Reply #12: My wife and I used to commute in Los Angeles.

[hunter]

Never again. We've done whatever we can during most of our marriage to avoid commuting. When choosing a place to live, having to commute is heavily weighted against a place. Maybe it's just me, but I've always feel like time spent commuting is lost time, like an amputated limb, you can never get it back. Time with family is always more valuable than time at work, and if you don't value your own time more than your employer does, than you are a slave to your work no matter how much money you make.

Right from the start, I always do the grim math, subtracting the cost of commuting from the wages, and adding the time to the hours. An eight hour job that pays sixty dollars an hour with a one hour commute each way is actually paying $48 dollars an hour before you even subtract the cost of the gas. The drive is part of the work, and not somehow "free," even if you use it to listen to your music or an audio book.

I work at home, and we can see where my wife works, about a mile away, from our house.

Living near your work, or near public transportation hubs, will be increasingly attractive as the price of gasoline rises.

Nice condos in the city will become more desirable than mini-mansions far from any employment opportunities.

It's sort of sad to me that so many people are forced to commute -- that it's the only choice they have to achieve a lifestyle that is acceptable to them.

I do like to drive. I've driven across the country a few times. I've driven up, down and across the Western United States multiple times since I first got my driver's licence, but never for work, I did it because I could, not because I had to. There was never a timeclock where I was going.