Step Two: Is a Shipping Container Worth It for Moving back to India?

Step Two: Is a Shipping Container Worth It for Moving back to India?

It will cost around $5,000-$7,000 for a shipping container from the U.S. to India. This includes loading, unloading, insurance and around $1,000 for customs duty.

What I concluded is that unless you can make up that cost in saving, it is not worth it to ship a container. We have purchased a lot of new furniture, two big HDTVs (including a 55″ 3D HDTV), a music systems (including 7.1 speakers), and many other items. We thought a lot about not  shipping a container, but once we decided that it would be worth it, we made a list of what we would need to take versus what we would buy once back in India. By doing this, we were able to save $3,000-$4,000 in electronics alone when compared to the cost of buying them in India.

We had been in the U.S. for 12 years so instead of taking our old furniture from U.S.,  we bought almost all new furniture including 4 Italian leather sofas, queen and king size bed, mattresses, dresser, night stands, center tables, computer table, entertainment center etc.  We are going to live in Indore, and it would have been possible to have gotten the furniture we wanted in the big cities, but it would have been a lot of hassle. We would have had to see in which big city we could buy our furniture, then where in that city to buy our furniture, and then we probably would not have been able to find what we wanted. I am pretty sure that the deal we got from Macy’s in the U.S. was better than any deal we could have found in India. In addition, already having the furniture would save us a lot of time and hassle, not to mention that we had gotten what we wanted and had grown accustomed to it too.

Here are the main item we shipped in our container:

1. 55″ Samsung 3D HDTV

2. 40″ Samsung HDTV

3. Onkyo TX-NR808 Home Theater Receiver

4. 7.1 Speakers ( 2 Polk II Monitor70, 1 Polk CS 2, 1 BIC 12″ subwoofer and 4 BOSE 161 speakers)

5. 1 New Lenovo laptop and 2 Dell netbooks

6. 4 2000 watts transformers and 1 3000 watts step up/down transformer

7. Toys and cloths for our 2 year-old son

8. PS3 and Xbox 360 with lots of games

9. Dinnerware (for formal and daily use)

10. Wireless security systems

11. HP wireless printer

12. 4-5 beds in a bag

13. Picture frames from michaels

14. Sony hi-fi shelf system

15. Exercise/boot camp DVDS

16. Speaker cables, ethernet cables, bannana plugs, etc from monoprice.com

17 Shark steam pocket mop

18. Rice Cooker, Cusinart griddle, KitchenAid oven

19. 2-3 digital picture frames

20. Bathroom and cleaning supplies for a few months

21. Professional fabric steamer from costco

22. 2 Area rugs from Costco

23.  Above-mentioned furniture

24. 2 wireless N routers, one to be used as a wireless bridge

25. 2 Spike protectors

26. PAL HDMI-NTSC converter ( depends on if you need it)

I hope this post and list of items will help you in deciding whether it is worth shipping a container.

Previous Post:

1. Step One in the Process of Returning to India