Welcome to the Getting Your Edge Podcast: Rightsizing Your Home and Life

In episode number one, our hosts, Dennis Day and Judy Gratton, will explain to  you what their podcast is about, introduce themselves to you,  and lay the groundwork for upcoming episodes about "Rightsizing" your home and life

Transcript

Welcome to the Finding Your Edge Podcast | EP-1

Dennis Day  00:00

Hello. My name is Dennis Day. I'm with the edge group real estate and you're listening to the edge group getting your edge podcast.

Judy Gratton  00:09

And hi, I'm Judy Gratton. This is episode one of our brand-new podcast.

Dennis Day  00:14

How are you doing today, Judy?

Judy Gratton  00:16

I'm doing really well. Thanks, and I'm really excited that we're finally getting this podcast up and running.

Dennis Day  00:22

I know it's a lot more work than you think. So, let's tell people why are we here? What's the purpose of our podcast?

Judy Gratton  00:33

Well, we're here to talk about right sizing and right sizing simply means getting you and your family into a home that fits your lifestyle and budget.

Dennis Day  00:44

Right size. Are you sure? That is even a real word?

Judy Gratton  00:49

It certainly is. You can even find it in the dictionary if you look, but it means different things to different people depending on where they currently are in their lives and what their needs are. They're all over the board.

Dennis Day  01:02

So, who is Judy Gratton? 

Judy Gratton  01:04

Well, Judy Gratton is a realtor with John L. Scott and part of the edge Group team, and I'm involved in this podcast because I have a little experience with right sizing personally, from the time I was born until I was 18. I moved 23 times and during my careers, plural, I've kind of been a jack of all trades. I started out early on in my life. I got a really great opportunity to do some photographic modeling and was able to live in Japan for a couple of years and after that, I became a flight attendant and then I worked as a talent agent for a while, and finally settled on real estate and I think that's where I really found my calling. I have always loved working with people, and I absolutely love the Pacific Northwest. I fell in love with the I am not a native, but I fell in love with it when I moved here. It's fine helping people find their homes here.

Dennis Day  02:09

So, you moved 23 times before you were 18. So, more than once a year.

Judy Gratton  02:10

Absolutely. Yep. My dad was in construction. So, whenever there was a new construction site off we went.

Dennis Day  02:25

How many schools did you attend?

Judy Gratton  02:27

I really don't know for certain, but I know I attended four junior high's in two years.

Dennis Day  02:35

Oh my gosh. You were always the new kid?

Judy Gratton  02:38

I was.

Dennis Day  02:41

Well, your life sounds a little more exciting than mine.

Judy Gratton  02:46

I have to admit I had fun. But tell me who is Dennis Day?

Dennis Day  02:51

I was born and raised in Seattle area. Here I'm a lifelong resident of Puget Sound and that's where our business is in the Seattle area. I worked in the food industry for 10 years to pay for college. That was a lot of fun and dirty, hard, smelly work. After college, I went and became kind of teaching certificate and became an elementary school librarian for 31 years and I retired a couple years ago. Now, I'm a real estate broker with John L. Scott and party edge group team also.

Judy Gratton  03:26

Well, I also happen to know that you're quite a soccer fan. Doesn't your son play semi pro soccer. 

Dennis Day  03:32

He does and I was just coached when he was younger, and he played all over the West. He's playing for the Everett Jets, which is a semi pro team, and they'll start their spring season around February 2023. I just thoroughly enjoy watching him play as long as he's having fun.

Judy Gratton  03:54

Oh, good. Oh, go Everett jets so.

Dennis Day  03:59

Well, with all those years 28 moves plus over two decades in real estate, you've got to have some interesting experiences of clients needing to right size.

Judy Gratton  04:11

Yes, I have many, many and I'll just give you a couple of examples so you can see how different right sizing can be. Early on in my career, I had a young couple come to me who were looking for a new home. They had two children and they had outgrown their current home and so they were looking for something larger for their family. We looked around at several homes found a really nice much larger home in the Snohomish area that fit their needs perfectly and on the day of closing, they found out they were expecting their child so that was a really happy experience for them. It was fun to help them move up into the next level of their lives and they were super excited. At the other end of the spectrum a couple of years ago, we had a couple who were downsizing basically, for the last time. They were currently living in a 55 plus community, their home, there was a single-family home and was two bedrooms and they were going to be moving to Minnesota into an assisted living situation, because they both had terminal illnesses. So, they had to let go of everything they owned out to make that move and it was a very emotional transaction if you want to call it that. Very emotional for them. We help them do a garage sale, help them find a place for things that they couldn't sell and didn't want to take with them and it was very emotional for us as well, because you become part of the family sort of in real estate transactions for the brief period of time that you work with people. So, it was very hard to say goodbye. So, those are two examples. 

Dennis Day  06:06

You get used to working intensely with these families and then it sort of just stops and it just kind of drops off and you're like, oh, I miss them. Yeah, we've started this podcast and really like to explain to people how we're going to help them. I mean, we've talked about very different experiences of different kinds of right sizing. Right sizing really isn't a one size fits all term. 

Judy Gratton  06:38

No, not at all. I mean, you have people at the very beginning of purchasing their home, maybe fresh out of college or newly married and all they really need is a small condominium. But with every change in their life. Normally there's something they need to change about how and where they're living. Maybe they're being transferred to a new job. We run into that here a lot and these people are coming from other parts of the country and generally don't know anything about this area. When I first moved up to Seattle, I was a flight attendant, and I didn't know the north end from the south end. I had no clue about where to look to even consider living and we ended up our first condo was in Lynwood and as a result, I think we just kind of gravitated to the north end and yet I know people who their first homes were in Federal Way, and they've gravitated to the south end. So, we help people find information on the areas that they will be moving to, so they can make informed decisions on where they want to live.

