If you’ve ever looked around your “forever home” and felt torn—grateful for the memories, but quietly aware the house may not fit your next decade—this episode is for you. Rightsizing looks like a real estate decision, but the hardest part is often psychological: identity, grief, guilt, and the fear of regret.
If you’ve ever looked around your “forever home” and felt torn—grateful for the memories, but quietly aware the house may not fit your next decade—this episode is for you. Rightsizing looks like a real estate decision, but the hardest part is often psychological: identity, grief, guilt, and the fear of regret.
In this episode of Next Act Ninjas, Rachael Van Pelt walks you through why your brain fights change (status quo bias, the endowment effect, and loss aversion), and why that internal tug-of-war can make a practical move feel like an emotional earthquake. We dismantle the three powerful “forever home” myths—especially the big one: your house is not your legacy…your time and presence are.
You’ll also get concrete ways to honor the chapter without dragging the entire house into the next one: how to “capture” the home in photos/video, choose keepsakes intentionally, redefine what home means, and use simple rituals that give your nervous system closure.
And not everyone should move so Rachael shares what to consider when it comes to your rightsizing decision. The real red flag is staying from avoidance rather than a clear-eyed strategy.
Next Step👉 take this FREE Rightsizing Readiness Quiz: https://bit.ly/4aiIBxx to see where you land when it comes to “home fit” and “health fit”.
Chapters
00:00 You’re Not Just Leaving a House—you’re Renegotiating Identity
01:18 The Emotional Knot: Grief, Guilt, Fear, Obligation
02:26 Why Your Brain Resists Change: Status Quo Bias
03:16 Endowment Effect + Loss Aversion (Why This Feels Like an “Earthquake”)
06:01 Myth #1: “My Home Is My Legacy” (Spoiler: It’s Your Time)
07:31 Myth #2: Do Your Kids Actually Want the House?
09:04 Myth #3: Moving Doesn’t Erase the Story—it Starts a New Chapter
09:59 Practical Healing: Capture the Chapter (Photos, Video, Memory Book)
12:05 Keep the Meaning, Not the Maintenance: Rituals + Closure
15:48 The Emotional Upside of Rightsizing (Energy, Bandwidth, Community Fit)
17:44 Stay or Move? The Red Flag Is Avoidance (Not Loyalty)
20:16 Next Step: Take the Rightsizing Readiness Quiz (Home Fit + Health Fit)
Hey, hey, welcome back to Next Act Ninjas, the go-to podcast for mastering your lifestyle longevity. I'm your host, Rachael Van Pelt. Today, I want to help you make peace with leaving your "forever home", should you be thinking about rightsizing. Because you're not just letting go of a property, you're renegotiating your identity, your story, even your idea of what home means to you.
On the surface, rightsizing looks like a real estate decision. We tend to ask ourselves simple things like, should we stay, should we downsize, should we move closer to kids? Do we trade that three-story home for a single-level ranch? But if you've been listening to this series on rightsizing, you know by now that the hardest parts are rarely about money or logistics. They're about what the house represents to you.
That's why in today's episode, we're going to talk about how to honor the memories and respect the emotional weight of your "forever home" while still choosing a home that actually supports your best Next Act. I want to help you make peace with leaving a beloved home if that is where your path is leading. Let's start by naming the emotions that are really going on under the surface.
When you even toy with the idea of leaving a long time home, it can stir up a slew of emotions. Often there's grief, because it's where we raised the kids, where we celebrated graduations and birthdays and holidays, where we paced the floor waiting for that phone call. Then there's the guilt. We wonder, what will the kids think if we sell their childhood home? Will they get mad? Will they assume we're erasing their memories?
And of course there's fear. What if we regret making a move? What if we hate it and can't go back? Sometimes there's a sense of obligation. We start worrying, maybe we should keep the house to leave to our kids or grandkids. And look, if any of that sounds familiar, I totally get it. It's a completely normal response. This is exactly how a healthy human brain responds to the prospect of change.
Your brain is good at using your emotions to slow you down and say, "Are you sure about that"? In fact, from a psychological standpoint, there are a few very normal cognitive forces at play here. I'm going to walk you through some of them so you know what you're dealing with. One of those forces is something we call status quo bias. Your brain is wired to overvalue whatever is familiar, just because it's more comfortable than the unknown.
Even if the familiar thing has flaws, your brain thinks it's safer because it's known. In other words, even if your stairs or yard work are getting too hard for you to manage, the brain makes them feel safer than they really are. Safer than the unknown alternative. That cognitive bias may have been helpful when we were dodging predators and food was scarce, but in today's world, it can keep us stuck in a situation that is quietly draining us simply because it's familiar.
