Office is moving - move with it?

[berbango]

Hi all,

My wife and I work at the same company, and we just learned that they are moving the office to a different part of town. The kicker: 40 minute minimum commute time, one way. A lot of ink has been spilled about minimizing your commute, and I am wondering if we should move to a new place within biking distance. A bunch of things running through my head:

. We bought our current place just 2 years ago. The home value has appreciated, but selling a house is always expensive - do we just need to bite the bullet?

. We are not too far off from FI - maybe 5 or so more years to go, depending on what ends up happening with kids. It feels like a waste to buy a place if we may end up just moving somewhere else in < 10 years once we aren't limited by the location of an office. Should we just rent???

. Our current place is ~10 minutes from family, and across the street from good friends. Moving would slightly increase the family distance and drastically increase the friends distance. My thought is that you don't go to see friends every day, while you go to work more often (3x a week in our case). But it still bums me out! I enjoy walking over for dinner or whatever.

Ultimately, I don't think the financial picture will change too much due to our high savings rate, most of this is emotional fear of change stuff. But I would love some perspective from y'all.

[Catbert]

I'd likely stay where I am, at least for a while.  Doing that commute 3 times a week is better than 5.  Would you and your spouse be able to carpool?  Try to find at least semi-productive activity for your commute - especially for the passenger.   You are right, translation costs are high when buying/selling a house.  Doing that after only 2 years will be expensive, especially since you might(?) move yet again after FIRE and/or children.  If your interest rate is lower than the current % a similarly priced house will cost you more.

     

[AMandM]

My first thought is that house-hunting, selling, buying, packing, and moving will take a lot of time. Maybe several months' worth of commuting if you only go in 3x/week.

Our current place is ~10 minutes from family, and across the street from good friends. Moving would slightly increase the family distance and drastically increase the friends distance. My thought is that you don't go to see friends every day, while you go to work more often (3x a week in our case). But it still bums me out! I enjoy walking over for dinner or whatever.

To me, this is a strong argument against moving. You'll always go to work when you have to. But you rarely if ever have to get together with your friends. If it takes 40 minutes of travel each way every time, you will see your friends way less than you do now. You'll never say "hi" while mowing the lawn, or run over to borrow an egg, or issue a spur-of-the-moment invitation. That's a high price to pay.

I would instead think about optimising the commute for the best combination of money, time, environmental impact, and productivity. E.g. do part of it by bike, spend it in conversation/discussion with your wife, use the time to do phone tasks to free up the evenings,...

[Freedomin5]

Do you like your current house? Is it your dream house in your dream location? If so, I would stay. It's only 3x per week, and the value of having family and friends close by is priceless. And it's only for a few years until you're FI. I would not uproot my entire life for my job.

Any possibility of the commute dropping to 2x per week?

[BECABECA]

Rather than move, I’d be more inclined to interview for jobs closer to your house. And then you could always use a competing offer to negotiate full remote with your current company… or at least a raise for the longer commute.

[Dicey]

Possible interim solution, assuming you don't have kids or pets. Rent a room together and stay there three nights/week. It will be way cheaper than selling and moving. Then focus on finding other jobs or putting the pedal to the FIRE metal.

A friend of mine did this successfully for many years. He didn't mind having tenants during the week, but wanted his home to himself on weekends.

[Paper Chaser]

Have you done any math to determine what the new commute will cost? Have you done any math to determine what moving will cost, or how much you'd spend to live closer to the new office?

Commuting isn't fun, but driving 40 minutes, 3 times per week shouldn't really cost too much if you drive something efficient. I'd be very inclined to stay where you've got an established network of friends and family close by.

[lhamo]

Would your company be amenable to a flexible start/end time on those office work days?

I had a 17km commute across Beijing for about 6 years, the first 2-3 of which were not easily do-able by subway.  Thankfully my boss was open to a somewhat flexible schedule (though he did demand butt in seat, unfortunately, except in rare/unusual circumstances like when my then husband was bed-ridden for several weeks after being hit by a taxi), so my scheduled work hours were 7am-3pm.  I would leave my house around 5:30am to get the first cross-town bus before traffic started, arrive around 6:45 and eat my breakfast.  Going home I would take a taxi for about $4-5/trip, because taking the bus would have taken 2-3 hours in afternoon traffic (which usually wasn't too bad yet at 3 pm).  Had enough time to go to the gym before dinner/evening routine.

NOw that I'm retired I find that I can usually cut 20-30% off the time it takes to get anywhere further away as long as I avoid driving during rush hour.  A 25-30 min commute is much better than a 40 min one.

[GuitarStv]

A 40 minute drive twice a day is not something I would want to commit to for a five year length of time.  I dunno what it's like where you're at, but around here a drive of that distance will add a couple extra minutes each year due to volume increase.  And that doesn't count the many, many times that traffic disruptions would increase the time from 40 minutes to an hour plus.  That time taken from your life is dangerous (surrounded by distracted people on cellphones doing foolish things), tiring (which saps your will to do stuff when you get home other than flop on the couch and eat bon-bons), and frustrating/stressful.

It might make it tolerable if you can set your own start/end times to come in during reduced traffic hours.  That, coupled with 3x a week rather than 5x might make it survivable.  If I really loved my house, I'd still be inclined to hunt for work that's closer though (switching jobs tends to improve your pay and perks for no extra actual work on the job).  If I didn't love my house, I'd be inclined to look at new places closer to the new work location.

[naturalhattrick]

Good time to retire. If you're not there yet, negotiate full WFH, or notify your work you'll only be working those 2 days a week from home. Last resort, look for another job close to where you currently live.

I certainly wouldn't consider moving my entire life just for a job.

[use2betrix]

It would be great if you could negotiate a move to only commuting 2x/wk instead of 3x, so having an extra remote work day.

I used to commute a lot more than I do now. Obviously, I prefer commuting less. That being said, I was just telling my wife last night that I really miss not having that time to listen to audiobooks. I used to get through 20-30 audio books a year, but now I don’t even drive enough that I could get through one while driving in 6+ weeks, so I don’t usually listen to them anymore.

[mustachian816]

How old are the kids?  If they're under 6 then I would consider moving since your FI timeline is more open ended, but if they're closer to middle school or older I wouldn't want to disturb their social life and there's more predictability of your future costs. If you haven't had kids yet, then I would mentally prepare yourself for your FI timeline to take a little longer than expected as there are lots of unexpected expenses.

Either way you go, I would try to negotiate higher pay to offset your extra time and commuting costs, fewer ours, more vacation time etc or start looking for another job closer to home.