Moving houses is not always a breeze. Sometimes, it is full of challenges that could drain your energy and push you to the limit. In this episode, Mariette Frey discusses how to handle tough moves by looking back on one of her most challenging home relocations so far. She shares how the FRED Framework guided her through the process full of unbelievable hurdles and the role of community support in easing her biggest emotional burdens. Mariette also launches Season 3 of the podcast as she reveals soon-to-be-implemented changes to the show and brand-new things every listener should look forward to.
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the Podcast here
Tips For Tough Moves
I want to talk about my now friend Mariette Frey a little bit. I met her in 2024. I was coming up on a big scary move and I happened to notice that she had an episode out on Instagram. I saw a post that Mariette’s on the Move has a new episode out. I thought, “This is amazing, a moving show. That’s so cool.” I started following her and I commented on one of her posts one day. I don’t even remember what it was about, and she messaged me right away and she was like, “Do you want to hop on a call?” That was it. That was all it took. She was so dedicated to what she was doing and was just so kind to me.
She had coached me through my move as much as possible. My move was not well-planned because it was me not her but she talked me down from some stuff and some Ideas as well. I think she’s amazing. She’s so kind and so experienced. She can tell you from that experience that you’re doing okay. That was the main thing that I needed because I was not a great place in my mind that she was like, “You’re going to be okay. You’re doing a great job.”
At that point, that was what I needed. That coaching part was super helpful for me and I just got to meet in person, so that was pretty amazing. Anyway, I highly recommend Mariette to anyone who is in the process of moving. She’s got great ideas and has done it all pretty much, so she can tell you. Check her out. Check out her show and everything that she’s doing because she’s helpful and doing amazing things.
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Season 3 Is Here! What’s New And What To Expect
Welcome back. It is Season 3 of the show. The show was formerly known as Mariette’s on the Move. That was just way too hard for people to type out or remember, so I ended up changing it. I also changed the name of the website, so you can still get me at MariettesOnTheMove.com but now it is DecidingToMove.com, which I thought was going to be even easier. I’m changing a lot of things up, you guys. You’re going to be able to go to my website soon and read to the episode right from the homepage. I’m not doing it. Podetize is embedding my show. It’ll be a blog and a player. I don’t even know what I’m getting but I’m sure it’s going to be amazing.
I also have them helping me edit because I have no editing skills when it comes to video. My brother got the genes on that one. I’m making the investment in the show because I find that there are still so many people that are so lost when it comes to whether or not they should move, what to do, how to find movers, how not to get scammed, and all that stuff. It is tough out there. It is very sophisticated when it comes to scams. We’re going to do a lot of things.
One of the things I’m changing up is the format, just so you know. I’m going to do two a week for the next 6 or 7 weeks and we’ll see how it goes from there. What I’m hoping to do is one solo episode and then one interview episode or one solo episode where I teach you about things like if you’re on the YouTube channel. I’m going to show you the rights and responsibilities that you have as a civilian moving in this great country.
The second episode would be a coaching episode. I am bringing back my coaching practice. It’s been like three years since I’ve been an actual life coach and had a roster. It’s important because relocation as a strategist is such a different niche than normal life coaching. Life coaching itself is to help you remove roadblocks, get unstuck, and get over yourself. When you meet with somebody like me who does relocation, plus all of that stuff. You find that taking action is a little bit easier, but it also is something that can help you not take action in the sense that maybe you shouldn’t move.
I would say half the people that I talk to I convince them not to move because it’s not the right time, not the right place, or not the right financial decision. That’s one I want to coach around. When you go to DecidingToMove.com, one of the very first things that you see on the website is a free podcast coaching session. You sign up there and it goes to a form that I’m going to check once a week because I still work full-time and this is just a side hobby and a side practice. I would say side hustle but I don’t make enough money off this thing. I would love to if somebody wants to sponsor me but all means, reach out to me.
It is getting expensive to produce, so we’re going to run this through the end of the year and see how it works with the new company that I’m partnering with and make some decisions from there. Some of the things that I want to talk to you about, I’m not going to do seasons. I’m going to take the season thing off and just do episodes so that way, if I do take a break like I did last time, it’s nothing big of a deal. As I said, I held up the your rights and responsibilities.
This is a very robust 21-page booklet that every mover that you meet with is supposed to give you. They don’t always do that partially because if it’s not a good moving company, then they don’t want you to see some of the stuff, but I want you to know what it is. I want you to know that and know that you have rights and responsibilities, but so does the moving company. It goes both ways. What I’m going to do is break things like this down. I’m going to do super sexy episodes like valuation and insurance, and what the hell it means.
