In this solo episode, Mariette Frey discusses the concept of false confidence and its impact on decision-making, particularly in the context of moving. She shares her personal experiences of moving multiple times and highlights the importance of considering finances, mental and physical strength, and the alignment with one’s dreams when making a move. Mariette introduces the FRED framework, which stands for finances, robustness, ecosystem, and dreams, as a tool for making more informed and mindful decisions. She emphasizes the need for a support system and encourages listeners to embrace their feelings and seek perspective from others. The episode concludes with a message of gratitude and support for the audience.
Takeaways
- False confidence can lead to overestimating one’s abilities and underestimating the challenges of moving.
- Consider finances, mental and physical strength, and alignment with dreams when making a move.
- The FRED framework (finances, robustness, ecosystem, and dreams) can help in making more informed decisions.
- Building a strong support system and embracing feelings can contribute to a more successful and fulfilling move.
Chapters
- 00:00 Introduction and False Confidence
- 03:08 The Impact of Moving and Comparison
- 05:25 Personal Experience with Moving
- 06:51 The FRED Framework
- 09:33 Moving and Dreams10:29The Importance of a Support System
- 13:16 Overconfidence and Moving Decisions
- 14:11 Regretting Moves and Lack of Joy
- 20:07 Escrow and Insurance Costs
- 22:58 Addressing Spending Habits
- 26:08 Embracing Feelings and Writing Them Down
- 29:04 Building a Strong Foundation
- 30:27 Finding Support and Overcoming Shame
- 33:41 Conclusion and Gratitude
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The Cost of False Confidence In A Move
Introduction and False Confidence
I am doing a solo episode. I was listening to the Mel Robbins Podcast, which I absolutely love. This was on March 25th. She did an episode about three small decisions that make you feel incredible. I do this every morning after waking up. The first one that she talks about is false confidence. I’m looking at my phone, so those on YouTube, which I don’t know if you know, but we have a show on YouTube now. Anything that I’m recording on the podcast, you can watch on YouTube. I love that. Just a little plug there.
She was talking about false confidence. It was funny because I was recording with an awesome young woman named Kelsey O’Connor, which, if you haven’t listened to that episode yet, please go back and listen to it. An incredible woman. She graduated from college about a year ago. She had a bad injury. She had to overcome all of this adversity. Just an incredible story.
It was funny because I was listening to Mel’s podcast. I have a speaker in my shower, and I always love to listen to podcasts. I’ve always been into podcasts. It was funny because I turned hers on, and I got done with work at 5:00. I had been in a funk all day. I’d been tired. I’m finding myself going to bed super early because I’m waking up at the crack of dawn at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. I don’t know why. I think my hormones are all over the place.
It was funny because I looked at my watch, and I was like, “I have half an hour in theory. I’m going to jump in the shower.” It felt gross. At one point, I felt like I was sweating a little bit, and I took a walk over lunch. I was like, “I’m going to take a shower. I’m going to redo my makeup, wash my hair, blow dry it out, and everything.”
I had such a funky day. In the shower, I stood there and had the hot water pouring on me, which felt awesome. I’m listening to Mel Robbins‘ podcast talk about false confidence and the concept. I looked it up. It’s a cognitive bias, but it’s about how you overestimate when you can do things, and how quickly you can do them, or what you’re doing.
I was laughing as I’m in the shower because I’m like, “That’s literally what I have right now, false confidence that I can get ready, get the podcast set up, get everything going, print out my questions that I had for her.” After watching her commencement speech, she did the NC State commencement speech, I was like, “I have so many questions for her.” All of these things that I needed to do. For whatever reason, at 5:05, I thought it was a good idea to jump in the shower and completely get ready.
Through the whole episode, I felt like I was sweating. I have the fan on above me. It is one of those things that the whole time I was listening, that I was doing the interview with Kelsey, I kept thinking, “I’m now sweating because I put myself in a position to be rushing around after I got ready,” which was the point of me getting ready so I wasn’t gross and sweaty and felt awful. I now feel that way again.
The Impact of Moving and Comparison
I wanted to relate that to moving because I think we do that. One of the things that we talked about in the episode with Kelsey was the fact that she graduated from college, and she’s watching everybody, including her twin brother, move to different states and do all these big things. It was hard not to compare. I think we often do that.
