Summer is the heart of the moving season. It’s easy to get caught up in a ‘good deal’ in your dream city and then 6 months later you’re shocked when you get the 6 Month Funk. Regrets are hard. Even harder when you’ve spent a ton of money, left all your friends and family and are too embarrassed to come back and potentially have everyone tell you ‘I told you so.’ In this episode, we move through the top 10 regrets that I’ve seen when people neglect to do enough research to make sure where you are, is where you’ll have the best work/life harmony.
If you want to keep in touch, jump on the Mariette’s On The Move website and register for my new FRED Freebie that gives you a workbook to start out with in every area of FRED. I’ll dig into them in future episodes. Connect with me on the Mariette’s On The Move LinkedIn page, on my personal page, my Instagram, or my Facebook page.
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Top 10 Moving Regrets
The Two-Part Injury That Sparked A Major Health Crisis
It’s so good to be back. If you follow me on social, I didn’t post a ton about this. I do have a lot of friends, family, and coworkers that have been checking in on me. For that, I’m very grateful. To fill everybody in, a month and a half ago, I had a two-part injury. In the first part, I was at a boot camp and I went to do a squat to a snatch. I thought the kettlebell was 10 pounds and it was 25.
My whole body moved, but the kettlebell did not. I hurt my back then and rolled it out and was trying to do the heat and ice and all that stuff. The following week, however, I had to travel for work. Going to a conference when you have a bad back is no fun. I got worse and worse as the days were going on, and I ended up leaving early.
I was supposed to stay until Friday. Wednesday night, I got home and all I wanted to do was take a bath. For me, that’s a big deal because I do not take baths. I’m more of a shower person, and I certainly don’t shower a whole lot in my guest bathroom. When I went to step out of the tub, it was further down than I anticipated. I slipped and fell and heard a pop. By the next day, I couldn’t walk.
I spent ten hours in the emergency room, met with an orthopedic surgeon the next day, and have since had a couple of epidurals straight into my spine, which is no fun. It’s been healing. I’m probably going to have to get a couple more epidurals to get the nerve pain to stop shooting through my body at random times. I’d like to get a little feeling back in my leg.
Outside of that, I am much better. It was by far the most humbling and the most painful experience I’ve ever had. I am grateful to be healing. I promise, I’m putting this out to the universe, that I will never ever take advantage, or I will never ever treat a healthy body the same way. Once I’m healthy, I will never take advantage of the fact that I have that. For those who had back pain that I was unsympathetic to ever, I apologize.
Moving on, it’s moving season. It’s summer. If you’re tuning in to this, I am in Charlotte, North Carolina. About a month and a half ago, going into this whole thing, I missed the kickoff of National Moving Month. I do batch my shows. What that means is, I typically record several of them in one night. If I’m doing interviews, typically not the shorties like this one will be, but I do that because I still work my full-time job, and I have no intention of leaving. It makes it easier for me to line up several episodes in a row. I don’t feel I have to do a ton during the month, and you can still enjoy the content.
How The Injury Delayed The Podcast And Inspired A New Topic
I had batched quite a few interviews in anticipation of National Moving Month. It came and after the last one, the spotlight on Charlotte, I was in the throes of my ruptured discs. I am only now recording this, and I’ve had a couple of messages from people. I’ve had a couple of phone calls from people, and I’ve got a few articles about regretting moves. I thought it was an important episode to talk through. I did get a couple of articles from people, one in particular that I thought was interesting.
I’m taking a little bit of the things that I know that have happened to me and some of the things that I’ve seen in the articles, and the super-secret, “Don’t tell anybody, but I completely regret this move,” conversations I’ve had in the last couple of weeks. I wanted to go through and do a top ten list of the regrets that I typically see and why they regret them. If you’re in the throes of that, how you can get over that or make the best of it anyway? There’s no real getting over that, but you can be content where you are. We’re going to get into my top ten list right after this.
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I have some exciting news for you. Did you know that my coaching doors are now open? Friends, once again, I’m doing one-on-one coaching. It’s not just about moving. While that is my specialty, giving you a roadmap to use when deciding to move or strategically aligning your goals to your dreams and moving you through the potential obstacles per se, technically, I’m a life coach who deals with the whole human experience. A life coach is a type of wellness professional who helps people make progress in their lives in order to attain greater fulfillment and joy. Doesn’t that sound lovely?