ProtectYourMove.gov is a government website, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration or the FMCSA are the governing body for household good movers. This is where this rights and responsibilities booklet came from. It’s the US Department of Transportation that puts it on. All of the stuff that we’re going to talk about has been vetted by them. I’m going to put my own spin on it, too, because I have moved twenty times in the last 24 years to 6 of America’s top cities, so I have a little bit of street cred. I’ve also had crazy experiences. I’ve had my stuff held hostage. I told the story at one of the episodes. I’ll probably tell that story again, but I want you to have things like the moving checklist.
I want you to know what the terms and terminology means, because when you’re talking to some of these movers, the more educated you sound, the more scared they are to scam. There are a lot of amazing moving companies out there. Shout out to the Moving Titans. They are a group of individuals that started this educational program for movers on how to be better movers, how to be more efficient, and how to scale their businesses, because we need the good guys.
I’ve had Wade Swikle on the show before. He was the founder of that with a guy named Chad. I just feel like you folks need to understand what’s going on out there because there are some very sophisticated scams out there but there’s no things that people don’t realize. I’ll give you an example. I was talking to somebody about an upcoming coaching session that we’re going to do. They were moving from the Pacific Northwest to the Midwest. They were going to do a DIY move.
Some of the things that I suggested like getting independent insurance. They’re renting their house, so they’re not going to have homeowner’s insurance that covers it. If you’re driving, hit a storm and the truck gets in an accident. All your stuff is gone if it’s not insured. Insured the right way. The insurance that you get from a moving company is a lot less than the insurance that you’re going to get from an actual insurance company.
A lot of people don’t even know that that’s a thing. Luckily, they will have their move, it will go fine and there will be nothing wrong with it, but that’s the thing. If you get lucky like that, then count your blessings. If you don’t get lucky like that, you lose all your stuff. You’re paying out of pocket for that. That’s the stuff that I want to talk to you in the next few episodes. I want to talk to you about some of that stuff, but then I’m also going to have fun interviews. I have David Sidoni from How to Buy a Home.
He has like a million people download his show a month because it’s the ins and outs. He’s a real estate agent. He knows the ins and outs of what you can and can’t do. He helps you do it on a budget and plan for it. The average age of somebody buying their first home has gone up to like 38, which everybody thinks it’s the American dream that you want to buy a house near twenties but it’s just not realistic in this market. I have somebody like him.
The insurance you get from a moving company is a lot less than what you get from an actual insurance company. Share on XI’ve got a guy. He’s a certified professional organizer. I’m a certified professional organizer but I don’t do it every day. He’s a guy that does it every day for clients. We’re going to talk about things like how to make a room more Zen, how to declutter, how to get rid of your stuff, and how to choose and what to get rid of things. I’ve got some financial people coming on who are going to talk through the finances of a move.
I’ve got some people that are going to talk a little bit about mindset. I know I did a lot of episodes on mindset in the past but this is a unique twist on it because I’ve got somebody that moved from New York City to Florida, and all the things that came along with that. I know it’s going to be great because even just like the pre-conversion I’ve had with people were very fun. Doing a lot more solo episodes will help you as well because 11 million people move a year. I’m hearing that up to three quarters of them regret it. I know I’m one of them, so let’s get into that part of the story, shall we?
Moving From Charlotte To Indianapolis
This stuff, I was avoiding. I moved from Charlotte to Indianapolis. A lot of people were like, “Why in Indianapolis?” I moved because my mom, my brother, some aunts, uncles, and my cousins live in Knoxville. It is an adorable little town, but it’s not a town for me. I love visiting but I don’t want to live there. I would love to get another place there that I can go and spend some time and visit longer, but since I just bought this house, I am not going to buy another house for a little bit. Anyway, I play my story.
The rest of my friends and family, my dad, my stepmom Kim, and my cousins and everything live up in Chicago. Indianapolis is a great in between because it’s 3 hours from Chicago and 5 hours from Knoxville. I ended up finding a house there that I was going to buy. I would not recommend buying in a city that you’ve never lived in. However, the strategy that I had here was a very reasonably priced house that I could rent out. I could buy it and rent out and still, if somebody didn’t pay their rent, I could still make the mortgage. Plus, pay for wherever I was living.
