Should You Move? How to Make a Smart Relocation Decision at Midlife and later in life

Have you ever dreamed about moving somewhere new, only to wonder if you're chasing a destination or a feeling?

In this episode of Real Estate Connections, Mary Foerster welcomes relocation coach, corporate executive, and Moving For Smarties founder Mariette Frey for a fascinating conversation about the emotional side of moving. Together, they explore why so many people dream about relocating, how to determine whether a move is truly right for you, and the hidden psychological factors that can influence life-changing decisions.

After moving 20 times in 24 years across six major U.S. cities, Mariette developed the FRED Framework, a practical decision-making process that helps people evaluate major life transitions through four key pillars: Finances, Robustness, Ecosystem, and Dreams.

This conversation goes far beyond real estate. It explores identity, grief, community, purpose, retirement dreams, and how to create a life that aligns with what matters most.

In This Episode

• Why people often chase feelings instead of locations
• How to know if a move is truly right for you
• The difference between vacation thinking and relocation thinking
• Why community matters more than many people realize
• The hidden grief involved in moving
• How identity shifts during major life transitions
• The FRED Framework for decision making
• Why testing a city before moving can save costly mistakes
• Moving after retirement and creating a new chapter
• How to reduce stress during a relocation
• The power of re-parenting yourself during transitions
• Why moving home can sometimes be the best move

Mariette Frey is an award-winning corporate executive, certified life coach, podcast host, and relocation expert who has guided thousands of individuals through major life transitions. Known as "the guide people call when they're at a crossroads," Mariette helps people navigate relocation decisions, career changes, lifestyle redesigns, and identity shifts with confidence and clarity.

Having personally moved 20 times in 24 years across six major U.S. cities, she developed the FRED Framework, a structured decision-making process that helps people evaluate finances, resilience, community, and long-term dreams before making major life changes.

Today, Mariette shares practical tools and emotional intelligence strategies through her Moving For Smarties platform, podcast, coaching programs, and educational resources.

Connect with Mariette Frey

Website
 Moving For Smarties

Instagram
 @mariettesonthemove

LinkedIn
 Mariette Frey LinkedIn

YouTube
 Moving For Smarties YouTube

This episode is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.

