Most people “budget” for retirement with spreadsheets—taxes, HOA fees, insurance, housing costs. But almost nobody budgets for the hidden tax of lifestyle misfit: the slow, compounding cost of living in a setup that constantly fights your wiring, your energy rhythms, your health needs, and (if you have a partner) your relationship. In this episode, I break down the four hidden taxes that show up when your lifestyle doesn’t fit: energy drain, wealth drain, health drain, and relationship drain—and how those taxes sneakily erode both healthspan and wealthspan over time. We’ll also walk through the three rightsizing paths—thriving-in-place, strategic downsizing, and sunbirding—and the specific “misfit patterns” that tend to sabotage each one.
Most people “budget” for retirement with spreadsheets—taxes, HOA fees, insurance, housing costs. But almost nobody budgets for the hidden tax of lifestyle misfit: the slow, compounding cost of living in a setup that constantly fights your wiring, your energy rhythms, your health needs, and (if you have a partner) your relationship.
In this episode, I break down the four hidden taxes that show up when your lifestyle doesn’t fit: energy drain, wealth drain, health drain, and relationship drain—and how those taxes sneakily erode both healthspan and wealthspan over time. We’ll also walk through the three rightsizing paths—thriving-in-place, strategic downsizing, and sunbirding—and the specific “misfit patterns” that tend to sabotage each one.
If you’re trying to decide whether to stay put, downsize, or split time between two locations, this conversation will help you stop chasing a fantasy plan that only works when you’re at your best—and start designing a resilient, resentment-resistant next phase that still works in your tired week, your pain-flare week, or your stressful week.
Next step: Take my Rightsizing Readiness Quiz (and if you’re a couple, take it separately and compare results). Then, if you want help translating your results into a clear plan that protects your health, wealth, and relationship, book a Rightsized Home & Health Review after you take the quiz. 👉 Quiz https://bit.ly/4aiIBxx
Chapters
00:00 The retirement cost nobody budgets for—lifestyle misfit
02:28 Three rightsizing paths: thrive-in-place, downsize, sunbird
03:40 Good friction vs chronic misfit (and why “future you” has less tolerance)
05:30 Hidden Tax #1: Energy drain (decision fatigue, logistics, uphill living)
06:47 Hidden Tax #2: Wealth drain (crisis hiring, repeat moves, two-house costs)
07:30 Hidden Tax #3: Health drain (stress biology, default behaviors, recovery)
08:45 Hidden Tax #4: Relationship tax (manager vs dreamer, resentment creep)
09:37 Thriving-in-place: when “pride of ownership” becomes maintenance captivity
11:48 Strategic downsizing: grief, identity, and the staged-process fix
14:01 Sunbirding: the logistics trap—and how to do “sunbird-light”
15:43 Couples: non-negotiables + a resentment-resistant plan
19:36 Self-diagnose: where are your biggest leaks?
Hey, hey, welcome back to Next Act Ninjas, the go-to podcast for mastering your health and wealth longevity. I'm your host, Rachael Van Pelt. Today, I want to talk about something almost nobody budgets for in retirement, because it doesn't show up on a spreadsheet. It's the hidden tax of lifestyle misfit.
And I don't mean the "I wish I lived closer to Trader Joe's" kind of misfit. I mean the slow, quiet, compounding cost of living in a situation that constantly asks you to override your natural wiring, your temperament, your energy rhythms, your need for structure, your desire for connection, your tolerance for logistics, your body's needs, your brain's bandwidth, that sort of thing. When your lifestyle doesn't match your personality, you pay. You pay in stress, you pay in money, you pay in health, and if you're married, you often pay in your relationship, one small resentment at a time.
And here's why this matters so much. Most retirement decisions are framed as financial decisions. Where can we afford to live? What will taxes be? What are the HOA fees? How far are we from the grandkids? And yes, those are all real factors, but the thing that gets people in trouble is assuming that the numbers are the whole story. Because the hidden tax isn't just the sticker price of your house or condo or your two homes in two states. It is the ongoing friction cost of daily life. It's the mental load. It's the constant "ugh" you feel in your body before you even admit it out loud.
Now to be clear, you haven't done anything wrong if you've stayed in a lifestyle that isn't a good fit. It's totally normal. It's just that our brains tend to overvalue what's familiar. We underestimate the ongoing cost of friction because it's invisible. And we overestimate how motivated and energetic we'll be in the future. Because we imagine our future selves as just upgraded versions of us. But here's the spoiler, we're not. Future you is still you, just with a little less tolerance for nonsense.
So today, I'm going to give you a framework to identify the hidden taxes you're paying, to figure out where those leaks are, and importantly, make decisions that support your lifestyle longevity. So that you keep living in a way that feels good, functional, connected, and sustainable for the next decade and beyond.