The goal was to live in the house for a couple years and then rented out and either upgrade or moved to a different area of the city or whatever. I ended up having to walk away from the house for many reasons. One, the walkability wasn’t great. Some of these things I did look at, but I didn’t realize like what I would be walking to was a lot farther than where I thought. There was a lot of stuff in there. It wasn’t the greatest neighborhood either. It was an up-and-coming neighborhood, but when it came down to it, I paid for the souped-up inspection and I’m so glad I did.
I will tell you, an inspection is your best protection. I feel like I should put that on a T-shirt. I’m going to have merch. If you have a funny saying, I’m going to have some t-shirts made in a merchandise shop for funny things that like we’ve said during my moves. I’m going to have a new logo put on it soon. Anyway, but if you have something fun that you want to put on a T-shirt that has to do with moving send it to me because it might make it into the merch shop.
That being said, I paid for the souped-up inspection and we found a bunch of things wrong with the house. The house itself was adorable and on first glance, it was great, but when we got underneath the hood, there were little things. The hookup for the washer was there but there was no dryer vent and that would require you to go through the floor. You have to have a professional go and cut that out. There was just all kinds of stuff like that that were little tiny things that would make a big huge difference. Once you close on that house, that is yours along with all of its problems.
I ended up paying for the inspection. It was like $1,700 just to put it in perspective for somebody that’s never done it. This is like the city sewer lines. You want to see those because if the city sewer lines are terrible, guess where the sewage is going when it backs up? Into your house. You want to have everything looked at. You want the roof to be looked at. You want the backyard, the garage, and all of the things. I paid for the additional and any extras that I could put on it because the house was built in like 1920.
I ended up having to walk away from the house. You get a due diligence period while you’re in inspection and I was cutting it so close to when my movers were coming to Charlotte that I had about two weeks to find a new place when I backed out of this house. I could not find something in the city that I liked. The way Indianapolis is, you pretty much have to find a place a couple months before you need to live in it in order to move into it. I ended up having to go all the way up to Carmel, which is a super cute area and very family friendly.
As a single person that’s not always the greatest, but they have an awesome little downtown area. I lived in a cute building that had a coffee shop in it and a bakery. That was amazing. However, it was right on the highway. I didn’t sleep for like the three months I lived there. Even I got soundproofing, curtains, and everything, it was bad. I treated that as like a city POC. If you haven’t ever read to the episodes, a city POC is where you do a proof of concepts.
I work in technology for my full-time job. When a customer buys a new technology that they want to implement into their environment, we do a proof of concept or a try before you buy. Sometimes, they do a bake off, which I basically did. I did a city bake off between Chicago and Indianapolis, and was coming to Chicago so much that I realized I wanted to go home and be back in Chicago. A city proof of concept is where you spend a week or longer in a city because let’s face it, anywhere you go for a weekend is magical but you want to get into the environment.
It’s not a vacation. It is literally market research. You are going there with the intention to decide whether you can live there. You want to look at your vibe and how you’re feeling. If you’re annoyed or get along with the people. I strongly encourage you to do something like this. We’ll do a whole episode on a city POC and a city bake off because a lot of times people think that they want to go to a couple different places.
I know I was thinking, at one point, I wanted to go to Denver or maybe back to California. I’ve had all of these thoughts, which is normal but then I’ll go and visit them and be like, “No, I don’t want to do that.” I totally could live in Denver because I have a couple of good friends live there, but when it came down to it, I kept coming back to Chicago. I was like, “I’m just going to move to Chicago.” There were so many things that happened in the Charlotte to Indianapolis move that I could have never anticipated. Never.
Understanding The FRED Framework
First things first, the FRED framework that I go through when I’m trying to decide to move pushed my move back to Chicago a full year because in 2023, I had a lot of loss. There were like four people in my life that I lost. I lost both my dogs within four months of each other like August to December. I had ruptured three discs in my back. From a robustness perspective, my mental health wasn’t great and my physical health was even worse.
The FRED acronym stands for Finances, Robustness, Ecosystem and Dream. That’s where mental and physical strength come in and does this move. You start with the dream. What is the dream? Where do you want to live? What do you want to do? How do you want to feel? Where do you want to be? We reverse engineer you into the finances of where you want to move making sure you’re mentally and physically strong enough, and the ecosystem, what it needs to have in it to thrive as a person.