We’re like, “I want to move to San Diego. I’m going to sell all my stuff or put myself in storage, and I’m going to go, and I’ll figure it out when I get there.” What ends up happening is that you have this false confidence that, one, you can figure it out. Two, you’re going to make it out unscathed with no stress. You’re going to YOLO.
What ends up happening is that in your day-to-day, in that present moment, it is stressful. It is hard. You question your judgment. Your brain is a problem-solving device, and you end up trying to solve all these problems at once. It makes it even more compounded that maybe you didn’t put enough thought into the decision. Maybe you shouldn’t have moved. Maybe you should have waited a year and stayed at home, or stayed wherever you are, depending on where you are in your life journey.
I felt compelled to sit down and talk because I know that I do this. The fact that I’ve moved 18 times in 24 years to 5 of America’s top cities, not only do I know that I do this, but I’ve also had those overconfident thoughts that I can figure it out, and it isn’t going to be stressful. “This is what I do. I’m good. I got this.”
It is hard to make friends in a new city. You have to put effort into taking a new job, networking, and going on friend dates. Share on XPersonal Experience with Moving
I’ve been doing my own framework since 2023. Granted you’ve been listening to the podcast, you know 2023 was a crap year for me. It was the hardest year of my life, the most humbling. I had a lot of loss, a lot of grief, a lot of a lot. It was an extra year. I still have these thoughts of moving. I’m in that place where a lot of my ecosystem in Charlotte has moved away, like my friends and family.
Even though I do still have a great community here that I can lean on and have fun with and go out and do things, I long for the familiarity of my family that’s up in Chicago or my friends that are down. I have friends all over the country because I’ve lived all over. I’m taking a step back, and I did this with my last move, too, which is doing the framework and going through my own workbook. If you sign up for my Monday Mailer, it automatically sends you a PDF. I’m in the process of updating it.
The FRED Framework
There’s a lot of good little nuggets in there, but as I’m going through and doing this framework myself, I’m like, “I need to put more emphasis on this part,” or, “I need to do more on this part,” or, “I didn’t explain this part well.” It’s a lot of different things that you have to consider. The framework is called FRED. It’s finances. Think about how much money you have going into that new city, what the cost of living is, what the cost of rent is, how much it costs to move, all the hidden costs, all the things that you have to think about when you’re in that position.
It’s not just tape and boxes that you’re buying. The movers are expensive. Even if you rent your own truck, it’s expensive, the gas, the first month’s rent, and last month’s rent, and the deposit. If you’re buying a house, however much you have to put down, and selling your old house. There are a lot of things to consider. Your robustness is your mental and physical strength. Coming out of 2023 and being in this grief funk, I feel like I’m lifting out of my grief between losing Emmy and Carter, and my brother moving to Knoxville, loss of a relationship, all that stuff.
I feel like I’m now getting to a point where I feel like me again, and I feel okay, and I feel better. Even when you’re a super strong person, you get hit with anything from a mental health perspective. Any setback could feel incredibly detrimental to where you’re moving and your decision-making. You question a lot of things. Physically, from a strength perspective, it’s hard. You physically have to pick up boxes and move furniture and do all those things, preparing for that part.
Going back to the ecosystem and being overconfident, it’s also hard to make friends in a new city. You have to put effort in, and you have to go through everything, from if you are taking on a new job, to networking and going on friend dates. When I moved to San Francisco, I was set up on a blind friend date with my friend, Danny, whom I worked with. His cousin lived in San Francisco, and she lived in the city, and I was going to be living in the suburbs. We ended up meeting and hitting it off. She’s amazing.
Moving and Dreams
I was the maid of honor in her wedding. Her husband is going to be on my show to talk about negotiating contracts and things like that for people who are looking to move and pivot for a job. I think, looking at all of these things, the big question mark is always your dreams. That’s the last part of the framework. Is it getting you closer to your dreams?
Along the lines of false confidence, and I’m going to get this definition on my phone, there’s the cognitive bias itself. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect, and it’s a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. It says this tends to occur because a lack of self-awareness prevents them from accurately assessing their own skills. That’s huge.