When it comes to rightsizing in retirement, I see three paths that people tend to take. You've heard me talk about them before. The first path is thriving-in-place, staying in your current home, but rightsizing how you live so that it fits your body and your life as they are now and as they're going to be. The second path is strategic downsizing. When you move into something smaller, simpler, more manageable, often shifting towards valuing experiences over stuff. The third path is sunbirding, where you split your time between two locations, usually so you can optimize climate, lifestyle, family, or personal joy.
Those three paths are not just real estate decisions, they're personality decisions. They're health decisions, they're energy management decisions. And what's "right" is not the same for everyone. In fact, one of the most expensive mistakes I see is when people choose a lane just because it looks good on paper or on Instagram, but it quietly doesn't match how they're wired. When that happens, the hidden taxes start draining healthspan and wealthspan.
So let's define lifestyle misfit in a way that I think is useful. It's not the same as simply needing to adapt to something new for a few months. That's normal adjustment. That's a learning curve. Some friction is good, isn't it? Good friction is usually temporary. Good friction is you building a new skill, a new routine, a new social network. Good friction has a payoff. It feels uncomfortable, but it feels meaningful. It even exercises your brain and improves neuroplasticity.
Lifestyle misfit, on the other hand, is different. It's chronic. It's when your environment requires constant self-control and constant compensation. It's when your days are full of tasks that drain you, not because you're lazy, but because they don't align with your temperament, your health needs, or the stage of life you're in. Misfit is when you keep saying, "Once we get settled, it'll feel better", but then it never does. Because the issue isn't settling, is it? The issue is the system itself.
I'm going to be a little contrarian here for a moment, because sometimes people hear personality fit and they think it's indulgent, like you're being picky, like you're being overly dramatic. "I'm an introvert. I can't possibly live near other humans". No, that's not what we're talking about. We're not using personality as an excuse. We're using it as data, because the goal is not to build a lifestyle that feels perfect every day. The goal is to build a lifestyle that still works in your worst week, in your tired week, in your pain flare week, in your stress week, in the week when you don't have extra motivation to spare. If your lifestyle strategy only works when you're at your best, it's not a strategy, is it? It's a fantasy.
So here are the four hidden taxes on lifestyle misfit. And as I go through them, I want you to notice which ones hit you in the gut. That's usually the place that you're paying the most.
The first hidden tax is energy drain. This is that constant drain from tiny tasks, decisions, logistics, the things that don't look like much individually but collectively add up to leave you feeling depleted. It's that "I'm tired and I don't know why" feeling. It's the emotional fatigue of managing a home that asks too much of you. It's the cognitive load of coordinating schedules and repairs and travel and errands and driving and appointments and all those little things that keep life running.
But here's the tricky part. People often blame themselves for this. They think, "Why do I feel so overwhelmed? Other people handle this". But that is like blaming yourself for getting tired just walking uphill. If the environment is built like an uphill slope, you're going to feel tired. If the environment is built like a flat trail with shade and water stations, then you're going to have more energy for the things that matter. It's not a character flaw. It's an environmental design flaw.
Now, the second hidden tax is wealth drain. And I'm not talking about the obvious monthly expenses. I'm talking about the sneaky costs that show up when your lifestyle is a mismatch. It's that late-stage hiring of help because you waited until you were in crisis mode. It's the repeated moving costs because you picked the wrong next home and you had to do it all over again. It's the duplicated life expenses when you run two households. It's the "we'll just fix it later" maintenance bill that becomes a major repair at exactly the wrong time. It's the, "we'll stay put because it's cheaper", while you're quietly spending more to cope with the stress of staying, retail therapy.
The third hidden tax is the health drain. This one's huge, and it's the one I think most people underestimate because it doesn't feel immediate. When your lifestyle is a mismatch, your stress load increases, your movement your sleep often gets worse. Your social nourishment can decline. Your social overwhelm can increase. Your nervous system just stays a little more activated than it should. So you can't recover from injury or illness as well. And that chronic low-grade stress is not harmless. It's not just "in your head". It's biology. It affects inflammation, pain perception, metabolic health, immune function, mood, motivation, cognition.
And lifestyle misfit isn't just about whether your community has a gym nearby. It's about whether your environment promotes healthy default behaviors. For example, does your neighborhood invite walking or require you to drive everywhere? Does your home life naturally promote mobility or a risk of falls? Do you have easy access to care when you need it most? Do you have social connection? The kind that nourishes you, not just is a contact that exhausts you. Your lifestyle is either protective or erosive. There's not much in between.