Does it have your specialty doctors? Does it have specialty schools? What does it need to have in order for you to get there and thrive? All of those things are things that I take into consideration. In 2023, I was planning on moving in the fall. I just wasn’t strong enough mentally and physically. Financially, I would have been fine, but I’m glad I waited a year because my house was worth more a year later. Let’s talk to FRED framework. The FRED framework is designed to like look at whether or not you’re strong enough to make this move.
What you need to have in this community to thrive, but the benefit and the beauty of this framework is that you go back to dreams after doing things like the city POC and a city bake off. You go back to the dreams tab of the acronym and you say, “Is this still the dream?” I will tell you, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s enough to just have you stop and say, “Maybe I should wait. Maybe it’s not the retirement, or maybe I don’t want to do this at all.”
A house inspection is your best protection. Share on XI was coaching somebody one time and he wanted so badly to move to San Diego. Constantly, the more time that passed, the more time he felt this sense of shame that he hadn’t moved yet. I said, “When was the last time you were there?” Thinking it was like months ago. He’s like, “It was like twenty years ago.” I was like, “You haven’t been back in twenty years?” He said no, and I said, “Go back.” I basically told them to go back. He worked remote and I introduced him to Furnished Finder. I’ve had him on the show before. It’s a midterm rental. An Airbnb is considered a short-term rental, so you have a lot of fees and cleaning fees.
You just got a lot of fees and it costs a little bit more. When you do something like Furnished Finder, you can rent a place for a month straight from a landlord. It’s got to be 30 days or longer typically, but it doesn’t have all those fees connected to it. It’s a lot less expensive if you were to spend a month somewhere. I’m not affiliated with them yet. I’m hoping to maybe get sponsorship from them in the future because I send so many people there. They’re great. It’s a low-cost option to try before you buy. This person owned a home.
Even getting your house prepped and ready to sell it is a pain in the butt. If you don’t have a house and you’re just renting, consider yourself blessed if you do want to move somewhere cross country because you basically move your stuff out, clean it up and your done. Whereas, when you sell a house. There’s so much involved. It costs so much money. The seller is the one that pays the commission, so you lose a lot of money on the equity of your house and everything.
Anyway, he went and I had him stay in a couple different areas within San Diego. He came back and was like, “Thank God I did not sell my house. You were literally like answering a prayer because I realized more than ever that I’m so content living here. I may sell this house and move to a different area within this town but I’m so glad I didn’t move.” That’s the point of doing the FRED framework. His finances were in a good place mentally and physically. He would have been strong enough to move. I have a bunch of friends there. I could have introduced him into the ecosystem.
San Diego is great. They’ve got all kinds of everything you can imagine from holistic healers to specialty doctors and all that stuff. Anything that you need is there, but when it came down to it that dream, he was able to close the file and the chapter on that dream and is now so super content that he stayed. That’s what I want for people. Me going through the FRED framework in 2023, I knew it wasn’t the right time inherently.
Fast forward to 2024, I spent a lot of time healing. I am just now getting to a place where I’m thinking about getting another dog and talk about them passing and not bawl my eyes out. At the same time, I also knew that I wanted to be closer to friends and family and a lot of the people that I moved to Charlotte to be closer to left. My brother wasn’t it there anymore. My cousins weren’t there and I literally have like a handful of friends. I didn’t get to see them very often. My neighbor’s I got to see all the time, which was great.
The long and the short of it, financially, it was a great move for me because I made a decent amount of money off my house. I was being able to pay off my debt and have a little bit in emergency fund to save for if I bought another house again. At that point, I was buying a house but the down payment would have been so low because it was a $220,000 house and I was only going to put 5% down because that’s the thing. A lot of people don’t realize that’s all you have to put down.
Facing The Challenges Of A Tough Move
I would rather have money in the bank in liquid cash if I needed, versus tying it all up in a house but some people are different. Some people want to put a large downpayment down and have a lower mortgage. Anyway, the point of my story is, it just made sense financially. It made sense that I was in a better place mentally and physically. I thought physically for sure, but when it came down to it, I moved and because the only place I could get was a two-bedroom apartment, three quarters of my life was in storage.
Even just being 3 months or 6 months out from that situation, you forget how impactful a move is. It is traumatic in the best situations because you get there and you don’t realize all that crap that you have. That you’re like, “Why did I even move this or I hate that I have to put everything in a box,” because you have movers. Everything has to go into a box. At that point, I had a 1,600 square foot house with a two-car garage and even getting everything packed up. I was very cocky about it.
