Ask what a move costs and you'll hear about movers and deposits. That's the receipt, not the price. Money spent relocating leaves your net worth at the start of the decade — the exact moment it would have done the most compounding. At the benchmark 7% return over ten years, every dollar of moving cost is 1.84 dollars of final net worth. The $10,000 intercontinental move is really a $18.4K decision.
Five routes, priced honestly
Each route below gets the rule-of-thumb cost for its distance band, then the simulation runs twice — with and without it. The last column is the number worth memorizing: the moving cost that would erase the route's entire advantage.
| Route | Distance | Est. moving cost | 10-yr outcome (free move) | 10-yr outcome (real move) | Advantage-erasing cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles → Las Vegas | 368 km | $2.0K | +$42k | +$39k | $23.1K |
| Boston → Raleigh | 981 km | $4.0K | +$12k | +$4k | $6.4K |
| New York → Miami | 1,758 km | $4.0K | +$19k | +$12k | $10.3K |
| San Francisco → Austin | 2,414 km | $4.0K | +$42k | +$34k | $22.7K |
| London → Berlin | 932 km | $6.0K | −$22k | −$33k | Already negative |
Why year-one dollars are the expensive ones
The mechanism is the same one that makes waiting expensive, running in the opposite direction. The simulation charges the moving cost to your net worth in the first year of the move — where it stops earning returns for the entire remaining horizon. That's why the gap between the "free move" and "real move" columns above is always larger than the moving cost itself, and why cheap flights and a few boxes are a genuinely different financial event from a shipping container.
Notice also what the table doesn't show: any winner flipping to a loser at the rule-of-thumb costs. Healthy moves survive realistic moving expenses — the verdict danger zone is specifically the thin-margin move, where the erasing cost drops into four figures. On a losing route the logic inverts once more: the moving cost just deepens a hole you shouldn't be digging at the benchmark offer anyway, as London to Berlin shows above.
Pricing your own move
The simulator's optional moving-cost field pre-fills the distance-band estimate for your route and charges it the same way — year one, against the moved path, fully compounded. If your quote from an actual moving company is triple the rule of thumb (families: it will be), put the real number in and watch whether your verdict survives it. Two minutes in the simulator beats discovering the margin after the lease is signed.
Common questions
Why does a $10,000 move cost more than $10,000?
Because the money leaves your net worth in year one, which means it also takes all the investment returns it would have earned for the rest of the decade with it. At the benchmark 7% annual return over a 10-year horizon, each dollar spent on the move is roughly $1.84 of net worth by the end — the exact multiplier is computed live on this page.
What's a realistic moving cost?
The rule-of-thumb bands used here: about $2,000 for a short domestic move, $4,000 for a long-distance domestic move, $6,000 for a nearby international move, and $10,000+ for an intercontinental one — covering movers or shipping, travel, and deposit overlap for a one-to-two-person household. A family with a house of furniture can multiply those numbers; the input is fully editable in the simulator.
Should moving costs ever change the decision?
Only near the margin — and the margin is wider than people think. A move with a five-figure advantage shrugs off any realistic moving cost. But this page computes the advantage-erasing cost for each route, and for thin-margin moves it lands within an ordinary family's actual moving budget.
Methodology & sources
Computed by the MoveWorth simulation engine: progressive income tax (US federal + state + FICA brackets; PolicyEngine-derived UK curves; OECD-anchored effective rates elsewhere), cost-of-living-scaled spending, compounding raises and invested savings. Salary benchmarks: BLS OEWS metro medians for US cities (official), calibrated World Bank-derived estimates elsewhere (labeled). Rent: Census ACS. FX: dated ECB snapshot. Benchmark assumptions unless stated: mid-senior software-engineer offer, 25% savings rate, 3% raises, 7% annual return, 10-year horizon. This is a benchmark, not financial advice.
Rule-of-thumb moving costs by distance band: $2,000 (domestic, under 500 km), $4,000 (domestic, longer), $6,000 (international, under 3,000 km), $10,000 (intercontinental) — movers/shipping, travel, and deposit overlap for a small household, labeled as an editable estimate in the app. The advantage-erasing cost is the route's free-move outcome divided by the compounding multiplier (1.07⁹ ≈ 1.84 at benchmark settings), computed live.