Accurately assessing their own skills. I think when you get into a position where you’re going to up and move, depending on the circumstances, sometimes you have to, and there’s no way around it, I think it’s incredibly important to be self-aware of what your strengths and weaknesses are in those regards, but then also finding a buddy.
The Importance of a Support System
I’ve talked about this on a couple of different episodes over the course of the last couple months because I’m finding that even having somebody to talk to, even though I’ve moved this many times and I know what to expect, Laura from Laura Makes Moves, I’ve had her on the show now a couple times, and I’m so grateful for our friendship.
She has become a dear friend of mine. Even being able to have her, she’s putting together this amazing moving journal. It’s a checklist. It gives you four months of moving, but she’s got all kinds of stuff in there. If you go on her website, it’s LauraMakesMoves.com. If you sign up for her mailer, she sends you this 47-page checklist of getting prepared for a move, and this is on top of that.
Some people may think they have a great sense of direction when visiting an unknown area because of overconfidence. Because they refuse to check a map or ask others for help, they end up getting lost. Share on XEven going through, I’m a VIP, I get to have an advanced copy, and I’m helping her look through it. She’s been kind enough to ask me if there’s anything I wanted to add or anything like that. Just to be able to have somebody to talk to like her, to be able to say, “I’m in a funk. This new National Association of Realtors, the new lawsuit that was won, how does that impact me if I want to sell my house?” I know a lot of people love investing in real estate, and that’s never been my thing. I’m very risk-averse, and I know there’s a lot of risk, even in renting out your place. Some people are super comfortable with it, and they love it. To me, it’s scary, and I don’t love that part.
Overconfidence and Moving Decisions
The other definition that I saw when I googled it, what I put in there was, “What is an example of overconfidence cognitive bias?” It is either false confidence or overconfidence bias. It said, “A real-life example of overconfidence bias is people’s assumptions about their sense of direction,” which I thought was appropriate. “Some people may think they have a great sense of direction, even when visiting an unknown area, because they trust their ability. They refuse to check a map or ask others for help. This can cause them to end up lost.”
I thought that was such a pivotal definition because when we move, even if it’s across town and we haven’t put a whole lot of thought into the foundation of why we’re moving, everywhere you go, there you are. If you get to a point where you’re making assumptions about how easy this is going to be, or even if you think, “This could be hard, but I’ll get through it,” the impact and the ripples that it has on your life, some people don’t take that into consideration.
Regretting Moves and Lack of Joy
The whole reason I put this show together, I do the coaching I do, I give the content on social media that I do, and the free advice that I have in my day-to-day conversations, I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve talked to somebody and they’ve been like, “I wish I talked to you a year ago. I so badly regret making this move,” or “I wish I would have done this differently. I didn’t even think about this perspective. I didn’t even think to ask anybody about a different perspective.” I think that is the difference between you being confident in your decision-making and getting somewhere, and regretting it.
I’ve seen all kinds of statistics, especially because of the pandemic. It threw off the numbers about how many people move each year. I’ve heard everything from 11 million people move a year to 28 million people move a year, which is a pretty big delta. I think it’s interesting to see. There was a study in 2023 that they put out, which had a huge test group of people that they surveyed about whether or not they regretted their move. It was something like 3 out of 4 people regretted their move.
Could you imagine spending all that time packing, spending all that money moving, and spending all that time getting into a new community and not wanting to be there? Having to go out and meet new people, or find a new grocery store, or even the day-to-day. We were on the show with Kelsey. We were talking about how the effort of having to change all your addresses and figure all that personal stuff up on all your bills, like you’re changing everything. I get annoyed with two-factor authentication, which I work in technology during the day. I know that it’s a necessary evil, especially in our awful hacker world.
I find that such an interesting cognitive bias. When I was cracking up in the shower, because I’m doing that exact thing. I’m about to get on a show that I host, that I’m supposed to be running and leading. I had two minutes to spare when I was setting up my computer. I jumped on a Riverside, which is the platform I use, which I highly recommend. It’s the best alternative to Zoom. I’m so grateful to have it. I know I pay for Zoom as well. Everybody’s got Zoom, and for the most part, you can get the free version or whatever, but Riverside.fm is awesome.