Dennis Day  07:48

What is the listener going to get from this podcast in the future?

Judy Gratton  07:52

We've tried to come up with and we have a few different episodes on different aspects of right sizing and we're going to be starting in the beginning of our podcasts with talking about downsizing specifically. We're going to provide high quality information based on our experience and then we're also going to be bringing in experts and guests providing resources like timelines and booklets that would be helpful to people and we've got giveaways our listeners can easily get and we can answer any questions you might have right here on the air. 

Dennis Day  08:29

You have freebies? I love freebies.

Judy Gratton  08:32

Yes, I'll tell you how to get those later.

Dennis Day  08:35

So, we built our business Judy as Edge Group team, specifically around helping people right size their home and their life. I want to tell our listeners that why I'm so passionate about this topic. I know, passionate is it's kind of an overused word. I'm passionate about coffee. I'm passionate about this or that. But it's true. I'm passionate because it's personal. I right size, my parents four times in a 15-year period. I wasn't a realtor. I was a librarian at that time and each time on my siblings and I were stumbling around trying to find resources on the fly. We had to make snap decisions based on emotions, like panic and the decisions sometimes just didn't go well. They were poor. It wasn't fun. In fact, it was awful at times, and at times, it was a full-time job on top of working in the school system and through this podcast and our giveaways, I want to help our listeners so that your family doesn't have to go through what my family did. So, you can make informed decisions. You can make timely decisions. You'll get guidance through a difficult process and that's why I'm so excited about this podcast. Why do you want to create the podcast, Judy?

Judy Gratton  09:53

I think basically it comes around the questions that I have received and the situation questions that I have been in, in different transactions. I'll be at my parents, I moved them here from Arkansas, and they downsized. So, I was able to help them and it at times was very frustrating and very difficult. But I also got to help my daughter by her first townhome once she graduated from college and in each of those situations, there were questions around the particular situation that needed to be answered and so over the years, I have developed the experience to be able to answer almost any question and if I don't know the answer, and I'm not going to say I know them, I will certainly find them for them. So, that's why I wanted to develop this podcast to help find those answers for people. So, it does make those transactions and transitions easier in their lives and the lives of their family.

Dennis Day  10:57

So, we've defined what right sizing is, and I'm gonna say it again, as an educator for 31 years, I've learned that if you repeat things multiple times, sometimes they stick. So, right sizing simply means getting you and your family into a home that fits your lifestyle and your budget. So, episode one here is just really laying the groundwork for our series of podcasts that are coming up. What is our next episode about? I think you teased it a little bit earlier.

Judy Gratton  11:25

I did. Okay, it's about making a plan and we're going to look at it in regard to steps in a five-year plan for right sizing.

Dennis Day  11:37

Five years seems like an awful long time.

Judy Gratton  11:41

Not really. But your timeline is your own. Five years is a good place to start, if possible. But if that doesn't work for you, then you'll have to adjust the timeline to fit your personal timeline. Some people have a year. Some people don't have any time at all. It's kind of put on them suddenly and hopefully we can find answers that will fit your timeline.

Dennis Day  12:05

And as we mentioned, we're going to have guest speakers and experts from all kinds of different fields. What are some of those fields that we're looking for in the future?

Judy Gratton  12:16

Well, we have someone who's going to talk about the financing that you might want to look into towards making that plan. We're going to have someone who's going to talk about estate sales, and how you can, when you're downsizing, begin to find ways to get rid of all of the things that all of us have accumulated over the years. We're going to have someone talk about maintaining your home for that five year period so that when you go to sell it, you don't have huge expenses and getting it repaired so it can sell. Those are just some of the examples. So, how about we tell our listeners how to get a freebie from episode one?

Dennis Day  12:55

Freebies. I love freebies. 

Judy Gratton  12:58

I know you've already told us. 

Dennis Day  13:00

I know but we do have a great freebie and yes, it is free. It's called the Would You Rather? game. Can you explain to folks what that is?

Judy Gratton  13:11

Sure. So, it is we have a series of questions that start with Would You Rather and depending on your answers, you will get points and at the end of the questions, you add up your points to find out what level of right sizing you may be add at this point in your life. There's no right or wrong answers.

Dennis Day  13:31

So, if you rack up a whole bunch of points, that doesn't mean you have to right size.

Judy Gratton  13:36

Oh, absolutely not. Right sizing is the decision that you make in your life on your timeline. But it does make you stop and think about what you have been thinking about anyway and haven't really been paying attention to.

Judy Gratton  13:50

Yeah, it's gonna give you some questions to let you focus on where your life is that, is your current situation really fitting your lifestyle and your budget. So, I'm going to tell you how to get that. All you have to do is go to the edge group real estate website, and that is;

www.edgegrouprealestateservices.com. 

At the top, there'll be a button that says freebies and you click on that, you know, pull up a PDF. You'll be able to download it for free or you can read it online. There's no sign up for the Would You Rather? game.

Judy Gratton  14:32

Super. So, this is just our first episode and it's the one that's just kind of setting us up for the future. We drop new episodes on the first and third Mondays of every month.

Dennis Day  14:45

And we would love you to like this podcast, share it with friends, family or someone who could really use it. Give it a rating. Write a review, that would really be awesome. You can also email us any questions you have, and we might bring those up on the air. If you email at;

answers@edgegrouprealestateservices.com.

Judy Gratton  15:10

That sounds great. I think that's it for our first episode.

Dennis Day  15:15

So, in a couple of weeks look for our next episode. It went really fast. Thank you, Judy. 

Judy Gratton  15:21

Thank you.

Dennis Day  15:22

And thanks to our listeners. Until next time. Goodbye. 

Judy Gratton  15:26

Until next time.