Transcript

0:01

Are you considering a big move at the midlife, maybe later in life? And if you are, there's so many aspects of it to be considered, and today's guest is Mariette Frey. Mariette is an award-winning corporate executive. She's a podcaster. She's a YouTube content provider, and she's a certified life coach. And we had a lively discussion today, I thought was gonna be about the physical kind of considerations of a moving. We went deep inside, and we are gonna follow up with our conversation on those practical things later on. Welcome, Mariette Frey. Welcome to Real Estate Connections podcast, where relationships open doors. I'm Mary Forrester, and housing is a universal need. We are often thinking about our existing housing, our future housing, that possibly of family members. This is where you're gonna hear the issues and the people who are working the issues every day. Please hit subscribe and like if you find this podcast helpful to you. Thank you. Today, we are here having a conversation with Mariette Frey. Mariette is a distinguished mover. And what do I mean by that? Mariette is an expert at moving, and she has moved 20 times in 24 years. Now, we are going to hear about the practicality of moving and the emotional aspects of it as well. But this is not gonna limit our conversation. We have so much to talk about. Mariette, it's so good to see you, and thank you so much for joining me. And I'd like to talk to you right out of the shoot, basically. What does somebody need to have clarity on whether or not they are going to move or should move? What is the clarity that people need in your experience? Well, there's a lot of things. I built a whole entire framework around it because like you said, I did 20 moves, and I don't think I was clear with what the end game or end goal was. And so the clarity that I often tell people to look for is around your dreams and what your end game really is, and then reverse engineer into it. So kind of out of selfishness, I made a whole framework for myself because I was making all these moves. Some of them were smart moves. Some of them are not so smart moves. I don't like to say dumb, but some of them taught me a lot of lessons that I carried into the next move. So I would say the framework was probably the best thing I could do to give myself clarity and get me closer towards my goals. So I can tell you a little bit about it if you'd like. Terrific. Well, there are so many different types of people, and sometimes I feel very impulsive. Carl, let's move to Idaho, you know? And no, Mary, we can't move to Idaho. They don't have my business in Idaho. God, I really want to move to Idaho, and it feels very impulsive. And then other times it feels too practical. Oh, honey, if so-and-so, our daughter's gonna stay there for the rest of her life, what are we going to do and this type of thing. So walk us through impulsive versus well-thought-out. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I talked to a lot of people who, I'll give you an example. So I talked to this guy who wanted to move to San Diego, and he had been thinking about moving to San Diego for like 30 years. And I said, "Well, what is it about San Diego that has been on your heart for so long?" And he said, "You know what? The weekend that I went there 30 years ago, I just felt amazing. My energy was great. I felt the scenery was beautiful. It just made me feel so good." And I said, "Well, when was the last time you were in San Diego?" And he said, "Well, 30 years ago, over that weekend." And I said, "So you've been chasing this feeling and having it hang over your head for 30 years, but you haven't gone back to see if it still feels that way?" And he said, "Well, now that you say it that way, it kind of sounds silly." So I think that a lot of times people want that feeling in their body that they felt wherever it was that they were. So, you know, your example, so if you say you want to move to Oregon, what is it about Oregon that seems so wonderful? Is it the fresh air and all the nature and the hikes that you can take because that feels good in your body? Or is it that somebody you love is there and you want to spend more time with them and that brings you community? So I think looking at that part of it, because a lot of times it's the feelings in our body that we felt when we were somewhere that actually is what we're chasing, not necessarily that city. Because sometimes you can find that in the city that you're in, it's just maybe moving to a different area or connecting to a different group or going on hikes, like I said, discovering. I could even give you another example. When I moved back to Chicago, because I kind of took my moving journey full circle, I, like I said, moved 20 times to six of America's top cities all across the country. So that was San Diego, San Francisco, New York City, Charlotte, Indianapolis. And then I came back here, I grew up here and I forgot how beautiful the area that I grew up in is. There's tons of forests and tons of places, the hike. And my cousin, Annie said, "Well, why don't we go take a walk down by Centennial Lake?" And I said, "Well, where is that?" And she said, "Well, it's over by Centennial Pool." And I said, "Well, I life-carved it at Centennial Pool when I was in college. I don't remember a lake being there." Well, there was a lake right on the other side of the shrubbery that I never saw. And now I walk three miles a day. I walk to the lake, unless it's raining every single day. And everything that I loved about Charlotte, the outdoors and walking by the water and all that stuff, I know where I'd have in my backyard. But I didn't realize that. And I get that good feeling and I get to be out in nature, but I don't have