The fourth hidden tax is the relationship tax. if you're listening as a couple, want you to lean in here because this is where lifestyle misfit multiplies. Misfit creates resentment. Not overnight, but slowly. One partner becomes the manager, the other becomes the dreamer. One partner is clinging to stability while the other is craving freedom. One feels burdened by stuff while the other is comforted by it. One partner wants community, the other wants quiet. And if you don't name these problems and design for them, you're going to end up paying the relationship taxes that look like tension and sarcasm and avoidance and emotional distance.
And I want to ground this in the three rightsizing paths that I mentioned, because each path has a specific kind of pattern. And once you recognize the patterns, you can fix them proactively.
We'll start with thriving-in-place. This path, I think, is best for people who value stability, routine, familiar relationships, continuity of care. I think it's great when your current community is highly supportive, when you have great neighbors, intimate friendships, meaningful volunteer opportunities, church groups, gym community, a trusted medical team. These are all incredible assets. They support healthspan. They support your identity.
But the misfit version of thriving-in-place is when your home feels like a second job. You're not living in it so much as managing it. The yard feels like a burden. The stairs feel like a threat. The snow feels like a constant worry. Your repair list never ends. And that's when energy tax creeps in. You start spending your best energy on keeping the house running. And you have less energy for things like strength training, social connection, purpose, travel, anything that makes retirement feel expansive rather than contracted.
Which is why I always ask, is your home serving you or are you serving your home? Because there's a point where "pride of ownership" becomes "maintenance captivity". Again, it's not failure, it's physics. Bodies change, energy changes, motivation changes. If you wait until the house becomes manageable, you're going to be paying the money tax in more intense ways because you're going to be making decisions under stress.
Thriving-in-place doesn't have to mean doing nothing. Rightsizing can happen without you ever having to move. It can look like buying back your energy with outside help. That might be a regular landscaper, a reliable handyman, cleaning supports, snow removal. Or it might look like making proactive modifications that reduce fall risk and daily friction. It could look like a serious commitment to building your strength and mobility, your social connections. Aging-in-place becomes thriving-in-place when it reduces stress, enhances health, frees up energy for things that really matter. If it doesn't do those things, it's not thriving. It's just status quo.
Okay, so what about the strategic downsizer? I think downsizing is best for people who want simplicity, people who feel weighed down by possessions, who want to spend their time and money on experiences rather than upkeep. For many people, a well-planned downsize is like taking off a heavy backpack that you didn't realize you were carrying.
But the misfit version of downsizing is when you underestimate the psychological cost of letting go. If one partner has a deep attachment to the home and feels like it's a part of the identity, then downsizing can feel like grief, it can feel like betrayal, it can feel like loss, even if the new home is objectively better. Often couples get stuck, because one partner is looking at the spreadsheet while the other is feeling the story.
So misfit in downsizing shows up as decision fatigue and anxiety. People freeze, they procrastinate. They fight about some random thing like a dining room table, but it's not really about that thing. That dining room table, it's just a stand in for identity. And the energy tax shows up as months, sometimes even years of mental clutter. You can't relax because there's a decision always hovering. And then the money tax shows up because delays aren't free, are they? There's always a cost. And the relationship tax shows up because one partner feels pushed while the other feels trapped and nobody feels understood.
The fix here is to stop treating downsizing like a single event and start treating it like a staged process. Downsizing in stages reduces the nervous system shock. It gives you time to make meaning. It gives you time to preserve what matters and release what doesn't. Sometimes you need outside support. Not because you're incompetent, but because this is emotionally heavy and it's far too easy to stay stuck. That's why people hire me. A good rightsizing realtor and coach can help reduce the cognitive load and give you a path forward. When downsizing works, it reduces your hidden taxes dramatically. And it only works if it respects your psychology.
We don't want to forget sunbirding, do we? I think sunbirding is the dream for many people. Climate optimization, variety, a sense of freedom, chance to be near family part of the year, chance to escape winter, chance to feel more alive. For some people, it's like plugging into a new energy source.
But sunbirding has one of the highest hidden tax potentials if you underestimate the logistics. Two homes is not twice the fun. It's often twice the work. And if one partner is naturally a planner and the other partner is naturally a "we'll figure it out" kind of person, you can end up with a relationship tax where one person becomes the COO of your retirement and has to coordinate all the medical care, the managing medications, keeping records in two places, maintaining two sets of everything, managing property issues from afar. It's a real load.
The misfit version of sunbirding often shows up as dread. If you feel stressed just thinking about moving between two homes or managing two sets of logistics, that's a signal. It doesn't mean the concept is bad, it just means the current design is wrong. Because you can do a "sunbird-light" version that will keep the joy and reduce the tax. You can rent seasonally instead of owning two properties. You can create a clear system for your health records and care continuity. You can hire a local property manager for when you're not there. You can simplify the number of transition days or reduce duplication. The point is, sunbirding should feel like expansion, not like you're running a small business.
