Free rent vs more flexibility/happiness

[paulsta234]

Hey guys love the community, you guys have helped me before. Hopefully I can help some of you in the future.

So just a bit of backstory. I wanted to start my moustachian journey years ago. I was in a cool tourism job that made it really hard to save and was in a relationship of 18months. I basically put my moustachian dream on hold (i know right) and stayed in this low paying job to make the relationship work but it all blew up in my face.

All good, heading back to Melbourne in 2 weeks to start my journey and I couldn't be more excited. So my dream is to work remotely so I am trying to get a phone based customer service job so I can eventually land a remote customer service job and  I am studying web development so I can have a remote career with that.

While I am working towards all that I am designing my life so I can save as much as I can. Here is my dilemma, there is an opportunity to be a live in mentor in a house with young adults. They are checking my references so I think i have a shot. It's free rent and bills paid for. This would be amazing for saving by my calculations I can save an extra 10,000 a year.
You have to be home 5 nights a week though. the house is in the outer melbourne suburbs, 1 hour train ride out.

My original idea was to live closer in to mebourne, be car free. Coming out of a long term relationship and not having a huge friend network in melbourne i want to go to lots of meetups and make new friends. i don't want to spend lots of money going out though. i will maybe budget 10% for play which will be 70-90 each week.

So my main concern is i want to do it to save so much more it would be amazing. But I am concerned I won't be happy and I will be limiting social interactions and might be isolated. while still being able to to go out 2 nights a week isnt bad (i have some old outdoorsy friends I could potentially going away for some weekends with. they have cars so still cheap but if I do that on those weeks i wont be able to meet new people).
Thoughts?
How do you weigh up maximising savings and happiness?

thanks for reading

[Linea_Norway]

If socializing with friends of your choice is so important to you, then you should live close to your friends. I know from experience that the further you live away from them, the bigger is the hurdle to visit them. Not owning a car is a big saver. Just calculate for yourself how much a car really costs you per year, including road fees, insurance and depreciation. And there is the train that your write about.

If I were you, I would either live in the city without a car, or take that caretaker job and still not take a car. Trains are a bit inconvenient, but they are usually a lot cheaper than a car.
It sounds to me that you find your social life so important that you might not yet be ready to live outside the city... After some years, when your friends move out to have babies and stop going out, you might change your mind.

[socaso]

Well, it sounds like you are in a position where you want to make more friends and you can do that in the city or in the suburbs but if you take the mentor job and work from home it might be more challenging to actually make friends. By your description with this lifestyle you would only have about 2 days a week to get out there and be social. And if you do have to have a car in this scenario that gets pretty expensive.