The second bias is what we call the endowment effect. That's just a fancy way of saying that once something is "ours", we assign more value to it than a neutral observer would. You can see this bias in play when you think something along the lines of "No one's going to love this house the way we did". "There's no way anyone's going to appreciate this garden like I do". And of course, there's a truth to that, isn't there? Other people won't experience the house exactly the way you have. They're going to experience in their own unique way. Endowment bias is your brain's way of protecting what it thinks belongs to you by putting a little glow around it. Your brain's just being a little territorial by nature.
The third bias is loss aversion, which just means we feel the possibility of loss far more intensely than the possibility of gain. Psychologically, losing $10 somehow hurts more than finding $10 feels good, which means when it comes to housing, we feel the potential loss of our current home, our neighborhood, our routine. We feel that much more strongly than we feel the potential gain of easier living or more financial flexibility or a better fit. One emotion just feels more concrete, the other more abstract.
Put those three things together, status quo bias, the endowment effect, and loss aversion, and you can see just why thinking about moving feels like an emotional earthquake. Your brain is not neutral in this conversation. It is not a calm judge in a black robe weighing the pros and cons. It's more like a perfectionist mother shouting, "Don't touch anything. I finally got the house in order", right?
And there's one more layer to this. Many of us equate staying in our "forever home" with loyalty. Loyalty to our family history, to our kids, to our marriage, even to the younger version of ourselves who worked so hard afford a nice place. And we quietly equate moving with some kind of betrayal, as if you're betraying the memories, the hard work, the family narrative. But I challenge you to reexamine that idea. What if, staying in that home is not actually the loyal, noble choice. What if clinging to a home that no longer fits your body, your energy, or your financial reality is actually the betrayal? A disloyalty to your future self. What if moving in a thoughtful, strategic manner before being forced to is one of the most loving, loyal things you can do for yourself and your family?
I'm going to tell you why that's probably true. But to do that, we need to dismantle a few myths about the "forever home". Unfortunately, these myths are powerful and many of us inherited them without realizing it.
The first myth is that your home is your legacy. I hear this all the time. It sounds something like, "We built this home for our family and we plan to leave it to them. I get it. When you've poured decades of mortgage payments, sweat equity, emotional energy into a place, It can feel like your life's work is somehow embedded in the walls.
But here's the truth. Your house is not your legacy. Your time is. Your real legacy is the way you showed up for your kids and grandkids. It's the traditions you created, the values you modeled, the stories you told around the dinner table. It's the way you cared for your aging parents, the way you handled hard seasons, the way you loved each other in every day.
Your home may have hosted those memories, but they're not a trophy to the moments. If your house disappeared tomorrow, the essence of what you've built would still exist in your family's nervous system, in their memories, and in the way they move through their world. For most families, what actually gets passed down as legacy is not the building. It is the experience of being seen, being loved, being guided. And guess what? you can keep creating that legacy in a different space, one that might allow you to be more present, more energetic, and less stressed.
Now, a second myth is that your kids want the house. Maybe they've said that to you, but more likely, they haven't said anything and you're just assuming it. I invite you to test that assumption. And most families I work with, when we have an honest conversation, the adult children, don't actually want to inherit that big 3 or 4,000 square foot maintenance project in a location that doesn't quite fit their own lives today. What they want is emotional continuity, not the physical burden.
They want to know you're safe. They want to sense that family gatherings are still going to happen even if the backdrop changes. They might want a few heirloom items that they can touch and say, "This was moms, we used it every Thanksgiving", but mostly they want relationship. What they don't want is to be tied to a property that is expensive to maintain, that's hard to sell, or a poor fit for their own chapter. And one thing I know for sure, they definitely don't want to deal with your decades worth of stuff in some drawn out estate sale.
So if you're staying in a too big, too complex home because you believe your kids would be disappointed if you sold it, I gently encourage you to have an honest conversation with them. I think you're going to discover that what they really want is for you to have a home that supports your health, your independence, and your joy for as long as possible. That is an enormous gift that you can give them.
The third myth is that leaving means your story in that home didn't matter or somehow erased. Now this one can be sneaky. You might not think this explicitly, but the emotion it shows up is this quiet, dull ache. It stirs up feelings like "Life is short, it's fleeting, my story is ending".
But if you think of your home the way a writer thinks of a chapter, it helps. A chapter can be beautifully written, full of plot twists and character growth and emotion, but it still has to come to an end, doesn't it? Doesn't mean that everything that happened in that chapter was irrelevant. It just means it's time for the next chapter to begin. And each chapter, as you know, is an important piece of the whole story.