It transcribes everything for me. It gives me show notes and does all, it automates a lot of this for me. It is because I do work a full-time job and I do travel a lot, having that assistant, that artificial intelligence assistant, has been very helpful for me. I think that there are other cognitive biases out there. I’ve talked to my therapist about them, because there are a lot of people out there who are all or nothing, who throw caution to the wind, or they beat themselves up for a lot of different things. Use language like “I should be doing this,” or “I should be doing that,” and comparing yourself to others when it comes to moving.
I had a conversation with a good friend of mine from college, probably a couple of months ago. Financially, we were both not in a great place. We both have good jobs. She’s got several kids, and her kids are in sports. It was one of those things where I was like, “I’m struggling,” because I made some dumb moves in 2023. Plus, I had the vet bills from Emmy, the vet bills from Carter. I had a bunch of medical bills that I’m still trying to pay off because so much had happened in 2023.
I was like, “I’m struggling on the day-to-day. I’m trying to dig myself out. I’m picking up this side hustle,” and things like that. We don’t talk about that. When you’re trying to keep up with the Joneses, I hate that term, but it’s true. You’re like, “If I move, then it looks like everything’s going well and I have a fresh start.” Again, everywhere you go, there you are. In doing my framework, especially the financial side of it, even getting on Realtor.com and looking at the two places that I’m considering moving in my next chapter, I was plotting it out. It’s like, “My mortgage is this right now.”
Escrow and Insurance Costs
What’s crazy is that if you’ve never owned a house, one of the interesting things that mortgage companies do, if you hold a mortgage, is you can choose to put escrow on your mortgage. Escrow is your insurance and the city and state taxes that you have to pay to be a homeowner in that particular city. Escrow means that they will put it into your mortgage. It’s part of your monthly payment. My monthly payment was $1,800, and because I built my house and they didn’t have an accurate picture of what the taxes were.
We do not often talk about financial foundations and our money in the bank. There is a lot of shame around money and security, especially if you are a woman. Share on XThey now reset it, and they reset it and they reassess it every single year. If your property value goes up, as my property value went up in 2023, they reassess it. What the bank does is they come back and they have to make sure there’s enough to cover it, plus $600. That’s at least Chase’s number, which is the $600. Even though my insurance doubled this year, which homeowners, a lot of things happened in 2023 between hurricanes, and insurance is hard in a lot of states. One of those states that I’m looking to potentially go to is Florida.
Florida has been hit so hard with hurricanes, and the Miami building that collapsed. There’s so much out there that a lot of insurance companies were pulling out of Florida as a state. There was all kinds of talk about the state government coming up with their own insurance program, which I can only imagine what that would be like. You have to weigh those things, and a lot of people don’t even think to do that. Even if you have renter’s insurance and you’re in an apartment building, that’s a different layer of financial obligation that you have, that you might not think about until you get there.
You’re like, “My car insurance doubled from moving three hours south.” In my case, my escrow reset. They now basically said that my insurance or my mortgage payment is going to go up by $200 every single month, or I can pay $1,000 into the escrow fund to not make it go up, which either one sucks. One, paying $2,400 a month, or paying $1,000. Obviously, $1,000 is a better deal, but you have to come up with that in cash, and you’ve got to do it right away.
Addressing Spending Habits
Having that financial foundation and having money in the bank, we don’t often talk about that with our friends because it’s shameful. Especially if you’re a woman, there’s a lot of shame around money and security. I think that looking at the cognitive bias of overconfidence and not putting the thought into it that you need to could put you in a position that’s difficult if you aren’t looking at all of the things you need to do. It sucks because, looking at all those things, this past weekend, I hired the coach. I’m lucky that I get, with my benefits package, this is something that if you work for a corporate company, you can look into your benefits package.
My company works with Modern Health. Within my benefits package, I’m sure I’m paying for it somewhere, but I get six sessions with a therapist and six sessions with a coach. I reached out to Modern Health, and I said, “I would like a financial coach to help me comb through my spending habits.” It is because I needed a reset. One, I had some debt this year, which I haven’t had in a very long time. A long time ago, I was in debt, and then I got myself out of it, and I did a great job of saving, and that’s how I was able to buy my house and all those things.