to pay all the prices that were in Charlotte or, you know, and now I have community here. Community, yes. Community is huge. Yes, I had a conversation the other day with David Shotwell from Washington, DC, realtor. We talked about moving, he has two lives, coastal Maryland and Washington, DC, very different areas. We talked about kind of, you know, what is it that you're looking for? Can you take the quiet that you might have enjoyed on your vacation in Rehoboth, Delaware, from the intensity of living in Washington, DC, a world capital, basically. And so how do you advise people who are still remembering a dream vacation, vacation, right? Away from work, away from stress. How do you advise people about that? Well, there's a couple of experiments that I tell people to do. And especially with your audience, I think you kind of tailored to the 45 to 65 year old audience. I think it's really important to do what I call a city proof of concept. I work in technology in my full-time job. And when someone is trying to buy a product, they could either buy one product and do a proof of concept and see if it works in their environment, see if it's something that they like the dashboard test it out, or they can do a bake-off. And they take two different products and test them both out and see if they like it. Well, a city proof of concept is that same concept where you go and spend longer than a weekend somewhere. And there's all kinds of midterm rentals that you can use that are a lot less expensive than the short-term rentals like the Airbnb and the VRBOs that have all kinds of service fees. But you could go say Furnished Finder is one of them. I actually had them on my podcast and it's where you negotiate with a landlord for 30 days or longer. So it's more than 30 days, but less than a year. And it's a furnished apartment, a furnished house in the area that you want to go live in to see if you feel connected to the community. I mean, you could go and do a weekend and see how you feel there. But what you're doing is market research. You're not on vacation because everything feels magical on a vacation. But if you're there for a week or longer, you can literally go to the library if you spend a lot of time there. You can go to the grocery store and see what the prices are. I remember when I first moved to New York City, my mom came to visit me and I love coffee and making lattes. I have an espresso machine and I bought a gallon of milk and it was $8. And this was in 2011. And I said, "What is happening? Like that's gonna be a very expensive latte for me. I might as well just go to a coffee shop because it was cheaper." So experimenting and doing market research where you go, I have a whole entire checklist that I give to people to walk around in that neighborhood that you think you want to be in, to see if you feel safe at night, to see going to a community center, to see if the fitness center or the community center has activities for people like you that you like, that you can connect with and make friends with before you decide to move. The other thing is you can get on Facebook. They have all kinds of Facebook groups for, if you type in moving to Boise, Idaho, or type in moving to Florida, they have all kinds of private groups that will give you information. And a lot of the people that are in those groups have just moved or just left. So you have to use a little discernment because if somebody has just left, they might be a little bit ordinary about why they didn't like it. But there are all kinds of websites out there that you can look at the demographics, you can look at the safety scores and see if there's walkable scores. Fitting into a community is probably the most important way for somebody to feel like they belong and they're at home. And if you have that community, if you don't already know people there, that's gonna bring you so much clarity and see how you physically feel in your body. Cause you know when you go somewhere or when you've moved somewhere and you're like, oh man, what did I do? But your body goes through all kinds of biological changes when you have moved. So you're not really thinking about the grief that you're going through from the place that you just left. And a lot of people in that age range, like I will be 50 this year. And I know I've in just in the last five years alone experienced a tremendous amount of grief between losing pets, losing family members. You're grieving your old identity when you move from a city that you've spent a long time in. And now you have to rebuild a new identity. So if you're not in a good place mentally and physically, it's really hard to wanna go out there and meet people if you just feel like crawling up in a hole and you're surrounded by boxes that you don't wanna open and put away. In that grieving process, my experience is important to have. Yes, it's honoring it. Yes, it's honoring it. It's honoring who you were, it's honoring your memories. There's so much to be said for that. And especially I'm thinking about people in the middle. So you raised your kids in this town, the kids are now off to college or some other, whatever development that they are in or career. And your whole identity has been getting them through school. Now you have your career. Keeping them alive. Keeping them alive, getting them from school. And I see it especially around sports. They are connected with all that community around sports. And when that goes away, there's quite a hole. Oh yes. There's quite a hole. So then at any stage you get to ask yourself, what does that wanna be doing? I wanna live on the coast, I wanna live on a beach. Yeah, amazing. I think it's also important. So I mentioned my framework at the beginning, it's called