Sense of Place and Living Environment | Steph Bruno Mission Wealth

Hello, I’m Steph Bruno. I’m a partner and senior wealth advisor at Mission Wealth. And today I’m excited to talk with you about a sense of place and living environment. Um, I am by no means an expert, but I did leave the city I grew up in at 25 and I’ve moved several times. doesn’t mean it was all rosy. So I thought I would give you something to ponder to avoid some of the challenges that I and some of my clients have faced. There are five main biases we see come into place uh when we think of sense of place. So the first one is status quo bias. So what this may often mean is that people will stay where they currently live simply because it’s familiar. uh even when the environment no longer aligns with their life stage or values. For example, maybe the neighborhood was a great place to raise their kids, but now the kids are launched and gone. Or maybe it was the home someone lived in with their deceased partner. So you uh they worry about leaving all of those memories behind. I’ve seen this uh with my own family. So some of the problems can be that in status quo bias it will prevent people from relocating to communities that are better suited for aging connection or support systems uh which will lead to missed opportunities for connection maybe walkability or better climate health care access. If you feel you or loved one um may be experiencing this bias here are a few things that you can consider. Um first of all there are digital relocation platforms best places uh where to live app which help v visualize tradeoffs across maybe tax burdens, community density, health care access. Sometimes visualizing yourself in a new environment can make the idea of a move more accessible. So if you or your loved one finds that the thought of relocating really challenging, they could also look at cognitive behavioral therapy. There are tools like decision balance worksheets which can help. Um there are some financial planning strategies that your mission wealth advisor can run side by side geographic cost comparisons which can help sometimes too. They can layer in housing liquidity, tax exposure and property maintenance um for aging in place versus relocating as well. The next bias is called rosy retrospection effect. So sometimes people may romanticize past living situations. I was so happy when I lived in Santa Fe and they’ll have a lot of nostalgia that might overly influence their decision. So the problems with these decisions, they’re filtered through selective memory which often ignores stressors that may have existed at the time leading to misplaced expectations for future satisfaction. So some solutions that might help with this would be to utilize journaling to analyze what actually created that fulfillment. Was it that close friends live there? U maybe the city was very walkable and you got a lot of exercise and you felt energetic. There’s some technology you can use like journaling apps like Journey or Reflectly that can help as well and talk about those experiences and can inform whether it was place or the experience that created that nostalgia and maybe just holding an awareness that um according to academic research we all misremember past events sometimes as more positive than they were. Some financial planning strategies that might help would be to build a fulfilled life profile based on values rather than place. So what are you looking for that you value and does that place have that for you? Um you can also create community centered budget categories. So what would a membership to an art museum look like or to the theater um or maybe a ski pass and compare location fit accordingly. Um it just helps you look at what does this location that I’ve been idolizing have that maybe other locations might also have too. So the third one is uh familiarity bias and many people feel more secure choosing to live near where they grew up or maybe where they attended college or maybe even vacationed every summer when they were a kid without examining like how that place aligns with their goals today. Um, this kind of goes handinhand with status quo bias that I reviewed earlier. Um, the problem here is that it really narrows your decision set which might prevent consideration of another uh other new locations that maybe better support lifestyle factors, aging, shared interest or even accessibility. So, some of the solutions that you can use here is you can leverage motivational interviewing to explore ideal daily rhythm. So, think about what you want to do each day. Um, and not just a geography. Uh, does your current environment offer that? There’s a a a couple of apps that you can use like teleport or nomad list that offer rank suggestions based on lifestyle variables like uh whether you might want something that is LGBTQ friendly or maybe has a lot of community engagement or a great library or maybe you want to be in an academic environment. Um some things you can do on the financial planning side is also to model outcomes for different geographies again. So you can focus on what are the social capital and support networks. Um are you in good proximity to adult children or affinity communities? Um does community engagement help you out there? What are the metrics that are really important to you? and does that community have it or would you find that more in other communities? The fourth bias that we’re going to look at is ambiguity aversion. So this is with hundreds of cities and climate variables and tax structures and cultural scenes. Choosing where to live can like overwhelm even the most rational planner. So too many variables often lead to avoidance. um we rely on defaults or we maybe just won’t make decisions. It’s like when you go to the store to buy laundry detergent and there are over 30 different options to choose from and you just really don’t know which one to get. Or maybe that’s just me. Um another solution that you can use here is to break it down into really manageable criteria. What are the things that are important? Healthcare, maybe safety, walkability, uh good transit, community interest groups. So, uh, kind of sort the categories that are really important to you. Um, Smart Asset actually has a relocation quiz that could be helpful when you look at this. Your financial planning uh, strategies with your advisor can help. You can use some decision frameworks to look at, well, let’s look at a budget for cost of living versus tax exposure, relocation costs, uh, maybe community budgets you might need to put in. that can help make the decision a little bit more narrowed in and comparison and you can really make those decisions. The last one is impact bias. So we tend to sometimes overestimate how much living in a new pa place will bring us happiness. So if we think that beachfront town or that ski mountain will increase happiness, it may not always be the case. So it can sometimes cause individuals to overcommit to expensive or isolating environments based on some imagery while ignoring the deeper drivers of satisfaction such as community contribution and routine. And so we think if you’ll think about any new environment, will you be bringing the same challenges you have today to a new place or does that new environment really solve some of those challenges you face in your current environment? Um there are a couple of things that you can think about as a reframe here. So who will I be in this new place? So what will your life look like? you can really try and visualize what you can be in that new place. And something that’s very important, um, what we often advise people to do is go try a new place. If you think you want to live there, you can just go there for a month. Um, try an Airbnb. Um, that’s a lot less expensive than a major relocation. Um, and also energy-wise, not just financial wise. And I would suggest uh go there at different times of year. The beach may be great at certain times of year, may not be as great at other times. Likewise, the same thing for a ski community. If you’re there in the winter, you may love it. Um maybe if you’re there during mud season, might not be as much fun. So, it’s just good to try different places before you actually move. So, I hope this has been helpful. I wish you luck on sorting out your new environment and I hope you’ll keep these things in mind and have a very successful place to live. Take care.