Your Next Act won’t begin when you feel ready. It begins when you stop drifting and start building momentum. In this episode, I’m giving you a simple framework to make 2026 your Runway Year—so you’re not forced into a housing decision by a fall, a health change, or an expensive “surprise” repair.
Happy New Year, Ninjas. If you’ve been “kind of” thinking about rightsizing… this episode is your traction.
Here’s the truth: your Next Act won’t begin when you feel ready. It begins when you stop drifting and start building momentum. In this episode, I’m giving you a simple framework to make 2026 your Runway Year—so you’re not forced into a housing decision by a fall, a health change, or an expensive “surprise” repair.
The Challenge: Set a date for your Decision Day + complete the 30-day Sprint to build your Runway.
Learn about the 3 lanes of your regret-free rightsizing runway:
✅ Take the Rightsizing Readiness Quiz: https://bit.ly/4aiIBxx
Chapters
00:00 Clarity Comes with Action: Don't Wait to Feel Ready
01:14 Instead of Jumping off a Cliff Build a Runway
03:45 Fresh Start Effect vs Fantasy Reset
04:46 The 3 lanes: Body Fit, Numbers Fit, Life Fit
06:43 Decision Day: Choose the Plan you’re Building
08:34 Week 1: Body Fit Audit (future-proof your home)
10:10 Week 2: Numbers Fit Audit (the myth of “saving money by not moving”)
12:15 Week 3: Life Fit Audit (environment drives health & happiness)
13:26 Week 4: Prototype Week (test drive your future)
14:36 Evidence Reduces Anxiety, Vagueness Fuels It
15:08 The Identity Layer: Memories Aren’t in the Square Footage
16:34 Take Action, Don't Wait for Perfection
Hey, hey, welcome back Ninjas. Happy new year. I want to start today with a simple truth that might sting just a little bit. The next chapter of your life isn't going to begin when you feel ready. It's going to begin when you decide you're ready, when you decide that you're done drifting. Because most people I find don't fail to create a great Next Act from lack of intelligence or lack of resources. They fail because they keep waiting for clarity to arrive before they take action. Clarity is not a gift that falls from the sky. Clarity is your reward for taking action.
So today I'm not here to help you think about it more. I'm here to help you start building your Next Act. And we're going to do it through the lens of rightsizing - rightsizing your home, your environment, your financial bandwidth, and honestly, your future options. Not with panic, not with some frenetic "new year, new you" energy, but with something way more powerful, a runway.
Because the biggest problem I see with right-sizing decisions is that people treat them like a cliff, like you're standing at the edge of a precipice, a terrifying drop-off, and the only choices are jump or don't jump. Sell the house or die in it. Downsize or stay stuck. Move far away or remain trapped. It's no wonder people freeze. It's no wonder the decision feels so loaded with grief and guilt or fear of regret. But what if this year isn't a cliff for you? What if it is a runway year?
A runway is not a leap, is it? A runway is what you build before you take off. It's what's going to give you speed, control, more options. It's what makes the moment of lift feel inevitable instead of terrifying. And in the context of rightsizing, a runway year is a year where you stop waiting for a crisis to force your housing decision. And instead you create enough momentum, information, and optionality that the next step becomes obvious.
And I want to say this clearly. A runway year does not mean you have to move by the end of the year. It means you stop letting your home decision sit in the background like a low-grade stress headache. It means you stop paying tax of procrastination. Because procrastination costs you. It costs you money, it costs you energy, and it costs you time, even if you don't see those costs on a financial statement. I'm going to put it bluntly for you. If you keep your home decision on autopilot, it will eventually make the decision for you. And it won't be kind, it won't be convenient. It will decide through a fall or an injury, maybe a spouse's health change, a sudden financial squeeze, could be a burst pipe at the worst moment, a stairway that becomes hard for you to get up and down, maybe yard work that turns into a part-time job.
So if you're listening to this and thinking, "OK but my situation is not urgent", that my friends is exactly the point. Crisis rarely gives you a heads up. It crashes into your life without warning. So the goal isn't to wait for an urgent crisis, it's to be strategic. Now I want to talk about what your brain does at the beginning of every new year. Researchers call it the "fresh start effect". When we cross a time boundary, whether that's new year or a birthday or a new month, our brain becomes more open to change because we mentally separate who we were from who we're becoming. It's like you can step back and look at your life with a little more objectivity. That's the upside.