In 2023, things have fallen by the wayside. I got sloppy, and things add up quickly, especially when you’ve got compound interest every single month. It’s hard to dig out a debt. Even going through the exercises that she asked me to do, I had to go through credit card statements from the last three months. She said two months, but I went from January 1st on to get a good, accurate picture of where my spending was happening. A lot of it was Amazon. I know a lot of people have fallen into the Amazon trap. It’s so easy. I’m embarrassed to even give the number of what I was spending on Amazon, but I don’t even have a way of tracking what I bought.
It was a lot of stupid stuff, but even looking at it from that perspective, if I move to a more expensive state, if I sell my house and rent, or if I buy another house and then the insurance goes up and my car insurance goes up and all of those little details that add a ton of money to your monthly budget, plus I’m spending on Amazon, is that going to work? It’s not going to work. I’m not going to have enough money for savings. I want to put more into retirement. I’ve always wanted to put more into retirement.
Those are the things that when you have that overconfidence, or you throw caution to the wind, and you YOLO it, and you move without thinking and putting a foundation in place. Those are the things that can set you back, where you have to move home, or you’re put in a difficult financial position. A couple of episodes ago, I had a woman who had to declare bankruptcy. She was married, she got divorced, and it was too much for her to handle. At the time, when you have a dual income, the dual income is a false sense of security sometimes. That false confidence, she had to pivot. She now uses the envelope system, and she saves money. All this to be saying, I know I’m going on a tangent, and we’re 23 minutes in. I thought it was going to be 15 minutes.
That overconfidence, especially when it comes to moving, could make or break your experience in your new city. Part of the reason I became a coach and why I still use a therapist, and I still use a life coach, I now have a financial coach, is because I want to make sure that in this next chapter of my life, whenever it will be, whether I move tomorrow or a year from now, I want to make sure that financially, mentally, and physically, my community and getting closer to my dreams is confident, not overconfident.
I want to make sure that I’m in a position to coach people because I’ve been through it, which I’m going through now. I love the framework because it can be applied to so many different areas of your life. It doesn’t just have to be moving, but I think that there is a significant lack of joy out there. Part of it is because we’re making decisions not out of long-term vision, but out of how I feel right in this moment. That could be staying out too late or staying up too late, or scrolling on social media and comparing yourself, or even scrolling on social media to find joy and see good things like puppies. Ever since Carter and Emmy passed away, all I’ve seen on my feed is puppies.
Embracing Feelings and Writing Them Down
I’m now dreaming about buying another puppy, which is an expense that I don’t want to incur. Dogs are expensive. There is no such thing as a free puppy. I’m going to repeat that, “There is no such thing as a free puppy.” Every puppy is expensive. Every cat is expensive. There are vet bills, there’s food, and they’re getting hurt. Carter tore his ACL chasing after a bunny, and bunnies bring him joy, chasing after them. I think that what I’m trying to say, again, I go off on tangents, if you are tuning in to this and we’re not friends, we are now, because you are learning that I love tangents. They’re my happy place. I’m going through this with you.
Set yourself up for success so when an emergency happens, it would be a blip on your roadmap rather than a catastrophe. Share on XI am doing my own framework, and I am making sure that I set myself up in a way where I am listening to all the thoughts, all the good thoughts, all the bad thoughts. I am deciphering which one I want to move forward with. I think that we as human beings need to shift because it is causing people anxiety. It is causing people to be incredibly depressed. If you take a step back and listen to the voice and are truly honest about what you want, not what you think other people think you should have, or what in your heart makes you feel good.
If you think about something and you have a visceral reaction, meaning physically, it makes you feel one way or the other, lean into that. Don’t back away from it. Don’t run from it. Lean into it. “Why did my stomach drop? Why did I feel like I got punched in the gut? Why did that spark interest and joy and make me sit up and be like, I hadn’t thought about that?” Lean into those feelings and write them down. I have a whole graveyard of journals. I don’t love journaling. I go on these kicks where I’ll do it for a couple of days in a row, and then I don’t do it for three weeks.
Even writing it down on a piece of paper in front of you that you pull from the printer and physically say, “I am not happy because,” or “Right now I am grateful for.” Making that list will help us see themes. It’s collecting data. Going into a particular area of your life and saying, “I have been avoiding looking at my finances, and I know I have. I 100% have been avoiding that because I did not want to deal with the fact that I have a spending problem on Amazon.” I went in and I deleted the Amazon app from my phone. It was harsh. We had a breakup.