I moved twenty times in the last 24 years, so I was like, “This is nothing. This is fine. Ike it’s going to be easy,” and it wasn’t. Luckily, I had a good mover that I’ve used a couple times. He’s helped my family and he got it. He realized like I was not in a good place. Once I sold the house, I could have backed out of it, but it would have been difficult and I would have lost a lot of money. I also I just was committed to it because I know I want to be close to the Midwest and be closer to my family, but then Hurricane Helene hit. Something I could have never in a million years anticipated and obviously, Asheville never anticipated it either.
They got flooded out and it was just a terrible situation. They’re still trying to rebuild as of this episode. This is in the beginning of April. It was just heartbreaking. I lived in Mecklenburg County which is two hours away from Asheville and they put my house in a flood zone. My plastic plants on the back porch of my patio didn’t even blow over. That’s how little affect we got from Hurricane Helene and because they put it in a flood zone, my closing got canceled. It was crazy. In fact, I called my attorney and I was like, “Did you see that email?” He’s like, “Ignore it. It’s probably a scam,” because he had never heard of a closing getting canceled by FEMA.
It was legit. My real estate agent called me and he’s like, “I don’t know what happened, but ten of my closings just got canceled as well. Let me get back to you.” It turns out, because it was put in a flood zone, every house that was set to close had to be re-inspecting and re-appraised because the people that bought my house had to push back and they were moving out of an apartment or house, or something that they had rented. They had family flying in to help him with the move. It was bad on all accounts.
Even like the day that we were finally supposed to close, all these problems because the closing was pushed back that meant I had to pay more HOA fees, taxes, and on the mortgage. All of that, when you close you, the closing sheet is calculated to the penny and because all of those changes were made, we were off by $11. I was like, “Can I just Venmo someone?” They were like, “No.” It made it even harder. I was driving to Southern Illinois University to where we were having homecoming. I was doing a speech on campus for the American Marketing Association.
I have a fun speech that I do called, Your first real job: Moving to a new city, making big money and what business casual means. I was doing that. That was the kickoff of me giving this speech and it’s like from Indianapolis to Southern Illinois, because I moved five days ahead of one of my closing was because that was the only week we could do it. I had to stop three times off the highway on a four-hour drive to re-sign paperwork on DocuSign on my phone. I’m like, “I don’t even know what I’m signing.” It was crazy and so emotional.
The last minute, my attorney calls me and he’s like, “I got bad news.” I was like, “What could be worse than what I’ve just been dealing with?” He’s like, “They’re computers are down.” I was like, “Excuse me?” He’s like, “Their registrar went down,” or whatever he called it. He’s like, “I literally have somebody in the office refreshing the app repeatedly so we could have this recorded.” What they do is they record the title to the house or the deed to the house for the county. The problem was, if it did not get recorded by 4:00 PM Eastern time, and at that point it was like 3:53, then they had to push to Monday.
They couldn’t push to Monday, so they would have to push to Tuesday and four more days that I’m paying for HOAs, taxes, and mortgage because Monday was a holiday. I don’t remember what holiday it was. All that to be said, this could not have been more stressful. On the side of the move, like the actual physical move itself, I did not plan ahead because there’s a million hotels and a nine-hour drive. What I anticipated was that we were going to move out.
This is sad that I know this, but it usually takes like six hours to move out of a house. That’s a general rule if you have a three-bedroom house or so, because the movers come. They assess the situation. We start moving the big stuff out, and then they start moving the little stuff. Inevitably, there’s always stuff that’s not packed, but you got to figure out what to do with it and you’re repacking boxes. It takes about 5-6 hours. The quickest I’ve ever done a move up is five hours. The longest I’ve ever done a move out was nine hours. Give yourself a good range especially if you’re moving across country. Book a hotel in your city that night because it’s a long day. It’s sucks. Everybody’s tired.
If you are just renting a home, moving across the country is much easier. Selling a house is so much involved and costs a lot of money. Share on XWhat I anticipated doing was getting done by like seven-ish and then driving three hours to get ahead because it’s a nine-hour drive from Charlotte to Indianapolis. What end up happening is because Hurricane Helene displayed so many families, anything within a three-hour drive which puts us right about an hour North of Asheville. All of those hotels were sold out. All of them and there was one that was like 30 minutes from my house that I was currently living in at that moment in Charlotte.