Moving doesn't erase your story. It simply says that it's time for another exciting chapter. That said, I think one of the most healing things you can do if you choose to move is to actively capture that chapter instead of just closing the book and shoving it on a shelf. If you're thinking about leaving a long time home, there are some really practical concrete strategies that you can use to gently loosen your emotional attachment without dishonoring what that place meant to you.
One thing I highly suggest that you do is you curate some of those memories. Your brain is holding on to many decades worth of moments in a kind of diffuse cloud. It can feel overwhelming having all those memories bouncing around untethered in your brain. And one way to honor that is to literally walk through your house with a phone and take pictures of the rooms that hold meaning for you. It might be the corner of that kitchen where everyone gathered. Or maybe it's the worn spot on the stair landing where the dog liked to sleep and keep watch over the house. The view from the back deck at sunset, that sort of thing. For that matter, you probably already have a bunch of pictures in your phone. Just go through and pick your favorites.
You can even do a video walkthrough narrating as you go. Saying things like, "This hallway, this is where we hung the kids' school pictures. This is the pantry where we hid the Christmas cookies. This is the window where I watched you ride your bike for the first time". That narration becomes a part of your family's story. And then just take those videos and photos and save them to a digital album that's easy to share with family. Title it something like Our Years on Maple Grove or wherever, right?
Maybe you even use an online photo service to make a printed book to give to your family at Christmas. They're really cheap and easy to make these days. Just remember, this doesn't have to be a major art project. You don't need to be a scrapbook queen or a videographer. It can be done quickly and imperfectly and still be incredibly meaningful. The important thing is to get the memories out of your head and into a form that honors and preserves them.
Another strategy I recommend is to intentionally turn a few objects into keepsakes instead of letting everything blur together. When everything feels precious, nothing actually gets honored. So rather than trying to keep every dish, every chair, every holiday decoration, you can deliberately choose a small set of symbolic items with a story attached. Maybe it's the dining table where you hosted all the chaotic Thanksgiving dinners. Maybe it's one piece of art that always made you smile. Or just that one lamp that sat next to the chair where you read to your kids every night. Maybe it's one item per child that they choose themselves.
The key is to let those objects become tangible anchors for memory instead of dragging the entire contents of your large house into the next chapter. Everything else, you bless and you release it. I know that might sound a little woo-woo, but in practice, it simply means you're acknowledging the role that those objects played in your life and you're allowing them to move on. Regardless of whether you sell or donate your stuff, you're not throwing your life away. You're letting your things do good somewhere else.
A third strategy, and I find this one very powerful, is to redefine what home even means to you before you move. A lot of people resist leaving because they've accidentally fused the very concept of home with a specific piece of property, a specific address. So when they think about moving, it feels like they're stepping into homelessness at an emotional level, even if they're moving into something that's beautiful and functional.
If that's you, I want you to begin to untangle that by journaling or having conversations around questions like, "What qualities made this home special"? Was it the light in the mornings, the walkability of the neighborhood, the fact that the neighbors knew your name, the garden you poured your heart into? Then ask, how could those same qualities show up in a different home, maybe even better?
Sometimes I think people realize that what they've loved is not the four bedrooms in the big yard. It's the sense of welcome, the familiar routines, the proximity to people they care about. Those things can be intentionally recreated. You're not giving up home. You're upgrading how home functions for this stage of life.
Finally, I'm a big believer in small symbolic rituals that give us closure. Our brains like ritual. We have them for funerals, for weddings, for graduations, because ritual helps our nervous system transition. Leaving a long time home is a major transition, but often people simply push through the logistics and they never consciously say goodbye. And then they wonder why they're haunted by this unsettled feeling afterward.
You could do a simple ritual like a final family dinner in the home, if it's just takeout. Go around the table, invite each person to share one memory or one thing they're grateful for about the home, and then just make a toast to the house that held us and say thank you. Or physically walk room to room, either alone or with your partner, your family members, and in each space, name one memory out loud and say thank you and say goodbye. I know it sounds childish, but I've watched this be incredibly grounding for people. It gives your brain and your body a chance to register that we're closing this chapter with intention.
Now I don't want this whole conversation to live on the side of loss because rightsizing when it's done thoughtfully is not about shrinking your life. It's about designing the emotional upside of your next home. So let's shift into that for a moment.
Imagine yourself three years after a move that went well, meaning that you chose the right, rightsized home at the right time. What might be different in your day to day emotional life? Maybe your daily load is lighter. Maybe you're not mentally budgeting energy for stairs, snow shoveling, yard work, constant repairs, and that frees up mental bandwidth and physical energy to do things you actually care about, like meeting a friend for coffee or volunteering or traveling or spending an extra hour on the floor with your grandkids because you're not already exhausted from dealing with a leaky roof or something like that.
