For many of us, we spend more time at work than we do at home. Even worse yet, some of us spend more time commuting than in leisure! Moving closer to work can alleviate this time crunch and give you back your free time. With the average commute time increasing 10% in the past 14 years, the question of whether moving closer to work is worth it is all the more relevant.
Why You Should Move Closer
Moving closer to work has numerous benefits financially, emotionally, and physically. It is worth giving good consideration to decide for yourself if these reasons are enough to convince you to move.
Shorter Commute
It goes without saying, if you are closer to work, then you will drive less to get there. When you spend less time commuting, you reclaim more of your day to do what you choose to do, not what you have to do.
When I went from a two hour round trip commute to a 20 minute round trip commute, I gained so much extra time in my day I was not quite sure what to do. An extra 8 hours a week has allowed me to exercise consistently, pick up more household chores we had been neglecting, and spend more time with my son. That is over half a month per year I was spending driving instead of on things I enjoyed!
Less Stress
The stereotypical person yelling at traffic comes to mind here. This study has shown that longer time on the road has been linked to less satisfaction with life, along with a decrease in physical activity and increased sense of time pressure. The variability of traffic can lead to mood swings and eventually anxiety and depression if left unchecked.
To compound on top of this, less time to do things you enjoy adds even more stress since you will have less time to decompress. Exercise in itself is an incredible way to reduce stress among many other benefits. I recommend taking at least a small part of your time savings and devoting it to physical activity even if it is just taking a walk around your neighborhood.
Better Health
Perhaps you are someone who enjoys longer commutes, however studies have shown that it is actually bad for you. Longer commutes tend lead to obesity, higher blood pressure, stress, and exposure to more air pollution.
If you have been waking up earlier than you should be and getting less sleep than you naturally need, by cutting your commute time down you can actually hit your sleep goal. Ironically enough, after moving closer to work I began waking up two hours earlier than I was before, but that was because I had more time in the mornings and evenings to get what I wanted done. I was managing to go to bed on time whereas I used to stay up all night trying to play catch up.
If your commute is bad enough, you will eat worse than you would if you had time to cook for yourself. With a shorter commute, you have time to make better eating decisions leading to better overall health and wellbeing. Less time on the road means less time to stare at fast food restaurants passing you by. I started going home for lunch and catching up on household chores during my lunch breaks. Because I am able to go home I do not have to worry about packing a lunch or going out to eat, so I save time, money, and eat healthier.
Public Transportation
If you move into a city or other area with decent public transportation, you can make the switch from driving yourself to having someone else do it. Not only do you have a shorter commute this way, but you can also spend the time commuting doing something besides staring into traffic.
Are there any activities you do in your spare time you could move to your commute time? Listen to podcasts, check email, write, watch movies or videos… If you shift these to your transportation time, then you can accomplish tasks that require you to be home while at home instead of these activities.
Easier Access to Amenities
Typically, if you are closer to work, you are closer to other things you might like to visit. Unless you work in the middle of no where, you will have easier access to other places for productivity or leisure. For instance, if you go to the gym near your work, it is not too much trouble to go on work days, but what about weekends or days off work?
If your commute is half an hour, then you are wasting two hours on the weekends assuming you go everyday. There goes over four days of your downtime per year! I am not saying you should avoid the gym if you have to drive to it, but an extra four days per year adds up. What about restaurants, shopping, movie theaters, or anywhere you enjoy visiting for leisure?
Saving Money on Transportation
Less driving means less gas, wear and tear, maintenance, insurance, and more. Outside of insurance, this is a benefit that is felt over time, not immediately.
Updating your insurance information with your new lower yearly mileage amount can lead to some shocking savings. Insurance companies are aware the less you drive the less likely you are to get in an accident, so fortunately most will cut your premiums down. I know when I updated mine after I moved closer to work, I was caught off guard at the savings.
Less gas is an obvious benefit, especially if you drive a fuel hungry vehicle. Gas prices have steadily risen over time so this will only be more valuable as time goes on.
Wear and tear is honestly the big one. You won’t feel the financial impact of your vehicle slowly degrading until it hits you in the face. Oil changes, new tires, and other unexpected repairs all come more frequently the more you drive, so by driving less you get to space these out significantly.
Why You Should Not Move Closer
Of course there are some potential negatives to moving closer to work. Unfortunately this is not a decision that benefits everyone, so before deciding to commit, you need to weigh the negatives as well as the positives.
Cost of Living
Typically your place of work will reside somewhere where cost of living is higher than where you live now. If moving closer to work would increase your household expenses by significantly more than you save, then it does not make much sense to move. However, if your commute is significant, such as an hour or more one way, then you need to carefully factor in what your personal time is worth.