You know that pattern of habits you have that are even more annoying to you than they are to your friends and family? I’ll help you verbally process those so you can get off that merry-go-round that doesn’t feel so merry. Do you feel like you’re constantly sliding down a metal slide on a hot day in shorts? I’ll give you the tools to make better decisions. Jump on my website, MariettesOnTheMove.com, get on my Monday mailer, and I’ll start giving you some of my tips and tricks. If you’re ready to book a strategy session, click on the Coaching tab and we’ll start moving forward together.
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The FRED Framework & The Six-Month Funk
I’m going to preface this by saying, every person’s experience is unique. What might be a regret for some, might be the best decision ever for others. The most important thing, as we go through this top ten list that I’ve put together, is to research. By research, I mean figure out how you feel about that and what you would do in that situation. Have as much preparation as possible before moving to minimize potential regrets.
Every person's experience is unique. What might be a regret for some could be the best decision ever for others. Share on XI do have what I call the FRED freebie. If you’re not familiar with FRED, you can jump on my website, MariettesOnTheMove.com. FRED is an acronym. It’s a framework that I have come up with in the last half of my moves, the things that I would go through when I was figuring out if it was a good move or not for me. FRED stands for Finances, Robustness, so think mental and physical strength, Ecosystem, and Dreams.
When I’m coaching, I start with somebody’s dream. We get tight and niche down on what that is. We reverse engineer their finances, their robustness, and their ecosystem into that dream. That way, every move you make is getting closer to that dream. That way, every move you make is researched and tailored to you, and your experience, feelings, wants, needs, and all of that stuff.
That is how I help people minimize their potential regrets. Sometimes, you don’t realize that you’re not tight in one of those areas. Finances, for instance, you could have a ton of money in the bank and be ready to go, but you might not have researched specifically to the area that you want to move to, and might not understand what that financial picture looks like, because for where you are today, you might have a lot of money in the bank, but for where you want to move tomorrow, that might not be enough.
There’s a method to my madness, but I want to get into the top ten things that I’ve seen that people have done that might bring regrets down the road. Typically, you don’t see those regrets come into play for about six months. I call it the six-month funk. That is a little bit of nostalgia, a little bit of regret, a little bit of missing home. One of the things that I recommend to anybody that’s moving, even if you think you’re never going to ever want to leave, for instance, when I moved to San Diego, everybody thinks like, “How could you have moved from San Diego?”
It was simple. It didn’t have a lot of the things that I needed in the FRED framework. I had purposely booked a trip back home for six months. At the time, I didn’t even know FRED existed. Looking back, I did this almost for every move, where I would go back to wherever it was that I moved from, or go back home after six months, filled my tank on whether or not I wanted to move back there. From there, went back to wherever I was living, and I was happily back in that space.
Mistake #10: Overlooking Job Opportunities
Number ten would be overlooking job opportunities. Depending on where you move, some people move to a new city without securing a job first. Depending on the financial position you’re in, you can potentially do that. While this would work in cities like Chicago and New York City, oftentimes, when you go to a city or state like California, a lot of times, everybody wants to move to San Diego. Sometimes, the job market won’t allow you to apply for a job until you’re in that market. You can apply. That’s probably the wrong word to say, but they won’t take you seriously until you have a local address on your resume.
That being said, we are in a very remote location, but if a job requires you to be on-site, that’s pretty much what’s going to happen. Ways around that are you can work with staffing firms. You can establish those potential connections that you have to get the job, and they can work with employers to say, “They are moving here, here’s the date they’ve got going for the move,” and all that stuff. That is one way to get around that.
I think it’s a source of regret as the job markets can be unpredictable. I even heard on the news that some of the companies that have extended offers to new college grads or graduates coming out of school have rescinded them or pushed them back to next year. I don’t know about you, but if I was graduating in May or June, and I thought I was starting a job July 1st, and it gets pushed back to January of 2024, that might be alarming for me. There are ways around it. You can work at country clubs, or whatever is around you, restaurants and things like that, until you get there or have a fun summer. That would be my number ten.
