Spending your day commuting and living in a car dependent hell hole is smarter, just because you can retire a bit sooner? What alternative universe has HN transformed into?

For NYC it can be an easy 30-45 minute train ride where you are free to occupy your time with something productive.

Something productive that can be done in a car or train you mean. Not, say:

- Being with your kids, spouse or helping them out to school or work

- Housekeeping

- Working out

- Doing anything that requires undisturbed attention

As someone with a long train commute, my train time is basically my non-productive "me time". Read a book, read the internet, take a nap, program on fun, non-work projects. If I'm at home, I'm usually engaged in child-care or house-care of some flavor or another, with very little time for simple idleness.

To your last point: in NYC it's pretty easy to do things requiring "undisturbed attention" on a 45 minute express Metro North train into the city from the suburbs. It's a very different experience from the subway.

As for the other three, I guess I could say that I'm not sure it's realistic to try and budget your time so efficiently that a 30-45 minute commute is intolerable. Many people have commutes for which that's a margin of error on how long it will take them - that sounds like a real problem.

Aside from working from home full time, what kind of commute are you looking to have, and at what distance from work? It's not realistic for most people to achieve a 15 minute commute, so 30-45 in a train really isn't that bad. If it really matters then you could do things on the train that would normally keep you from your spouse or kids at home :)

I'm one of those 30-45 minute margin-of-error folks- I'd move into Hoboken or Brookyln for a 45 minute commute in two seconds!

My friend does the Go Train from Oshawa to Toronto every work day. She spends the time on the train either reading a book or watch a video of a show she is following.

On the way home she will sometimes watch a movie and finish it at home. Time on the train does not have to be work or a vegetable.

Just to add perspective here. Toronto anywhere proper, you have to get on a bus generally, to get to the station. Then you have to take the train south to Union. Then take the GO, East to Oshawa. The entire trip can be done in less than hour, but you are walking between connecting options for 10-15 minutes which limits your "free time."

The idea here is many people want a house and if you aren't DINKs then Oshawa was cheaper in housing a while ago. Now it's almost similar to Toronto cost and rent is nearing.

You can trivially get a 30 minute commute just within SF. I imagine other expensive cities are similar. Living within a few minutes of work is a real luxury for all but remote workers.

Depending on how early you retire it can be the smart choice.

That’s 2+ hours per day of your life that you’re never getting back. You can always make more money, but time lost is gone forever.

How much is 2x5x52 = 520 hours worth to you?

If you’re selling your time for even just $100/hour that’s $52,000/year right there. With a 300k salary your hour is worth way more than $100. For your family, it’s priceless.

If you commute by train it’s not all necessarily wasted time. You can read, play games, listen to podcasts, etc.

I always read many more books when I commuted than when I didn’t commute. I find myself making new year’s resolutions to read more. But it was easy when I had the commute as a forcing function. (Not having internet on the subway probably helped...)

If you don’t think reading books is valuable enough to do when you aren’t commuting, is it really valuable to you? Or are you just doing the best you can to salvage a shitty situation?

(I audiobook when running so I’m no better)

I always find other more pertinent/alarming things I need to do at home and the forced lack of internet makes me focus more than I normally would.

Admittedly this doesn't say great things about my attention span...

I think it is valuable, I’m just bad at organising and prioritising my spare time!

300k a year post tax, 50 weeks a year, 50 hours a week, that's $120 an hour.

If it takes an extra hour a day and $500 a month that's $3000 to save a month in housing costs

Don’t forget to take transportation cost out of your $3000 per month.

I live across the street from the office and yes the rent is stupid, but my commute is a 5 minute walk.

And rent is still stupid in a 30min radius (for a total of 1h/day). You really have to go 1h+ radius to make a significant dent in rent around here (SF).

I did - $500 a month. I have no idea what communitng costs, and little idea about rent.

I have a 5 second commute from the bedroom to the office (3 minutes if I go downstairs and boil the kettle first), far easier. Monthly Mortgage is less than the weekly rent that one colleague pays in London, and he still has a 45 minute commute each way.

If you are working for somebody else, you can't exactly make any extra money by working extra hours. At least in a programmers case.

The only real thing to gain in this case is convenience.

I work full time in software engineering and do occasional paid freelancing work. It's quite possible to be full time and work extra.

Depends on your contract and whether you get paid overtime.

It's essentially unpaid work. So you "upgrade" your 40 hour week to a 50 hour week.

In SF the suburbs are called Silicon Valley and are also expensive.

Sufficiently expensive that when I consider Silicon Valley jobs in my future, I also consider getting a pilot license and commuting by plane from the central valley.

There are also suburbs across the bay that are cheaper.

Maybe.

Right now though, my 401k has been doing 15-18% for the last couple of years. My condo has been going up in value by about 13%/year, but I put 20% down and I think I'm at 30-35% equity, and my monthlies are cheaper than an equivalent rental.

The rent + invest vs buy + bank on property value debate is age old, and I won't restart it here, but so far, I'm not doing terrible.