FRUD. So it's finances, robustness, so that's mental and physical strength, ecosystem. So the community you're moving from and the community you're moving to and what you need to have in it to thrive. And then dreams. But we actually start with the dream. So you and Carl, I listened to your episode, you and your husband Carl have moved, right? And you've talked through kind of what you wanted and you started planning for that a while back. And I think that's important because if your dream is to spend time on the coast, but you're not actually going to the coast to figure out if that's still your dream, maybe you need to pivot and that's not the dream anymore. And that's where something like the Citi POC comes in where you can explore, stay, rent a place for some time. But when we can figure out what that end game is and that dream and you start going to that place even five years prior to you moving to retirement in that community, now you're building friends. Now you're finding your local coffee shop. Now you're getting familiar with it. And when you actually move, your body doesn't feel like it's in that much of a transition. Your body feels like, oh, this is familiar and I have evidence to prove that I'm safe here. I like it here. I've already been here. I kind of know a couple people here. So taking the dream and really getting clear on what that means, that could mean in retirement, taking on an acting job. We talked about that. I wanted to be an actress my whole life like until like I even wanted to do that when I went to college and I listened to everybody and I got a real business degree. And I always said, if I wanted to do that down the road, I would still do that after I took on a real corporate job, which I did, but I experimented. I took classes while I was working my full-time job. Even at one point I got laid off and I went in and looked at agents and auditioned for agents. I did a lot of extra work. I was on Chicago PD and Chicago Fire. And I did a whole bunch of like these independent films because I could, I was working. So I had that money to support my dream. But I've always said to my dream now after being on those sets and realizing like, gosh, there's a lot of downtime. There is such a shortage after a conversation with one of the acting agents that I talked to, she was having a really hard time finding people that were 65 and older because people who had traditionally been acting their whole life, realized they were getting close to retirement, didn't have money. And so now there was a huge shortage of actors between the ages of 65 and 90, because they were now working to support themselves during retirement. So even doing a voiceover work where you can do it from your home with a microphone and put audio panels in a closet. If that's, if trying a new chapter of your life and trying a new dream is something to explore, maybe you wanna look to be closer to Los Angeles, maybe you want to do something where you can fill a remote role like voiceover acting. But it's something that if you don't know what the dream is, how are you gonna know how much money you have? So we start with the dream, we get very niched down, we have you start experimenting as if you're doing that while you're still doing your full-time job, living in your house, not giving up your good mortgage rates, not giving up your community, all of that. And then when you do that Citi POC, that's when it all starts, right? So you then look at your finances. So, you know, what, I will get on realtor.com with someone or I'll get on, I don't necessarily love Zillow, but you can use AI to say, what are the average rents? Or what are the average home prices? And I have a workbook, if you go to my website, it's just movingforsmarties.com, you can sign up and it sends you a workbook that you can start filling in all of these little, you know, like how much taking the average of three of the apartments or three houses in that area. So now you're like, okay, well, if I figure out the cost of living there, then I know that, you know, based on what my cost of living is now, how much would I need to save? Or how much would I need to have in the bank? Or how much would I need to have coming in from social security and my retirement and all of that? So you're kind of reverse engineering yourself and then when you get to that place where you're making the decision to move, now we look at robustness, right? So are you, is it a good time? Are you feeling well? Like is it, you know, are you physically strong enough and mentally strong enough to handle the move? I mean, you've moved, you know how hard it is? It is so stressful. It was very hard. So I want to talk about kind of what I experienced and I think you might've experienced when you moved back to Chicago that after all these travels, after living in Washington, 49 years, and being so engaged there, that it felt very comfortable to be in Massachusetts. Yeah. It was so surprising to me and it was community in part, but there's something else, there's something genetic. I don't know what it is, it's in the air, it's the people that we were raised with, whatever. Yeah, well, it's also your biology has evidence that it's safe there and you know people. And I think that when we talk about changing identities in a new town, that's incredibly important because when your brain, your subconscious mind, your amygdala wants to keep you alive, right? That's its entire, entire job. So when it already has evidence that you know, like, and trust the people around you, it feels safe instantly. But you're also rediscovering what has changed since you last left. So you still have that adventure and that like excitement. I even just drove past my, the house that I grew up in