Mistake #9: Not Considering The Weather, Climate, And Allergies
Number nine would be to consider the weather and climate. I know this is a weird one, especially because, as of the recording, this is summer. If you’re moving to a city with even a slightly different climate, you don’t realize, for instance, Chicago is called the Windy City, not necessarily because of the weather, but because of mafias way back in the day. If you get into a Chicago winter, and you show up with anything less than a long puffy jacket, and it’s one of those below-zero days where the wind is blowing through, it is hard to live there if you’re not used to it, or excited about it, or have ever experienced that.
If you’re moving from Minnesota to Chicago, it’s not that much different, even anywhere in the Midwest. I think not considering the weather and the climate changes. The other thing is not considering the pollen and allergies. That’s a big one. When I moved to San Francisco, I didn’t think of San Francisco as a very particularly forested area, because you look at it from a city perspective, it’s all buildings and stuff.
Further away from the actual city itself, there’s tons of forestry. Despite the rumors that you can have honey from a local area that’s going to cure your allergies, it doesn’t work that way. The bees pollinate through flowers. A lot of the pollen and allergens that people are allergic to come from the trees, and they’re not pollinating trees. It doesn’t necessarily work. Psychosomatically, it might. In real life, I’ve been told by every allergist that I’ve been to that you’re on some Allegra D or Clarinex or whatever it is.
Mistake #8: Neglecting To Visit In Person
The big thing is considering the weather and getting a good idea of what that is like by visiting the heart of that time. That brings me to my next one. If you’ve been tuning in, have visited my website, or have downloaded the FRED Freebie, neglecting to visit in person before you move is a huge mistake. I call this a city POC, or a proof of concept. What that means is you go to the city for longer than five days.
Neglecting to visit in person before you move is a huge mistake. Share on XIf you go for a weekend, everything is going to be magical. Everything is going to seem awesome. You’re going to see the highlights of everything. If you go for longer than five days, and I’m talking if you can go and live there for two weeks or a month, even if it’s staying with somebody or getting an Airbnb, that is how you are going to see a city differently than you would see it as a tourist. I can tell you that nine times out of ten if someone tells me about a regret and I ask them if they’ve done this, it’s almost always no.
There are some things that you can do by maybe getting on Facebook pages and asking questions, figuring out where in the city is a good place to stay, or where you shouldn’t stay. Not considering being in that neighborhood is tough. When you get there and you are in the wrong neighborhood, it is heartbreaking because you probably signed a lease or bought a house. That is not great. It’s not a good feeling. I would say neglecting to do a city POC before you move is number eight. It’s a big one. We’ll talk a little bit more about that further down the list.
Mistake #7: Rushing The Moving Process
Number seven is rushing the moving process. When I coach people, it’s 6 to 12 months prior to them moving. My coaching program is six months specifically because until you’re getting into that countdown, and mind you, that six-month program doesn’t necessarily have to mean that you have to move at the end of six months, it’s that you’re getting that transformation underway because nobody transforms in six sessions. It’s like six months, you’re starting to get your courage up, and you’re honing in on where you want to be and why you want to be there.
I would say not rushing the moving process. I’ve done it. It is hard. For instance, when I moved from Bloomington, Illinois, to Charlotte a couple of years ago, from the time I accepted my offer to the time I physically moved into my rental property was three weeks. In those three weeks, I sold my house. I packed up all my stuff. I think I had a garage sale, or at least donated a ton of stuff. It was hard. I lost things. Things got damaged. I used professional movers.
It was very quick because I could not spend a ton of time shopping around like I would normally do. I don’t necessarily encourage you to do that. I would say if you’re rushing the moving process, you have to have some tight checklists of what you need. It’s going to be hard when you get to the new place because you haven’t even had time to say goodbye to the old place.
I had time to say goodbye to Bloomington because I didn’t know anybody when I moved there. We moved into the pandemic a few months after I moved in. It limited my ability to get to know people. Luckily, I loved my house. I had no problems not leaving it for two years because it was awesome. I had a lot of fun there. Number seven is rushing the moving process. I think a lot of people regret doing that and not taking more time to properly say goodbye and have that closure in the old place.
