Too many things cause varying degrees of stress in our lives; some are unexpected, while others are by design. But when it comes to the one thing guaranteed to push stress levels into the stratosphere, it’s moving home.
Fourteen, that’s the number.
Fourteen what you might ask? Fourteen is the number of times I have moved home over the past 20 years, and to this day, I can remember the huge stress brought on from each and every move.
Only recently and completely out of the blue, the subject of moving home reared its ugly head once more. Fortunately, my wife Natasha didn’t run out of the room screaming, or throw one of her books at me and was kind enough to listen to my pitch.
Why it is I suffer from itchy feet, is a mystery. Perhaps it’s my time in the armed forces and growing up an army-brat. Or, maybe it’s this bloomin’ virus that makes me want to move to somewhere remote, far away from people.
One thing is for certain, the initial thought of moving home is simple, it’s the actual moving home that brings the stress and this has been well and truly backed up with some new data.
Just Move In recently commissioned a survey of home movers and found that 52% of those asked ranked moving home at an eight or above on a scale of one to 10 when asked how stressful they found moving – with 10 being the most stressful.
It is a bit of shame that the survey’s scale only went up to 10. I am quite sure that on a couple of occasions, a higher number than 10 would’ve been more applicable based upon the moves I’ve experienced.
To show where moving comes in the stress charts, respondents were asked “Rank the following on which you have found the most stressful” and the results were:
Moving home 28%
Job Interview 21%
Driving Test 20%
Having a baby 16%
Getting Married 11%
Waiting for Brexit 5%
The survey also found that almost half (49%) found packing to the most stressful part, followed by transferring services and updating existing utility providers (27%).
With everything that needs organising for a smooth and successful home move, it comes as no surprise that transferring services and utilities ranks so highly, with 44% of movers spending over 30 minutes on the phone to each supplier.
Moving home throws up an almost endless list of things to remember. You have council tax, water and sewerage, gas and electricity, TV and broadband, phone and insurance as a minimum. These alone take hours to sort, and the thought of missing one, overpaying and having to go through the rigmarole of claiming back is making me stressed just thinking about it!
Co-founder of Just Move In, Ross Nichols, commented: “We know first hand how incredibly stressful it can be to move home, not only have we been there ourselves, it inspired us to launch Just Move In, and we can appreciate that in the current climate it’s even more stressful than usual. Unfortunately, it remains one of those life events that will always bring a certain degree of stress regardless of when you do it due to the nature of the move itself and the time and money involved.
“One of the main contributing factors to this level of stress is setting up essential services as you move into a new property. To make things easier, most people tend to stick with the incumbent provider to save time or opt for the cheapest tariff to save money.
“However, this can lead to even more stress further down the line as the cheapest, short-term provider turns out to be, well, not that great when it comes to other more important factors such as customer service, performance, and environmental and social impact.”
As it stands, making the right choice is more important than ever, as not only could it save you some valuable money, but it may also improve other areas of life, such as that ropey wifi signal that keeps dropping out mid-zoom call as you struggle to work from home.’
The results were compiled from a survey of 500+ UK home movers conducted by the MIS Group.
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