But let's talk even more about couples because I think this is where the hidden tax can quietly become the biggest. Couples rarely have identical personality needs and that's normal. In fact, it can be a strength. One partner might be the anchor: they love routine, they love familiarity, they love predictability. One partner might be the explorer: they love novelty, stimulation, variety, a sense of possibility. One might be a simplifier, where they feel relief when life is streamlined. The other might be sentimental, they feel grounded when surrounded by history and objects that hold meaning.
I think the problem is when couples assume that retirement should feel the same to both people. It won't. So instead of trying to force one shared fantasy, you need to build a shared operating system. Something that protects both people's healthspan and wealthspan and doesn't quietly drain the relationship.
Here's the most important reframe. The goal is not agreement on the perfect lifestyle. The goal is a plan that is resentment-resistant. A plan that doesn't require one partner has to constantly override their temperament. Because if your plan requires one of you to sacrifice your core needs indefinitely, you haven't created harmony, have you? You've created delayed conflict.
So how do we do this practically? Well, I would say start by identifying your non-negotiables. Not your preferences, not the nice-to-haves, non-negotiables. And keep it small, because if everything is non-negotiable, nothing is. Each partner gets only three, and they should be tied to health and physical function and identity stability.
For one person, a non-negotiable might sound like "I need to live near my people". For another, it might be "I need quiet and control over my environment". Yet another, it could be "I need winter sun because my joints and mood tank in the cold". Or "I need predictable routine, I don't want constant transitions".
And then you decide what you're optimizing for in the next few years. Not forever. The "forever" framing is where couples get stuck because it turns every decision into a permanent identity statement. You don't need a "forever" plan. You need a next phase plan. One that's long enough to matter but short enough to actually make a change. And then you need to get clear on exactly what you're optimizing for. Maybe as a couple you want to be more physically active, have better medical access, get socially connected, reduce stress, simplify logistics. Whatever it is you're essentially asking, "how can we reduce our hidden taxes over the next three to five years"?
And then you look for hybrid solutions before you pick a fight. I think most couples assume there are only two options, my way or the highway. But the win-win solutions are golden, aren't they? If one partner needs roots and the other needs novelty, you can keep a stable home-base and build in extended travel blocks without having to own a second property. If one partner wants to downsize and the other wants to host big family gatherings, choose a smaller primary home with a flexible guest space or plan for short-term rental during the family season. If one partner wants the sunbird life and the other is overwhelmed by logistics, opt for a seasonal rental over ownership. If one wants city life and the other wants nature, you might not need two homes. You might just need to find a place that's accessible to both of those things. Sure, you might pay a little bit more, spend a little more time driving to and from the city and the mountains, but it's a small price to pay for domestic tranquility.
I want to give you a simple way to self-diagnose because I want you to be able to take action after today's episode. Ask yourself this, where do I feel the leaks most? Is it in my energy, money, health, relationship? You don't need to fix everything at once. You need to stop the biggest leaks first. If your energy is leaking, you start buying back energy through support services, simplification, and environment design. If your money is leaking, look at the hidden costs that you're ignoring. Consider whether a proactive move could reduce long-term drain. If your health is leaking, look at your environment, not just your supplement stack. If your relationship is strained, stop trying to win and start building a shared vision.
And here's something that might sound a little counterintuitive. Sometimes the cheapest house is the most expensive lifestyle. Likewise, sometimes staying put is the most expensive choice that you can make even if it saves on moving expenses. Why? because of all those hidden taxes we've been talking about. The goal of rightsizing isn't just to make a smart housing choice or optimize your monthly expenses. It is to design a life that is going to support your lifestyle longevity so that you can keep doing what you love for as long as possible and with as much independence and joy as possible.
So if you're listening to this and thinking, okay, I get it, but I'm still not sure what path we're on, that's exactly why I created the Rightsizing Readiness Quiz. It's designed to help you identify your current fit, your risk factors, and your best next steps. And here's my recommendation for couples. Take the quiz separately and then compare your results. Not to start an argument, but to understand, to have a starting point for your discussion around how to reduce those hidden taxes together.
And if you want help turning those results into an actual plan, one that respects both of your personalities, protects your healthspan, and doesn't quietly drain your wealthspan, I do offer a Rightsized Home and Health Review. That's where we look at your situation through both lenses, the home and the body. Because I've seen too many people make a beautiful housing decision that undermines their health or a health decision that ignores their environment. And then they end up paying anyway.
Your Next Act is far too valuable to spend it paying invisible taxes. You deserve a lifestyle that fits you, not just a house that looks good on your financial planner spreadsheet. So take a deep breath, get honest about your hidden costs. And remember this, you don't have to solve the next 20 years, you just have to stop the biggest leak and take the next right step.
All right, ninjas, until next time, live well, love more, age less.