Maybe you've chosen a community that actually matches the way you live, not the way you lived 20 years ago. That might mean better walkability, so you're less car dependent. It might mean a building with an elevator instead of stairs, or a smaller home with less to clean, so you can maintain it yourself longer. It might mean being closer to kids or to a social circle that you see regularly.
When you picture that, ask yourself a slightly provocative question. If the house you're in today is costing you the freedom to show up as your best self in your relationships or anywhere else, is that really honoring the memories that it holds or is it clinging to the stage at the expense of the story?
There's a contrarian truth here. Sometimes the most faithful way to honor what your home has meant to you is to let it go while you still have the strength and agency to choose what comes next. It's a way of saying, because this chapter mattered so much, I'm going to carry its lesson forward rather than getting stuck trying to live inside a museum of my past.
Now, as much as I'm an advocate for rightsizing, I also want to be very clear. Not everyone should move. There are absolutely cases where staying put is emotionally and practically the right thing to do. The key is being honest about which camp you're in. Some people truly do best psychologically staying where they are, especially if the home is already easy to manage, can be adapted safely, and is embedded in a strong support network. Maybe your home is already a single-level, low maintenance place in a walkable area and neighborhood with neighbors and social circles, people who can check in on you.
Maybe the numbers work. The property taxes are manageable, you're not house poor, you've done the work to make the home as age-friendly as possible. In that scenario, the question then becomes, "How do we intentionally invest in making this home a support base for the next 20 years"? Maybe that's putting in grab bars or better lighting or doing a bathroom remodel, finding people who can help you with yard work, that sort of thing.
Staying is not the problem as long as you are staying with your eyes wide open. The red flag for me as a coach and a former physiologist is when staying is driven primarily around fear or guilt or procrastination. When the story sounds something like, "I know this place doesn't really work for us anymore, but the idea of sorting through everything is too overwhelming. We're just going to stay here, not think about it". Or "we can't move, the kids would be devastated", even though the kids haven't even said that, right? Or "we'll wait until one of us has a health crisis and figure it out later". Even if no one would say it exactly like that, that's sort of the underlying premise. That's not loyalty, that's avoidance. And avoidance is, while very human and understandable, it's also very costly, financially and emotionally. If you wait until a crisis forces your hand, you often end up with fewer choices, more stress, and more regret.
So as you're listening, I want you to gently ask yourself, am I staying in this home because it genuinely supports my health, my relationships, and my financial resilience for my Next Act? Or am I staying because it's familiar and I'm scared of what I'd if I actually let myself imagine something There's no gold star for either answer. There is only clarity or fog. My goal is to help you move out of the fog.
So as we wrap up today, I want to bring this back to identity because that's where we started. You're not just leaving square footage, you're renegotiating your identity, your story, your idea of home. Leaving a long time house can feel like you're abandoning your past self. But what if you treated it instead as an act of care for your future self? You are not abandoning your life chapter, you're authoring the next one.
You're allowed to say this home was perfect for our child-raising years, for our careers, for the intense middle stretch. And now my body, my energy, my priorities, my finances need something different. That's not failure, that's growth. And if you decide to stay, you can still turn the page emotionally. You can still say we're staying, but we're not going to sleepwalk through the next decade. We're going to rightsize our daily life inside these walls. Our routines, our health habits, the way we use our space, all of those things, we can rightsize so that this house doesn't quietly become a burden.
And if you need help figuring out where you are in this process, the next best step I can offer you is to take my Rightsizing Readiness Quiz. I designed it specifically for people like you who are wrestling with exactly these questions. The quiz looks at both your "home fit" and your "health fit" because those two things are intertwined. When you take the quiz, you're going to get feedback right away that helps you see whether you're well positioned to comfortably age-in-place with some tweaks or whether you're in that sweet spot where rightsizing in the next few years could dramatically improve your freedom and peace of mind. Or whether you're somewhere in between and just need a clearer game plan. You can find the link to that short quiz in the show notes. It'll just take you a few minutes and it'll give you language and insight that you can use in conversations with your spouse, with your kids, or your financial advisor.
However you decide to move forward, whether you turn the page by moving or by transforming the way you live in your current home, I want you to remember this. Your house is not your legacy. Your time is. Your energy is. Your presence is your legacy. And you deserve a living environment that's going to support you in showing up fully for the years that you still have ahead of you.
Thanks for spending this time with me today. If this episode stirred something in you, I'd love for you to take the quiz, share the episode with a friend who's in a similar spot, and keep this conversation going. Your Next Act isn't about letting go of your past. It's about building on it with intention. Until next time, live well, love more, age less, my friends.