[Kaii]

If you guys had a chance to live somewhere you loved, but you had a great job that was far away, how far would you be willing to drive? Let's assume it's all highway with some traffic, but not really terrible. Let's also assume you can't or don't want to stay in a hotel during the week and drive back home on the weekends and didn't have family or friends to stay with. The job is not more than three hours away.

Thoughts?

[scotian]

Fifteen minutes.

[Hades]

Bring a tent, camp out at work three or four days, get one week of labor done, go home
At that rate, I would accept a one hour drive. Barring that, a ride.

[hydrogonian]

Under the conditions that the commute would be 3 days per week or less, and that the difference between my pay and the COL of where I lived was worthwhile, I'd commute up to 1.5 hours.

As you may be able to tell, I've thought about this.

I've even thought about "supercommuting" via commercial flying. The only thing that ruins that is the most often terrible commutes to and from the major airports in larger cities, which ruin the time economy (pushing it past 2 hours one way).

Train or bus seem to be the best options for longer commutes. Car is good as long as tolls, traffic and parking aren't too bad (though also calculate in repair cost per mile), but you free up work-time by resigning yourself to train or bus.

Stay in a hotel if you have to be there on consecutive days.

For a 5 day per week commute, my tolerance would be one hour each way if living far from where I worked was worthwhile in all important respects.

[Veloce]

45 minutes with no traffic.

45 minutes sitting in traffic...my house would have to have a badass pool, a music studio, a gym, and stocked with a team of nubile cheerleaders while I'm making $250k+/year.

That's how much I hate traffic.

[brick tamland]

^ What these guys said...
I'm not fond of traffic so for a perfect neighbourhood, I'd survive up to a 90 minute round trip.

[General Stalin]

If the job was 3 hours away thats at least 6 hours of driving plus ~8 hours of work. This dream dwelling would basically be a really nice place to sleep for 10 hours a night inbetween work/commute. No thanks.

If I were "living somewhere I love" I would try my hardest to eliminate having to spend time away from it. I would say I'd be willing to commute 0%. If it were truly a place I "loved" then I'd want to work from home or have some sort of means of making a living where I didn't have to be away from home. The exception would be if I had a job that was long distance travel for brief periods with long periods of time to myself back at home in between.

[Travesty]

20 minutes no traffic, 30 minutes with max. Of course as said zero is best, because you should love your home and your hood or you are doing it wrong.

Anymore than that it is such a waste for guys working on the $ end of things working to achieve freedom.

[kaotic]

As I commute already about an hour with traffic 30 without traffic. I'd say that or less for a place I loved living.

[ElFlaco]

I read somewhere that 20 minutes is the ideal commute in terms of being statistically associated with satisfaction in life. Not sure if they controlled for city/suburban/rural living. In any event, 20 minutes sounds about right to me. Much longer than that and it takes a lot of compensating factors to make up for it. Where I live now, some people commute up to two or even three hours one way, just so they can have a house of their own. Insane.



Counterintuitively, zero commute is not ideal. Most people benefit from having some separation between home and work; that time can be used to get yourself into work mode or decompress afterwards. My best commute ever was 20 minutes by bike, in downtown traffic for the last few minutes. A quick shower / spongebath and I was jazzed up to jump into problems at work. Stinky bike commuter.

[Ringo]

Commuting requires money and, most importantly, time.

What good is your awesome pad if you don't spend time on it?

Also - have you done the math to see if it's actually economically smart to do this commute? For a good breakdown on costs, check out this blog post by Mr. Money Mustache.

I used to work 1h away from home by train. For the past year I've been living 15 min away by bike - life has improved in so many aspects it's not even funny. Expenses are down; health (both physical and mental), enjoyment, fun and time free are up. I'm never going back to living far away.

[AneroidOcean]

A commute has dimishing returns, or rather, increasing downsides.

I live by the beach and would love to work mainly from home. As I've already spent way too much of my life commuting, I'd much rather not have to. At the moment my tolerance is to have a 20 minute one way commute (or less). I could tolerate up to a 30 minute commute each way if I increased my income AND my flexibility of working hours (which is actually my goal). Anything beyond that and I'm significantly increasing my stress level and dissatisfaction. Also, traffic sucks.

[8ball]

Clearly none of you live in LA...

[Suits]

I routinely commute one-hour each way to different work-sites. Yesterday it was 90 minutes each way to go see a client site in the very south of Beijing.

It's worth it. It allows me to work fewer actual hours, because the commuting gets me places where I make much better hourly income.

[Dr. Howard]

I commute zero hours. I enjoy it.

I think if you live somewhere you really like your best bet is to get a job with an exit strategy. The migrant workers of newfoundland are a good example, few to none of them actually wanted to leave the island so they took fly in/fly out jobs with long shifts, production bonuses or plenty of opportunity for overtime. The ones I worked with were hard working, driven men because they had a goal that wasn't long term, they had an exit strategy. They paid off their houses at home, banked about another 50 to 80k and then moved back to the island to work normal or casual hours at a much lower wage.

[Guitarman]

Fuck that! Just live where you love and create your own business that is either a short or no commute from your home.

Commuting to a cubicle corporate job is for betas.

[Guitarman]

BTW, I have NEVER and would never commute more than 30 minutes.

[Veloce]

(07-19-2016 03:51 PM)8ball Wrote:  

Clearly none of you live in LA...

Lived there 15 years. I think the worst commute I ever had was from West Hollywood to Brentwood. There is simply no fast way to get to Brentwood (I usually just took Sunset) In perfect traffic I could get to work in 20 minutes. Average was 30. With traffic it sometimes took 45.

But on that note I once had a job in Malibu when I was living in Ventura. It took 45 minutes each way, but that was 45 minutes of driving along PCH, which was a joy and I loved that drive. Sometimes on my way back to Ventura I would pick up a hitchhiker and have some pretty insane conversations or make a new friend.

I never had to take any major freeways to commute. I would never, ever, in a million years, create a lifestyle where I had to drive on the 405 or 10 every day.

[Dr. Howard]

^Reminded by Veloce's post above is that commuting can be less of a headache if you have a good or flexible employer.

I really hated commuting, it added up to about 40 min, and so my boss allowed me to shift my work day so I started at 6:30 am and ended at 3:30pm. Not driving in rush hour dropped my travel time to 25 min.

Also, when thinking about commuting add up all of your time. For the job above, I previously walked to work. Walking involved putting my shoes on, opening the door, and I was on my "commute". I ended my commute by walking in the door of the office and to my desk.

Compare that to driving a car, especially in the snowy midwest. In winter commuting involves warming up the car, maybe getting gas, parking in a shitty ramp somewhere, disembarking from the car, then walking from that ramp (with climate appropriate clothing) to the office. Getting from my parking spot to my desk added an extra 10 min to my "commute" that I didn't have walking.

[Travesty]

(07-19-2016 03:51 PM)8ball Wrote:  

Clearly none of you live in LA...

You mean a lot of us used to.

[Kaii]

Thanks guys for the replies. Gives me something to think about.