Moving Across the Country

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OK nerds, here's what's up:

 

My wife and I live in MI with a great dane. Brilliant wife gets full-ride and more for her master's at Texas A&M. The dane and her will be moving around Xmas time while I have to suffer through another brutal snowpocalypse in Michigan as I am a teacher and can't just drop my students halfway through the year (much less pick up another full-time gig in Texas halfway through the year). I will join them as soon as school's over for me.

 

Now here's where we need help:

 

How the heck does one move their life across the country? Has anyone done this before? Any tips? Ideally we'd do this cheaply since we're living on a young teacher's salary with only a little help from TAMU.

 

What we have at our disposal:

 

2 Honda Fits which fit an enormous amount of stuff in them with the seats down. However, the dane takes up most of 1 of them.

My dad's F-250 truck which he uses to haul his huge trailer for work.

A modest moving fund that we've already started to try to offset some costs (breaking our lease, gas/food as we drive 1,200 miles south, etc.)

 

Luckily, my brilliant wife is also becoming a minimalist meaning we don't have all that much stuff. However, we also don't have the cash to buy everything all over again in Texas, and we WILL be there for 2-3 years so we don't want to "rough it" sleeping on a craigslist couch with a great dane on top of us for that long.

 

Any tips or past experiences would be much appreciated. Love you nerds. I lurk often and post sparingly, but learn and laugh ton from y'all.