Jeff Bezos has enough money, enough of my money from 2023. If I want something, I physically have to go to a computer and buy it, or I have to physically go to a store and buy it temporarily until I get to a point where I’m making more mindful decisions instead of saying, “It can be here from 4:00 to 8:00 today.” Great. Got it. Need it. Love it. I have a ton of stuff that I don’t need in my house that I’m going to have to either sell at a garage sale or return because I wasn’t mindful about that spending, but I’m making that pivot.
I am making small tweaks every single day to support my mental health to get stronger. I do get over this grief, and I do get over the shame that I felt from making these unwise financial decisions. Some of them I couldn’t control. Going back to the cognitive bias of should, if I were putting money in the bank the way I should have been doing it, I wouldn’t be in this position, or would I? All I know is if I set myself up for success, if an emergency does happen, then I’d be prepared for it, and it would be a blip on the roadmap rather than a catastrophe.
My ecosystem, who in my support system is here in Charlotte, whom can I call at any given moment and have a conversation with them? I can think of five people that I could, in Charlotte, call and say, “I need you right now.” They would drop what they’re doing, and they would get here. I can think of five people that I could call, and they would pick up my phone, and I could say, “I’m in a tough place right now. I need to talk.” They would answer the phone, and they would answer the call, and they would lift me up. Find those people, and then lean into where you feel you’re not strong.
Building a Strong Foundation
It might surprise you, getting their perspective on the things that you’re trying to do or the things that you’ve done, and need a little grace and need to hear that it’s okay that you’re being irrational and beating yourself up. Those are the people that you want to surround yourself with. I think that if we can get to a place, even if you don’t move, that you’re content in staying where you are, that is a different feeling. That is powerful. That brings you from a place of anxiety and trauma and grief or whatever it is.
Grief doesn’t have to be about death. Grief can be a loss of a friendship. Grief can be, “I made bad decisions.” Grief can be a lot of different things. There are several different stages of grief as well. It does not have to be specifically about death. It could be about breakups and all that stuff. Going through and figuring out who your community is, and then saying, “Here’s a weakness. I need your perspective. Here is what I’m thinking about doing. What do you think? How should I prepare?” Not necessarily what you think it is, because you don’t have to care about what other people think, but how should I prepare for that?
Having that conversation with my college girlfriend about the position that I had put myself in and how I was beating myself up, and to find out that she was in a similar position and she was feeling shame for that too, even having that conversation released us of that guilt and that shame and allowed us to move forward and say, “Up until this point, I was like that. Moving forward, I’m not going to do that anymore.” It freed us up. That’s what I want for you. Seven minutes ago, I was like, “I’m going to wrap this up,” so I’m going to stop talking now.
Finding Support and Overcoming Shame
All that to say is that if you need help, if you need support, I’m here. You can DM me on Instagram or LinkedIn. I’m not great on TikTok, but I’m trying, or the YouTube channel that we put together. You can get to my website, join the Monday Mailer. I have tips every single Monday. Sometimes I skip a Monday. I am working a lot, and I am traveling a lot. You’ll get a Monday Mailer from me every couple of weeks at the very least, or a couple of weeks of the month. I put different tips and tricks, and I talk about the upcoming episode on there as well, before the episode is released.
You can also go to my website and find my email there, and email me if you want to tell me your story, or you think your story would resonate and help people make wiser choices moving forward about moving because of what you’ve gone through, and be a guest on my show. I would love that. It’s everyday people that I’m talking to, and I find so much joy in their stories, and I learn something from every single person. I hope you learned something from me. I’m so grateful to have you.
If you like this show, please review it. I hate asking for stuff like that, but it’s necessary in the podcasting world in order to move forward, in order to get sponsors, in order to pay for production costs. It’s expensive to produce a show. I’m thankful and grateful for anybody who’s tuning in. If I can make an impact on one person’s day or week or life, that to me is worth it. I’m officially off my tangents. I hope you have an amazing day. If nobody has told you, thank you. I love you. I’m here for you.