Assuming you work in a city, it is likely your rent or mortgage will double or even triple attempting to move into the city. When I was first exploring my options as a soon-to-be-grad, the rent in the city I planned to work in was actually six times as expensive as where I was living on campus. Even now, I would pay 50% more in rent in the city for a studio apartment than I would for my three bed two bath mortgage. Would I pay 50% more if it meant I could save two hours a day, or forty hours a month? That is for you to decide.
Family
For some, living near family means a lot. My wife and I feel fortunate to have both our immediate families relatively nearby. If you are particularly close to yours, then it can be tough to decide between a huge commute time and more family time.
It could be worthwhile to weigh the time savings. If you move half an hour further from family to save an hour round trip, and you visit family once a week, then you will save four hours a week overall (assuming five work days.) As a counterpoint, if you use family for childcare, moving further away could make this either a burden or force you to pay for childcare.
More Work
This could be a positive or negative, but since we have been focusing on time savings I will put it here as a negative. If you live near where you work, it is significantly easier for your superiors to expect you to show up at a moment’s notice if they need something. If you are paid a salary, this can be particularly obnoxious as overtime is rarely rewarded appropriately.
This can be mitigated of course if you set expectations appropriately. If you don’t want the extra work then don’t do it or volunteer for it. If you get paid for the time, then all the better. If you are expected to remain “on call” then you should expect to be paid for these “on call” hours.
You will also always be expected to show up to work. If you live five minutes from work, then bad weather or car trouble just do not cut it since someone could come pick you up or you could walk. I am not suggesting that failing to show up to work is a good thing but depending on who you answer to, this point could be fairly annoying.
Environment
Personally, there is something incredibly relaxing being surrounded by farmland. Depending where your workplace is, by moving closer you could be moving into an environment you don’t enjoy. More car traffic, more noise, and no open fields or nature all come to mind.
If you enjoy the city life with all the hustle and bustle, then this is a moot point and is likely a positive in your book. I prefer to take things slower and feel like I am closer to nature, not gridlocked in a concrete jungle.
Best of Both Worlds
If you like where you live and cannot bear to see you moving elsewhere, then why not get the best of both worlds?
Change Your Commute
If you have a flexible workplace, then see if you can leave home and work earlier to avoid traffic. In a particularly egregious example, I know of a nearby workplace where you will save over an hour of commute time if you leave 15 minutes early.
If you work as part of a team where you need to be present together, then this may not be feasible unless you can convince your coworkers to adopt a similar schedule. Likewise, if you are required to be somewhere at a certain time or you cannot do your work, then this would not be possible unless you can get less time sensitive work.
Work From Home
For even more flexibility, see if you can work from home once or twice a month, maybe even a week. If you show that you are even more productive at home, you just might be able to convince your boss to let you work from home more often. This results in zero commute time and is the ultimate time saver.
It is good to get face time with your coworkers however, so do not completely avoid going into the workplace. Also you must be able to self manage very well and get your work done; if you stay home and do little to no work you are going to be worse off than you started!
Move Your Job
Instead of moving where you live, why not move where you work? This is actually what I did recently; I found a place very close to where my family lives and got a job there.
You can take this one step further and find a completely remote position. You will knock your commute time to zero or basically zero if you do manage to have infrequent meetings, and you can live wherever you want. You might get lucky and increase your pay drastically as well, since most remote positions are for workplaces in cities meaning higher cost of living meaning higher expected pay. Even if you take a pay cut, just how much time and money are you saving by removing all your commute time?
Of course, this only works if you can find somewhere nearby that is hiring for your type of work. You are not going to find much non-remote office work in the middle of farmland!
Alternate Transportation
Whether it be carpooling or riding a bike, you can change the way you commute. Public transportation falls into this category, but I wanted to hit it again since it is more broad than that.
By carpooling you get additional time with coworkers (a positive or negative depending on who they are!) and do not have to worry about the costs of commuting as much since you will hopefully share the burden. if your coworker is the one chosen to drive, you can catch up on other things you would rather be doing instead of driving.
If you are relatively near your workplace, riding a bike to work can help consolidate your workout time into your commute time. Biking in itself will actually reduce your stress, costs of commuting, and save you time elsewhere if you are planning to do cardio anyway. This assumes you won’t melt into a puddle of sweat or at a minimum have a shower and change of clothes at work, but if you can pull it off it is an excellent alternative to sitting in your car for several days per year.
Commit to Reduce the Commute
As most things in life tend to go, results may vary. You will need to examine your own life and make that decision for yourself. I would argue most people would benefit from a shorter commute, but I cannot guarantee it. Between the potential time, money, and health savings you are looking at, it is hard to argue against it.