Mind you, I was moving in on a Saturday and we had to be there by like 3:00 PM. That meant we had to get up and leave it like 5:30 in the morning because we had an eight-and-a-half-hour drive with stops ahead of us. It was the worst thing ever. My dad and my brother drove out with me. They are saints. They have made almost every move with me. I can’t even describe how grateful I am for their help in this move because when I got to Indianapolis, I had a breakdown.
We got there we started and moving all the stuff in. There was boxes everywhere, but because three quarters of my life was going into storage, half of the box that we’re going into storage. Some of them made it into my apartment and some of them didn’t, which we had already piled the storage unit to the sky. Anything that was already in there, I wasn’t getting anything out of there. My stepmom had driven. I love this woman. Her name is Kim. She drove from Chicago to my apartment to help. My brother stayed with me. I got them a hotel. The next morning, we started unpacking and I was like, “What did I do? I’m now in a two-bedroom apartment.”
You feel like naked. None of your stuff is there. I couldn’t even figure out where anything was like. I couldn’t figure out where my dishes were or my silverware was. I didn’t have a ton of cabinets in Charlotte. That’s what even weirder about the situation. I had about the same amount of cabinets, but they were just smaller, even just putting my cups in the cabinets. We started putting on the cups and the cabinets and realized like, “I can only have like eight cups and four mugs.” I had to pull everything that we adjust and unpacked. Put them all back in boxes and bring him to storage.
I end up having to get a second small storage unit for the overflow and things that had to go. The bigger part of it is that, it was so stressful and I did the work. That’s the part that I was like dreading telling you guys. Even a veteran of moving can go through a situation like this and it’s hard and scary when you’re like, “What the hell did I just do?” It was funny because I was going to quit the show all together.
Exploring The Let Them Theory
I listened to The Let them Theory by Mel Robbins. If you haven’t gotten on the Mel Robbins bandwagon, what’s wrong with? I’m just getting. She’s amazing. It sounds like she came out of nowhere, but she has been doing this for a very long time. In the Let Them Theory, I candidly was like, “I don’t need to read that.” I let a lot of things roll off my back. I don’t often like let things bother me. The part of the Let Them Theory is that it’s let them, whoever is causing you issues or challenges or making you feel bad or whatever, let them do that.
The second part of it is like let me take back that power. Let me do what I need to do or let me do that. She re-inspired me. Sorry, Mel. Not because of the Let Them Theory in the let them or let me, but because she told the story about her moving and how difficult it was to move from where she was to where she ended up to the point where she had met some woman and she knew where she lived. She was on a walk with her daughters. Her daughter’s made her walk up to the door and knock on the door and ask them to be her friend because it’s hard to make friends as an adult.
I was so re-inspired listening to this because I’m like, “This is the whole reason I’m doing the show is because I want somebody to prep for their moves. I want them to have a friend base when they move their because they’ve done the research, gotten in the Facebook groups, connected on meetups, and they’ve done all that stuff.” They don’t have to have that awkward walking up to somebody’s door and being like, “I met you. Let’s be friends.”
I love that she did that and I love that the woman’s husband invited them in. She ended up coming back in her home and talking as well, so now they’re friends. I love that story. The heartbreaking story of what she went through with this move like re-inspired me to jump on here and do this for you, folks, because it’s so hard when it’s hard. It’s so great when it’s great, though. That brings me to the other part of my story.
I should probably talk more about the breakdown. I don’t want to talk about it because I’m already crying. It’s hard when you feel that guilt and shame about like, “What did you just do? How the heck am I going to get out of it?” There’s no getting out of it once you’ve moved. You can leave but now you’re paying for another set of movers. You’re paying to get out of your lease. I had to pay $9,000 to get out of my lease, but I didn’t anticipate leaving. I was going to spend a year there and when it came down to it, I was coming back to Chicago every other week for different family events and to see friends.
It made my decision very easy. Luckily, as I said, I put money in savings for the move and I just calculated this as part of my moving expenses. Part of it is that like when you get there and you’re feeling so lonely, even though I have friends in Indianapolis. I was about an hour North, so getting to see them, we were like meeting in the middle. It was so heartbreaking because I was like not only what did I do, but how do I move forward? This new life where I’m so paired down like I was in a 1,000 square foot apartment and I came from a 1,600 square foot house with a two-car garage. I had a garage Spa, but I couldn’t put anything in it.
You don’t realize what that means in real-life when you have a lot of stuff. The breakdown was all the things. I left my therapist and I wish they would get with the times and realize that Telehealth is a real thing. I never met with my therapist and not have an amazing breakthrough experience. I loved working with this guy, Kevin Boyd. Shout out to him. He’s licensed in North Carolina and a couple of other states maybe. He is the best therapist that I’ve ever had in my life, but even just like him.