Mistake #6: Overlooking Healthcare Facilities
Number six is overlooking healthcare facilities. I work in healthcare in my full-time job. It’s in technology, but I know personally, I’m in remission for Crohn’s. If you’ve tuned in to other episodes, you know that it’s important to me to have a functional medicine doctor in the area that I am in because I do a mix of holistic healing and Western healing. For instance, with my ruptured discs, I am very thankful that I had actual medicines, narcotics to help with the pain, and the nerve endings, and the muscle spasms, and all that. I also did an entire regimen of holistic healing that included meditation, and a lot of meditation. I was meditating 2 or 3 times a day.
If you don’t know who Joe Dispenza is, look him up. He was a triathlete back in the ’80s and got hit by a truck. He meditated his way out of a spinal surgery. Granted, he was a chiropractor, so he knew how those things would work, but his story is fascinating. For me, another example was when I moved to Bloomington. I was moving for a job. It was a good opportunity, especially because I was going to be making Chicago money in more of a rural area.
I took the risk. Going to my primary care physician for the first time, I told him what my medical needs were, and I asked if there were any holistic gastroenterologists in the area. After he stopped laughing, he said, you might want to keep your doctor up in Chicago for that. Outside of working with a chiropractor, I didn’t have anybody functionally that I found in my health plan in that area, which is crazy because it’s where State Farm and Country are based, granted those are more car insurance and home insurance, but it’s a huge city, and there’s a college there. I thought for sure it would have it, but I didn’t do enough research.
Luckily, I was only two hours away from Chicago, and I did love my doctor out at the University of Chicago. I did keep those appointments and kept going up there, but because it was only two hours away. That’s a big deal. If you move to a city that doesn’t have what you need, it’s tough to have to fly back somewhere if it’s too far away from where you’re moving from.
If you move to a city that doesn’t have what you need, it can be tough to fly back if it’s too far from where you came. Share on XI would say number six is overlooking the healthcare facilities, especially if you’re moving with a family. If somebody in your family has specific medical needs, the interviews that you need to do with the doctors that are there, you want to do those before leaving where you are. It could make the difference between moving to one side of the city or another if you are looking at a bigger city.
Mistake #5: Overlooking Commute Times
Number five is not considering your commute times. We are largely a remote country. However, many people can’t work remotely, whatever industry that you’re in. In these larger cities, if you don’t consider commute time, and this is another reason I tell people to do a city POC, different neighborhoods seemingly can be a short distance on a map, but it can equate to a long commute due to traffic.
For instance, I grew up in Chicago. For me, on the South Side of Chicago, if I were to go into the city from Orland Park, Illinois, downtown around 3:00 PM., it could take me 2 to 3 hours. I know that sounds like an exaggeration, and I promise you, it is not. Conversely, if you’re going out of the city around 3:00, it could also take 2.5 or 3 hours, but it’s 15 miles from where you’re starting to where you are going to be.
Choosing the wrong neighborhood and not considering that commute is hard if you don’t have efficient public transportation. Luckily, I love the train, Chicago has an amazing public transportation system, not only the buses, but they have the Amtrak that goes into the city from the suburbs. When you’re in the city, they have the L, which is the elevated subway.
In New York City, they call it the subway. In Chicago, they call it the L. I made the mistake of when I moved to New York City, I kept calling the subway “the L.” By the time I left New York City and moved back to Chicago, I kept calling it “the subway.” Everyone’s like, “It’s the L. Where are you from? What are you talking about the subway?” That was a big deal. I was considering that commute. I loved taking the train. I got work done, and I meditated. I watched videos. I got on social and all that stuff.
Mistake #4: Choosing The Wrong Neighborhood
That brings me to number four, which is a big one, choosing the wrong neighborhood. In the last episode, we had Dre Fox on, and she talked about how she loves her house and she loves Charlotte, but the neighborhood that she moved into is a little bit different from the demographic that she would have chosen. It’s an older community, with mature trees and beautiful older homes and things like that. That was one thing that she sacrificed. In hindsight, she said she probably would have chosen a different neighborhood, but that’s where she is now. She drives to whatever.
That’s a big deal. When I work with somebody, if you get tight on what you need to have in your ecosystem, this is where this falls in the FRED framework, I can get you down to a 1-mile radius of where you need to be to have the absolute best work-life balance, but you can do that as well. You make a list of all the things that you want to have in there.