The downside is that our brains also love a "fantasy reset". We imagine a new year is going to magically make us more motivated, more decisive, or more energized. And then real life shows up on January 10th and we're like, hey, wait, why am I still doing the same things? So if we're going to use the fresh start effect responsibly, we have to pair inspiration with structure. And that's what this episode is all about. Here's the concept. A regret-free rightsizing plan has three lanes. If you build a runway that incorporates all three of these lanes, you're going to have lots of maneuverability.
Lane one is your body. This lane of the runway includes your mobility, your strength, energy, and the reality of your
specific aging trajectory. But the question isn't, "Am I healthy today"? The question is, "Is my home designed for the body that I'm likely to have in five, maybe 10 years"? Lane two is your balance sheet. And this lane of the runway includes your cash flow, your home equity, your living expenses. It's the cost of doing nothing versus the cost of moving. It's all about numbers. Lane three is your built environment. The actual experience of day-to-day life. It includes things like your stairs, your yard work, your driving load, your social connectivity, your access to healthcare, your ability to get help quickly when you need it. This is the part people ignore until it's urgent and their future self pays for it mentally, physically, and emotionally. Most people tend to focus on only one lane, and that's dangerous. It's why the decision can feel so heavy. You're trying to make a life-shaping choice with limited data.
So today I'm going to give you a simple runway plan for the year. And I want you to listen like someone who is done arguing for their own limitations, which is why I promise to be straight with you and not coddle. I know you don't need coddling, you need traction, we all do. In fact, I outline these steps as much for myself as anyone. It's how my husband and I approach these kinds of decisions.
The first step of your runway year is what I call "Decision Day". This is the moment where you stop saying, "one of these days we should talk about the house". You're going to actually put a date on your calendar, preferably within the next 30 to 40 days. And on that day, you're going to sit down and you're going to answer just one question. "Are we building a plan to rightsize, to stay put, or some hybrid of the two?" Now notice I didn't say you decide whether you're moving. I said you decide what plan you're building. These two things are very different. In fact, as you build your plan, it will likely reveal the truth about what you truly desire. You might build a plan to move and realize how much you want to stay. Or you might build a plan to stay put and realize you feel trapped and you really want to move.
So Decision Day is simply a deadline for deciding what plan you are building. And without that deadline, your year is just going to slip by. You're going to stay in that mode of "kind of" thinking about it, which can leave you a little bit stressed and using up precious mental bandwidth. You'll keep telling yourself, I'll deal with it after the holidays, or after the winter, after the next thing. And that's not a plan, that is drift. That's exactly what we're trying to guard against. If you hate the idea of picking a date because it feels like pressure, let me reframe it for you. Decision Day is not pressure, it's respect for future you. It's you saying, I'm not going to keep kicking the can down the road. I'm not going to burden my future self with this.
And once you set that date, that's going to kick off your 30-day sprint. Again, not to force a move, but to force clarity. Week one of that sprint is your body fit audit. This week is all about asking brutally practical questions about home fit when it comes to your physical health. You're asking things like, when it snows in the winter, am I safe? Will I be shoveling slippery driveways, navigating icy neighborhoods, or afraid to drive anywhere? If you had a knee flare-up or a hip repair, or you needed a temporary walker for eight weeks, could you live on your main floor of your home? Or if you had to stop driving for a month, would your life shrink or would it still function?
And I want you to catch the mental trick here. People will often say, I'm fine. And maybe you are, but "fine" is not the goal, is it? Fine is what you say when you haven't really thought about what you actually want. The goal, is lifestyle longevity. It's feeling strong and resilient in a home that will fit future you without any friction.
So during this first week, you're not judging, you're just observing. Think of yourself like a scientist who is doing research on your life. Where are the friction points? Where are the safety points? Where are the energy leaks? Where are you working around your home instead of your home working for you?
And then week two of your 30-day sprint is the numbers fit audit. This is where we stop telling comforting stories to ourselves and we start actually doing the math. Because one of the most expensive myths in retirement is that we're going to save money by not moving. Now sometimes that's true, but I find that more often it's not. For many people staying put is the most expensive choice they can make. Especially once you factor in rising property taxes, insurance premiums, maintenance costs, major repairs and that sort of thing. Of course, all that opportunity cost of trapped equity as well.
So in week two, you're going to gather those numbers. What is your home worth today? How much do you owe, if anything? And then what are all your monthly carrying costs? That includes property taxes, insurance, utilities, HOA fees. Add to that those routine maintenance things like landscaping, snow removal, pest control, gutter cleaning. And don't forget the major repairs that you know are lurking. Those are the things we tend to kick down the road until they become urgent. Maybe it's new carpet, fresh paint, a roof replacement, a new furnace or water heater. You know which things are waiting to be repaired, don't you?