last week. So I, even just like going back because I hadn't in the year that I've been back, gone back there and it's only 20 minutes away. But probably like you, you know the thing. So you're not using your GPS everywhere. So you don't constantly have that anxiety. You're feeling lost or you know, you have friends that you could reconnect with and catch up with them. There's purpose in that move. And not to say that everybody has to move home, but if you have people that you already know in a community that you've had some history with, that signals to your subconscious that it's safe and you have somebody to rely on and have some backup. And we don't give ourselves enough credit for that part of moving back home. A lot of times people look at moving home as a failure when really it could be a huge way for you to thrive in your next chapter of your life. Exactly. The word curiosity came to mind as you were speaking. I went home, I went to see the house I was raised in. And can you imagine the range of feelings that that would cause? I remember doing the same thing in Boston and seeing the house that I was raised in, in Jamaica Plain. It was so little. It was so small. But because I remember as a five year old, and it was so big. So we have so many things to talk about in terms of moving. Can you talk a little bit about the stress of moving? How to alleviate as much as you can the stress of moving. One of the most stressful things you can do. And obviously you've done it. Top three most stressful events in people's lives. I think second only to divorce, which is crazy. So part of the robustness pillar in my framework is physical strength. And I think that that and mental strength are important because when you are looking through kind of that lens of what I need to do, there's a lot of things that I tell people, especially if you're considering it and not fully on board with moving. Little experiments like going to Home Depot and buying five boxes and putting them in your living room to see if you right away start packing and taping them up and putting things in there. If you just stare at them and you're like, oh, I'm so exhausted. I don't know if I can do that. That might tell you that you're already too stressed and right now is not a good time. But if you have to move, say there's some significant life event where you have to move. One of the things I like to tell people is to create a routine based on your current routine. So we are, as humans, creatures of habit, right? So if I wake up every morning, I have a coffee machine that starts grinding right away. There's all of these steps that I take. I take the coffee and I go sit in bed and I do my Bible devotionals. And I have this routine that when I'm moving is so incredibly important for me to keep because it tells my brain, I'm gonna be okay. I have a routine. I know this is familiar. So it gives you that little bit of stress relief that you have to anchor to. So finding that anchor is going to be important. So it could be a pet that you have that anchors you that you know every time you look at them, you can take a beat, take a minute. That's an acting term, take a beat. Take a minute and just sit in what you're feeling. But sometimes even just recognizing what you're feeling in your body and telling that protective part of you that saying, we can't do this, this is too stressful. See, I told you, this is gonna be too much. Taking that protector part and re-parenting it and saying, listen, I'm older now. This might've been stressful for me 10 years ago, but it's not now. There's something about taking your nervous system to a place where it knows it's safe, it knows it's stressed out and naming it. Being able to say, okay, we're just gonna take a minute. Take a couple deep breaths. There's a box breathing type experience, you know, exercise that you can do where you breathe in for four seconds, you hold it for seven seconds, and then you release it through a straw, like you're breathing through a straw for eight seconds. And you do that three or four times and then just sit for a second, close your eyes, and then it just lifts the stress off your vagal nerve, and it helps you to be able to move forward. Sometimes even just getting up and moving, and I know it sounds so silly, but putting on a song that you love and that has always been around, it could be a song from the 70s, or I worked at Disney and I love"The Little Mermaid" and "A Whole New World." There's all kinds of songs that you can pick, but even just moving, a lot of psychologists say that moving your body, even if it's just like swaying in place, releases the negative energy from your fingertips, from your body, and for whatever reason, your nervous system says, okay, I pushed through that negative energy, now I'm okay. So yeah, you're gathering data, and then what you do with that data, just like when you said it's a business transaction, and to treat it like a business transaction, that's data. So you were looking at data. Same thing if you take it internally and look at the data and what it's being presented. Why am I feeling so anxious? What do I think, what's the worst possible scenario that could happen? And have I survived 100% of the things that have been put in front of me to date? Well, if you're alive, that's a yes. Yes, I love your phrase. Reparenting, you're kind of parenting yourself. You are. Yeah, there's a whole thing that you can look at from parts work. I know that's a psychological term, but parts come in pairs, and you have the protector part and the vulnerable part. And likely if you are feeling super stressed out about whatever situation you're in, it's because at some point in your life, whether you were conscious of it or not, you were