In the new FRED freebie, I think it’s on page twelve. You’re looking at those different things. Does it have a nightlife? Is it quiet at night? Does it have a hospital? Does it not have a hospital? Mind you, when I was in New York City, I was a couple of blocks from a hospital and didn’t realize how far up the sirens can travel, because I was on the tenth floor and we could hear it like it was right in our apartment. Choosing the wrong neighborhood is a big deal. If it doesn’t suit your lifestyle, you’re at work for 8 to 10 hours a day, five days a week, but those other times you have all the other things that you want to do, like the nightlife and all that stuff.
It’s important to choose the right neighborhood for you at this time, even if it means moving a couple of years from now to be in a different neighborhood if you’re starting a family or doing any of that stuff, but you can have vastly different vibes within the same city. Chicago, I think when we talked to Tommy in one of the first episodes that I did, there are 70-plus neighborhoods within Chicago and they all have something unique to it. Same thing with Charlotte. We’ve got Noda. I live on the West Side of the city. There’s no name for our part of the city, but there are all kinds of different areas that are like little suburban areas within the city. That’s something that you want to take a look at.
Mistake #3: Lack Of Social Network
Number three on my top ten list of things that you don’t want to do so you don’t regret your move is having that lack of social network. Moving to a new city can be lonely, especially if you don’t know anyone there. Not to say that you can’t do it. I 100% have done this. I promise you, it’s not the end-all-be-all, but you have to put some effort into building that social network before you go. There are websites like Meetup.
I know a lot of people who either love or hate social media, especially Facebook. I don’t know why, but they do have a lot of great groups. If you have a hobby like one of my friends is a roller skater. She’s an amazing roller skater. I’ve posted some of her stuff, and she lives right outside of Austin, but for her, moving to a new city, she found a roller rink. She used to be an ice skater, Michelle. I’m going to call her out. I’ll tell her that I did this, but she has a whole network of people who do inline skating with her. What’s it called? Ice skating. It’s beautiful. It’s amazing and super cool.
You can find your niche. If you want to get onto a Facebook group that is moving to the city that you’re in, ask them, “I’m into knitting or slacklining or whatever, is there a group that you can recommend?” Building that social network, even if it’s people that you don’t know yet, but you can look at their profile and see if you would be friends with them and befriend them before you go is a big deal.
The other thing is local clubs and organizations. Back in the day, when I was doing a ton of moving, I was a runner. I was a back-of-the-pack runner. I was a run-walker, as I should probably say, but I met a lot of my friends through running groups. It was a great way to see the city. They took different paths. It was a good way to do that. Getting that social network tightened up before you go, especially if you know only a handful of people, is incredibly important to do prior to moving to a new city so you don’t regret it.
Mistake #2: Underestimating The Cost
Number two is underestimating the cost. I mentioned it earlier. This is where the proof of concept helps, but the cost of living varies so significantly from city to city. If you don’t fully grasp the increased or sometimes even decreased costs associated with your new city from housing to food to taxes, it is a big deal. I’ll give you an example.
The cost of living varies significantly from city to city. If you don’t fully understand the increased—or sometimes even decreased—costs associated with your new city, from housing to food to taxes, it can become a big deal. Share on XWhen I moved to North Carolina, I went to register my car, and they handed me a bill for $600. I’m like, “I’m just registering my own car.” They’re like, “You have to pay a property tax on that car.” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” I’ve moved eighteen times in 22 years. I’ve never had to do that, or 23 years now, but back then I think it was 16 or 17 times.
The point of my story was they put a property tax on cars, and they do it upfront. You have to pay for it. I got another tax bill in the mail. It’s shocking when you get a bill for $600 to register your car for one year. Mine even had significantly uplifted the value of my car, which is not true. It’s like $15,000 less than what they said it was valued. I have to go and fight that and try and get that right-sized so I don’t have to pay as much tax on it because my car is not worth as much as they said. It was worth like $45,000, and it’s worth like $30,000. That’s a big deal.