And then I want you to do something that's going to sound obvious, but almost nobody does. You estimate what it will cost you to stay comfortable and worry-free in that home for the next 10 years. Not just to survive, but to really thrive. That's going to include any accessibility changes you might need, any deferred maintenance you've been ignoring, any paid Be completely honest with yourself about the true costs of staying put. I'm not anti-staying, I'm anti-fantasy. If staying is the best move, I want you staying from a position of strength with your eyes wide open and a real plan. I don't want you staying because you don't know your real numbers.
Now, week three of your 30-day sprint is the Life Fit audit. This is the environment lane, and it's the one that I think people underestimate the most. Your environment is not background scenery. It's an active ingredient in your healthspan and happiness. So in this week, you're going to ask yourself questions like, how far are you from people that make you feel alive? How far are you from things that you need, like health care and groceries and community and purpose? Is your home pulling you outward into life, or is it pulling you inward into isolation?
And yes, you might love your quiet neighborhood. You might love your privacy, and that's great. But privacy can quietly turn into loneliness if your world is shrinking. I'm not saying that to scare you, I'm saying it because it's true. One of the biggest predictors of how well we age is not just our medical biomarkers, it is our social and behavioral environment. And the home you choose is either supporting those behaviors or it is working against them.
Now, week four of your 30-day sprint is the prototype week. This is the week that makes everything feel lighter because it turns your decision from permanent to experimental. Instead of arguing about where you're going to live "forever", you're going to test drive some possibilities. You're going to go spend an afternoon in a neighborhood that has the kind of life you want. You're going to walk it, sit in a coffee shop there, notice how your body feels, notice how your mind feels. Look at all your housing options, not to buy, but to understand. You might even do something bold like staying there for a week or even a month. a place that represents your possible future. It's not a vacation, it's your prototype. A practice week, if you will. Why does this matter? because your brain has a hard time choosing between abstract options. But your brain is excellent at choosing between your lived experiences. a lifestyle rhythm, your nervous system gives you data that Zillow never will.
Now, if you do these four weeks, here's what's going to happen. You're going to walk into Decision Day with something most people never have. You're have evidence, not certainty, just evidence. And evidence does something magical. It's going to reduce your anxiety because anxiety thrives in vagueness. Anxiety thrives in someday. Anxiety thrives when you keep telling yourself you should do something but you haven't defined what exactly that is.
But I also want to address the emotional layer of all this because even with evidence, your home decision can still feel like you're letting go of an identity. If your home represents your life's work, your memories, the season where you raised kids, the place where you cared for parents, the place where you became who you are, then of course, this is not just a real estate decision. It's a story transition, if you will.
Remember, your memories do not live in your square footage. Your memories live in you. And the goal of your Next Act is not to preserve your past at all costs. The goal is to create lifestyle longevity, which means protecting your future capacity for health, connection, adventure, generosity, and purpose. Sometimes staying put is the right way to protect that capacity, but sometimes letting go is right. The point is that avoiding a decision altogether protects nothing. Avoidance just delays the moment when you lose control of your timeline.
So if you're listening and you're a little uncomfortable right now, that's good. Not because I want you to be anxious, it's because discomfort is often the sensation of waking up. It's the feeling of realizing I've been putting this off way too long. And the moment you see that clearly is the moment that you can change it. Of course, regret-free, right-sizing decisions are not the same thing as "perfect" decisions. There's no perfect decision. There are only decisions that you make with honesty, with values, with good information, and with a willingness to adjust. Regret-proofing is not about predicting your future. It's about building flexibility into it.
That's why this year we are going to build runway. Building a runway will give you more flexibility, more options, and the ability to pivot more quickly. You won't need to be afraid that one decision is going to lock you in forever. So here's my challenge for you as we kick off the new year. Pick your Decision Day. Put it on the calendar. Commit to a 30-day runway sprint. Not as a project that you'll do when you feel like it, but as a gift to yourself, a gift to your future self.
And if you want a great starting point, take my Rightsizing Readiness Quiz. You'll find the link in the show notes. It'll help you see where you are in this decision process. And if you're ready to then turn your runway into a real numbers-driven plan, go ahead and book a free call with me. We'll look at your home fit, your health fit and your financial fit together so that you don't have to carry the weight of this decision alone.
Make this the year you stop waiting for a crisis or negotiating with "someday". Make this the year that you build your runway. And that's it. Until next time, my friends, live well, love more, age less.