I’m going through this breakdown and I couldn’t talk to him because I was across state lines. Things like that where you’re like, “I need the help now.” That was hard and partially because I didn’t know why I was having such a hard time with that move. I did not love Charlotte at that point when I was moving, so why was this such a big deal? I think because it was so permanent that I was like leaving, then I got to a new town that I didn’t know anybody and I was going to be lonely.
I had a blind date-ish set up that I was going to go on and that was great. I enjoyed it myself. He was new out of a relationship, so he freaked out a little bit but I don’t know. It was one of those things where even though I went through the FRED framework and even though I’m a veteran when it comes to moving and I’ve done it a million times. It just wasn’t right when I got there. That’s why I pushed doing a city POC so much because I did the POC in Indianapolis. I didn’t do a POC in Carmel. I probably could have rented something in Charlotte or found a short-term rental in Indianapolis until I found something.
Moving Back To Chicago
I liked caramel and we had an office there. Anyway, point of my story is, a house became available in Chicago, in the town that I grew up around. It was funny because the woman that I use as a real estate agent is a friend of mine from high school, Rommi Achterhof. She’s with Coldwell Banker. She’s amazing. She’s my family realtor. My dad and his wife were looking to make some updates to their house, so they had her come over. They’re considering moving themselves and they wanted to see like what she would think that they would need to update in order to sell the house.
As I said earlier, you got to make updates and stuff. It’s a lot. When you’re selling your house, you want top dollar but you got to do things in order to make it a place where somebody wants to live and pay top dollar. She came over and she’s like, “I have this house that we just renovated. It’s on the market, if you want to come see it. You can see what the updated floors look like and what we did to the rooms and how we updated the kitchen and get some ideas there.”
I happened to be coming in town and my dad told me that they were going to do that. He’s like, “Do you want to go?” I was like, “Yes.” I texted her. I’m like, “What house are you talking about?” She’s like, “It’s a three-bedroom and one bath house.” I was like, “A-ha.” That’s why I couldn’t find it because I was looking for two-bathroom houses, but it’s a small house, so it doesn’t warrant having two bathrooms in it. I came over to look at it. I walked in and I was like, “This is my house.” What I love about Rommi is she’s got impeccable and very high-end taste.
When you close, the closing sheet is calculated to the penny. Share on XEverything that they did in this house was exactly what I would have done to renovate this house, like the kitchen. The cabinets are this beautiful chestnut color that perfectly matches the luxury vinyl plank flooring that they put in all over the house. The walls are like a gray color. All of the doors are full heavy hardwood instead of the sheep like hollow wood. They’re all painted the super bright white color with black door handles. The place is gorgeous and I instantly knew.
What was crazy is that, I had the money in the bank because I put all of the money that I made off my Charlotte house. I’m going to do a whole episode on how to find movers, so I’m not going to tell the story. The long and the short of it is that I could do basically a quick close. I got an inspection and we had some plumbing issues that we worked through. Which, again, you folks, I cannot recommend inspections enough. Do not buy a house. Do not ever waive an inspection ever. If that means that the buyer or the sellers declines your offer. There’s something that they’re hiding.
Every single seller that has a great house will welcome an inspection to prove that they’re selling a good house, but we found some issues with the plumbing in the city sewer. We were able to rot everything out before I moved in the house because if you don’t do that, you can’t take a shower. It’ll all back up and you’ll be standing in a couple inches of water, which is disgusting. Anyway, the point of my story is, because she had a stake in this house because she did the renovation. I couldn’t use her as my real estate agent.
For the first time ever, I just bought this house through an attorney with her as the seller’s realtor and it worked out. I have a guy coming on a show doing an interview. Not to derail somebody from using a realtor. There’s an amazing amount of realtors out there that are good, and I was very hesitant to not use a realtor but she would have been my realtor. I didn’t want to hire somebody have to pay somebody a commission just for the sake of having a realtor because you have real estate attorneys out there that can do exactly what you need them to do, but I wasn’t looking at multiple houses in buying.
I was just looking at this one and I’m glad I made the decision I made. It’s the right house for me. It’s adorable. It’s fifteen minutes from my dad and Kim. It’s got a fence already in the yard. It’s a fenced-in yard, so in a month or so, I’m going to get a dog. All that to be said, I found the right mover. They showed up early. They took all my stuff out of storage and out of the apartment. They stored it overnight, and the next day they drove out. They literally had all my stuff unloaded in like three hours. I was already hanging pictures by the end of the night.
