Last June, on a sweaty summer evening, in our 550-square-foot Brooklyn apartment filled to the brim with towers of stacked moving boxes, my partner and I took a final appraisal of what our cross-country move to New York City had officially cost us. We might as well have bought a new car.
We’d moved from Chicago, renting a U-Haul that John drove across the country while I trailed him in our banged-up 2013 Ford Escape, our two dogs and numerous plants in tow. The truck, including gas, cost around $1,000. We hired movers in New York to help us unload the truck; their services cost $550.
