What a Move Costs Before the First Pay Arrives

Two sets of costs, one income, briefly none

The overlap is the whole of the problem. For some period the household is responsible for where it used to live and where it now lives, and during part of that period no wage is arriving from anywhere.

None of the three facts is surprising on its own. What surprises households is that they arrive together, and that the arithmetic of the overlap was never done because each part was being thought about separately.

This applies particularly where a move is between metropolitan areas within one state, because those moves are frequently made without relocation support and without the household treating it as a major event.

Building the number

1. Write down the date of the last payment from the current job, as it will actually land rather than as the final working day.
2. Write down the expected date of the first payment from the new one. Ask, rather than assume; first payments are frequently later than a normal cycle.
3. Count the weeks between. That is the interval.
4. Add up everything that leaves the account during those weeks, in both places.
5. Add the one off costs of the move itself, which land in the same window.

The second step is the one people skip and the one that most often moves the answer. A first payment at a new employer commonly arrives later than the household's normal rhythm, sometimes by several weeks, because of where the start date falls in a cycle.

Where the overlap comes from

Two housing commitments

A lease that has not ended, a property that has not sold, or a deposit paid before the previous one has been returned. Any of the three produces the overlap, and returned deposits in particular arrive later than households plan around.

Things that do not move on the same day

Utilities, subscriptions and services frequently run for a final period after the household has left, and the new equivalents start before it has fully arrived. Each is small and there are a lot of them.

Costs that only exist during a move

Temporary accommodation, storage, travel between the two places, and time off work to do any of it. These are visible but consistently underestimated, mainly because the move takes longer than planned.

Distance inside one state is still distance

A move between two Texas metropolitan areas can be several hundred miles, which puts it well beyond the range where a household can go back easily to finish something.

That has a direct cost. Trips back for handovers and paperwork are real, they take days rather than hours, and they generally happen during the same interval when no income is arriving.

What makes the interval longer than expected

Four things, and they compound rather than substitute for each other.

• A start date that slips, which is common and rarely by a small amount.
• A first payment that falls outside the normal cycle, which is usual rather than unusual.
• A deposit returned slowly, or partially, or after a dispute.
• A property that takes longer to leave than the household assumed.

Any one of them adds a fortnight. Two of them together turn a comfortable interval into an uncomfortable one, and households routinely plan for the version where none of them happens.

What to do with the figure

Compare it to what the household can actually reach within a fortnight without a penalty or a sale. That comparison is the entire point of the exercise, and it produces one of three answers.

Either the household can cover the interval comfortably, which is worth knowing and removes an anxiety. Or it can cover it with nothing to spare, which is a reason to build in a margin before rather than after. Or it cannot, which is a reason to negotiate a start date, a bridging arrangement or a later handover while there is still time to do so.

The method for working out what leaves the account regardless, which is the other half of this arithmetic, is in identifying essential expenses during an income interruption.

The negotiation nobody thinks to have

Most of what makes this interval difficult is decided by a date, and dates are frequently negotiable if raised before they are set.

A start date moved by a fortnight, a first payment brought forward, or a handover arranged remotely rather than in person each shortens the gap. None of them is an unusual request, and all of them are much harder to ask for after the arrangements have been made.

The reason households do not ask is that they have not done the arithmetic yet, and by the time they have, the dates are fixed. Doing it first is the whole advantage.

Deciding in advance which commitments could be paused during the interval is worth an hour on its own, and deciding what you would protect last is the method for it.

When the household has two earners

Then the interval is usually shorter for one of them and longer for the other, and the household frequently plans around the first. The person whose work does not move with them may have a considerably longer gap, and in some cases an indefinite one.

That case is different enough to have its own article: when one person's move ends the other's job covers what happens when the second income does not survive the relocation.

The version with children in it

A household moving with children has a second set of dates that line up with neither payment cycle, and those dates frequently decide when the move can actually happen.

Terms set the date, not the job

Which usually makes the interval longer, because the household is fitting a start date around a school year rather than around a payroll. That is generally the right decision and it deserves to be priced rather than absorbed.

Care arrangements restart from nothing

Whatever the household had is gone, and the replacement takes time to find and frequently costs more before it settles. It is a real cost inside the interval and it is almost never in anybody's moving budget.

Both of these are knowable in advance and neither is difficult to estimate. What makes them expensive is that they are usually discovered rather than planned, at a point when the household has no capacity left for either.

Mistakes worth avoiding

1. Counting from the last working day rather than from the last payment.
2. Assuming the first payment arrives on the new employer's normal cycle.
3. Treating a returned deposit as available on a known date.
4. Budgeting the move and not the interval, which are different sums.
5. Fixing the start date before working out what the gap costs.

The move has a budget. The gap in the middle usually does not, and it is the part that empties an account.

What this is not

It is not an argument against moving, and nothing here describes a product or states a figure. Income protection is used on this site as a category of guidance about managing a period without usual income, and a relocation gap is one of the most predictable such periods a household will meet.

What tends to be forgotten entirely

Three items land inside the interval and appear in nobody's moving budget, because none of them looks like a moving cost.

• Duplicated deposits and connection fees, which are paid in the new place before the old ones are returned.
• Higher day to day spending for a month or two, because the household does not yet know where anything is or what anything costs.
• Any professional or registration renewal that happens to fall in the window, which is nobody's fault and lands anyway.

Individually they are small. Together they routinely add a fortnight's worth of costs to the interval, which is enough to turn a comfortable calculation into an uncomfortable one.

Where to start

Ask the new employer when the first payment will actually arrive. That one question sets the length of the interval, and everything else follows from it. The wider context is income protection planning for Texas households.