Hey all
Question:
How would you weigh where to live when your choices all involve a car commute, and living within town will increase my commute + raise our rent slightly.
Background:
New job relocates us to a fairly rural area for the next two years. My workplace is in a spot where there are no rentals within biking distance.
Choice 1: We could live ~8-10 miles from my workplace outside of town for about $1,000. The commute would be ~15 minutes but we'd need to drive everywhere, including to the grocery store. We'd almost certainly have a large yard but there are no sidewalks.
Choice 2: We could live in town within walking distance of groceries, library, park, etc. for ~$1100, but my commute would jump to 17 miles (about 20 minutes each way).
SO currently does not have a position, and it's 50/50 whether she would work in the same place as me or elsewhere (there's about a half-dozen possibilities, so very hard to plan).
We've spent the past 6 years living within walking distance to our work right downtown, so we are wrapping our heads around the idea of becoming daily commuters again.
Basically it comes down to living closer to work for slightly cheaper, but needing to drive everywhere else. OR I'd add 16 miles of driving (round trip a day) and another $100 to our rent to NOT have to drive anytime we wanted groceries or to go anywhere else. Annually it would be an additional ~3,500 miles in commuting (est. $1,400 in vehicle costs) and an additional $1,200 in rent, plus an additional 55 hours in the car/year. Some of that would be mitigated by fewer trips to the store.
Normally I'd try to live as close to work as possible, but iv'e been second and third guessing this strategy here.