[Porsche-O-Phile]

My recent move from LA to the northeast cost about $8,000 doing it myself. Cost of rental truck, tow dolly, fuel, shipping two cars, etc. It was murder but I don't trust anyone other than me to do it. Difficult or not, this is something I'd always do myself. I simply do not trust moving companies - way too many horror stories out there of stuff getting lost/busted/held hostage for months while they change the price/terms after the fact, etc. No way.

My advice: Pare down to the stuff you really care about keeping or have use for, sell, donate or throw away everything else and get a storage unit. Transfer stuff into the storage unit to "mock up" how you're going to load your rental truck (get the dimensions ahead of time and build in a few inches on each dimension "just in case" and move stuff over several weeks. Spread it out. That way when the time comes, you just have to pull the truck up to the storage unit, roll everything up (it's already boxed/stacked the way you want, just make sure to account for first-in-last-out) and hand the keys in. That's what I did and it was very effective. But it's still not a fun experience.

Best of luck.