When I moved to New York City, I had a grocery store in the basement of my building, which I thought was the coolest thing. It was a Gristini’s, shout out to the Gristini’s people. I did work with them when I was working in the city at one point, not for the grocery store, but for their corporation. This was back in 2010 or 2011 when I was out there. It was $8 for a gallon of milk. I don’t do dairy now, but I was making lattes every single morning.
A gallon of milk would last me a week and a half. For $8 versus the $3 or $4 that I was paying in San Francisco, it was shocking. I wasn’t even getting full-fat milk. I was getting skim milk. I wasn’t even paying for the full amount. Underestimating costs like that is where we hone into the financial research part of the FRED framework.
Starting with your dreams, we reverse-engineer you into what you need to have and what to expect. I think those unmet expectations can be a big part of the regret process. If you know going into it, not to say that it’s going to be $8 for a gallon of milk, but if you do a city POC, and you go to the grocery stores, and you go to coffee shops, and go to all these places that you would normally go, you’re going to start to see how much it’s going to cost for a daily living amount to be there, and then you can prepare for it.
It may take an extra six months of you staying where you are, but wouldn’t it feel so much better if, when you got to this new city, not only if you lost your job the day you got there, would you be okay? You would know going into it what to expect, and that little, ” I hope everything works out,” wouldn’t be such a big deal.
Mistake #1: Failing To Do Research On The Area
That brings me to my number one reason why people regret their moves. It is not researching that area thoroughly enough. Underestimating the cost is one thing, but people regret not investing enough time in researching the city before they move. This could be everything from demographics to the cost of living, the crime rates, the quality of schools, the public transportation, local amenities, and the healthcare system.
I cannot stress enough how bad YOLO was for the moving, or how good it was for the moving industry. We saw a big uptick in moves in the pandemic, but if you guys could only spend a little bit more time researching these areas, your finances, the robustness, your mental health, your physical health, how you are feeling going into this, how you could physically pick up these boxes strength-wise, looking at the ecosystem that you’re moving from and you’re moving to. Researching this will help your dream accelerate in a way that you don’t necessarily anticipate because you are not overlooking the excitement.
You are embracing it, but you’re feeling the ways you can eliminate stress when you get there. That makes that life transition so much easier, so much better. Knowing going into it what you’re getting yourself into tamps down the brain’s fight or flight or freeze. There are three of those, but your brain is a problem-solving device. If you leave it up to your brain to wait until you get there to look at some of these things that you’re going to be doing in your life transition, it’s going to make it so much harder.
If you go into it saying, “Why is this going to be successful?” and then feeling all the things that you might not have researched yet and getting a good idea of what those are, that’s going to bring both excitement and an elevated sense of anticipation. On the other side of it, you could pivot and say, “I thought I wanted to live in New York City, San Diego, Omaha, Nebraska.” There are so many great cities out there. You might get to that city, do those proof of concepts and do all this research, and say, “Maybe I need to move across town where I am because it’s got all those things. It’s not expensive. I know the people, and it’s not quite as stressful of a move, then I’d be content.”
That’s the end-all-be-all. I want you to move to those places if you want to still move. If you get there and you no longer think that that’s where you want to be, I love nothing more than to hear these stories of contentment because then it puts that closure on that dream that has been nagging you for so long and allows you to embrace and live free in the city that you’re in.
I am going to stop there. If you have a chance to get on my website, MariettesOnTheMove.com, join my Monday mailer. That’s another thing I let go of throughout this whole process. I do apologize. I’m going to get back in the saddle and get those out more consistently because, for the last month and a half, it has been brutal in all areas of my life due to this injury. I’m healing every day. I appreciate all the prayers and well wishes, and I want you to have a great summer dreaming about all these things that you’re going to do within the next year or two, or even six months.
Get on the Monday mailer. I do tips and tricks there. Once you join the Monday mailer, you’ll get a free copy of the new FRED freebie that I am putting out. I think it’s fourteen pages long or something, but it gets you started on what I would do if we were coaching and reverse-engineering into your dreams. That being said, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for following me on social. I would love to hear from you. If you have any other ideas or things that I’ve missed or ideas that you want me to talk about on the show, by all means, I’m all ears. Thank you.
Important Links
- Mariette Frey on LinkedIn
- Mariettes On The Move
- City Spotlight on Charlotte with Dre Fox
- Joe Dispenza
- Meetup