes. And here's our brief disclaimer, we are not financial or investment advisors.

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