vulnerable and something didn't work out, or you were moving with a parent that moved all over the place and things didn't feel settled and you didn't have a routine. Going back and parenting that part and saying, I'm okay, you're okay. Pretending like it's six years old or even 30 years old. I mean, I know, like I said, I've made some really silly moves and I had to go back and say, okay, what part of me is fighting this? What part of me is stressed out about this? And going back and saying, well, it's worked out so far. Everything has been a detour, helped me pivot and got me to where I am today. And I'm gonna survive this too. And how long will you be in Chicago? What's funny is everybody asks me that. I wanna stay here forever, but I might get a, maybe another place, my mom and my brother, and I have some aunts, uncles and cousins down in Knoxville, Tennessee, and it's a beautiful part of the world. So I would love to spend more time there with them, but I also kind of like a vacation that I took to Bozeman, Montana. I went to Big Sky for a weekend, or it was like a four day retreat and I fell in love with it. But if I were to want to move there later in life, I would have to go back and spend, maybe two or three months and see if that's still kind of the dream because I felt so good when I was there. That doesn't mean that I would feel good there now because I don't know anyone there. Indeed. And I had the same experience in Montana as well. Did you? I did, I did. It was Red Lodge. It's magical. Yes, it was Red Lodge. No. You know, this conversation is evolving into something that I really didn't fully anticipate, but I'm so pleased with, which is so much about the inner work of moving, of making decisions, of life changes and making decisions. And I so appreciate the wisdom that you have. However, I know in a subsequent conversation, we're gonna talk about scams. Yes. And we can just touch on it briefly here, but I'm gonna do a follow-up with Mariette on moving scams. And there's a lot of vulnerability around that. But I promised Mariette that I'd like to talk to her about her evolution. You've gone from Mariette's on the move. What's the name of your YouTube channel now? Moving for Smarties. So everything is moving for Smarties. Subconsciously, going back to kind of the psychological side of it, when you say Mariette's on the move all the time, I think subconsciously I was thinking, okay, where do I have to go next? So by changing it from Mariette's on the move to moving for Smarties, I don't love moving for dummies, so I'm a very positive person. So I wanted to make it moving for Smarties. So, you know, I'm educating, but also subconsciously settling down a little bit. Terrific. Terrific. And so all the resources that you talked about, Fred and the structure, we'll be able to find them on your website? Yes. Okay, terrific. Yep, movingforsmarties.com. There is, on the YouTube channel as well, you can watch my solo episode. So I do still have both of the channels, Mariette's on the move or moving for Smarties. And what I'm going to do in the new moving for Smarties channel, I'm actually creating the pillars. So right now we're in the dreams playlist, then we'll move to finances. So it takes you through that journey of, if I were coaching you in real life, this is, these are the things that I would have you do. And then we go back to the dream and see if it's still the dream. And then we're going to move on to more logistical things. You know, I might do a playlist that you and I talked about moving in your 70s, moving in your 60s, moving in your 50s, moving in your 40s, and the different challenges that happen in the different decades of life. But yes, you can find all of that information there, and you can coach with me directly, but there's a lot of free information out there that you can start looking through and watching or listening to. Terrific. And now you have a new podcast and it is based on the dreams, right? Going through those dreams. And tell us a little bit about your new podcast. So the new podcast is the solo site. It's moving for Smarties, yeah. So I've kept it that way, but it does take you through the different playlists of the pillars of the framework. So that's what I love about changing from an interview-based podcast to a solo podcast. I'm going to weave the interviews in there. So in the proper playlist, I'll put the interviews. So eventually the Mariettes on the Move YouTube channel will go away. But they're all, if you go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, all of them are there. So we talk about everything from building a new community in a new city to, you know, I have, I do have something from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. They're the protectyourmove.gov where you can go and vet out movers. They have a whole moving database to see if there's any complaints. I have an episode on that. So all kinds of episodes, they're all still in the bigger playlist, but on the YouTube channel, they're split out. Okay, very good. Well, what a terrific resource. Mariette, thank you so much for your time today. And let's talk soon and we'll keep our conversations going. Thanks, and you'll see contact information from Mariette in the show notes. And thank you one more time. Thanks, Mary.(Upbeat Music) Thank you so much for joining us today. And I hope you found this conversation useful to you and your real estate goals. You'll find the contact information for our guests in any links they recommend you have in the show notes. And should we be able to help you identify some strong real estate professionals in your area, drop us a note at info at realestakeconnectionspodcast.com. Thanks again, and bye for now.(Upbeat Music)