It was by far, the easiest least stressful move I have ever made in my entire moving career. I’m going to stay here for a couple of years then I’m going to probably rent this house out because it’s adorable, and I want to keep it. I don’t want to invest in real estate, but I would love to have a rental and have some family rent this house out. If not, maybe I’ll stay here for a long time. Who knows? I am making a few upgrades and I’m going to take you guys through it through social media. I am building a podcasting studio.
Jump Into The Mailer And Closing Words
I’m just in my office. The acoustics aren’t great I’m sure. I’m trying to speak quieter because the last couple episodes I recorded, it was like I was eating the microphone. I have the microphone pushed out a little bit. I just have one call to action for you, folks. I’m going to wrap this up because I was a lot. This was a long episode. I’m sorry, but I am excited to get back in the game. I am going to be looking for sponsors, so if you have an idea for me. I want to reach out.
This is going to make you go to YouTube, so you can see my pictures. I love the beach, so surfboards, I got Polly the parrot. That’s what I call her. I got my little VW bus. One day, I’m going to own a VW bus. I think they’re the coolest. There’s another picture, too. It’s the plant that you don’t have to water like ever like once a year. It’s a pink succulent, but these are mixed tiles. Basically, there’s a thing that you affixed to the wall and it’s got a magnet on the other side on the picture. It has a magnet.
I literally just moved all of these to this side of the office, because I was staring at them before because they’re pretty and I like to see him, so Mixtiles. I feel like I need to reach out to them as a sponsor because everywhere I moved to, I just throw these up in five seconds. They’re easy and awesome. You can move them from all the wall and they have never hurt my paint ever. A little tip for you. I’m not affiliated with them yet, but you might see them as a sponsor soon.
Call to action, if you’re not on my mailing list, I’m going to start the mailers soon. I put this thing together called Moving for Smarties. I’m not charging for it now. It’s about 27-pages. It basically helps you figure out everything from your finances to, if you’re mentally and physically strong enough to move, what you need to have in your ecosystem to thrive and if this move will get you closer to your dreams even like where to move based on where your friends are.
I’m pretty proud of it. It’s a good workbook for somebody that’s just starting to dream about moving to a different city. As I said, I’m not charging for it but in the future I might because I might add to it. I’m considering write a book because I’m in the process of getting it copyrighted and trademarked and everything. Anyway, jump on the Monday mailer. I don’t even know if I’m going to do them on Mondays. Jump on the mailer. I am not committing to anything.
I always put myself in these positions where I commit to a lot of things and then I feel the pressure of getting it done and then I do it half assed. I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m going to be sending a mailer out a couple times a month. When I do, it’s going to be check full of good tips for you but that’s the way that you get the Moving for Smarties book. Even just reading this episode or any of the episodes that I have makes you a moving smarty. I want to reward that with what I’m putting out.
If you do want to free coaching session on where you want to move or a situation that you’re in, jump onto the website. It’s DecidingToMove.com. That’s where you’re going to be able to sign up for a coaching session. It’s going to be 30 minutes. No more because my time is very valuable, but that’s how you guys will start getting a taste of what I do in coaching sessions. I have a program that I used to run people through. That was very detailed and then I have just regular coaching sessions that you can sign up for. That’s going to be starting in June. They’re not up running yet. I don’t have the roster set up yet.
I’m going to be leaving my full-time job and moving to a new vendor covering my old company, which is super exciting. I have a little bit more flexibility in my job. I’m going to be able to have coaching sessions set up and do coaching a couple days a week. It’s going to be cool. Anyway, thanks for being here. Thanks for not tuning out when I started crying and thanks for being a moving smarty. This has been fun for me. I love it and I love you. Bye for now.
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That’s a wrap on this tips and tricks. Jump on to DecidingToMove.com to apply for a free on-air coaching session, or join the newsletter to get your copy of the Moving for Smarties workbook and the legal stuff. This show is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I’m a certified coach. Not a licensed therapist. This is not meant to replace the professional advice of a physician, psychotherapist, or real estate agent. I do not own a moving company or work for the governing agencies transporting home goods, which means Mariette’s on the Move LLC is not responsible for anything that happens during your move. This is solely my perspective based on my research, my own experience, and training. Move at your own risk. Bye for now.