London work Devon home

[Queenofthesilverdollar]

Have the chance of a great job in London probably starting in September. I live in London It will be DS U6th year, DH is stay at home dad - I’m wondering how it would work.

How does Devon come into this if you live & work in London?

Sorry ! I live in Devon

we have had property in a county near devon and worked in london. And once we had kids i worked from home in rural county and husband worked away normally. it is not ideal but we did it mainly for financial reasons and couldnt get decent paid jobs locally. the kids were younger a lot of the time and it did get easier as they get older.

things we didnt like were the commuting - best way we found was for husband to work from home 1 day a week - he left for work very early on the monday morning (I couldnt have got up that early and then worked all da)- otherwise you break up the weekend. In winter you have the bad weather in summer tourist traffic

he also missed out on time with the kids. and once they left for uni it was just me at home - would your husband find this lonely or could he spend the week with you in london.

you also need to factor in the cost of accommodation/travel

We did this for 5 years. Looking back we wished we’d done things differently as dh missed a huge amount of dds teenage years, plus I missed out on his support. We were both very lonely!

The positives- it did a huge amount for dhs career and we wouldn’t have the business we have now, if he hadn’t spent those years in London.

It’s a difficult one but as your son is in U6, I think in your position I’d go for it!

Are you able to arrange some flexible working? I live on the Devon/Dorset border and work in London. Lots of people do it. I get the 6am ish train and to my office by 9:30, then 4pm ish train home and walk in the house around 7:30. I work on the train and am in office core hours. I generally do this 3 days a week, work from home 1 day. I work compressed hours so FT 4 days a week. Dh also has a busy FT career, but he's self-employed so plenty of flexibility. With a SAHP at home, it would be easy. There is also the option of staying up part of the week and that's probably what I'll do in the future now that dc aren't babies anymore (I started when eldest was 11 months). So I'll go up Tuesday, come home Thursday evening, so 3 days/2 nights away but only two weeks out of the month.

The main thing to be mindful of is the cost of travel. Do not go by current train fares as they are ridiculously low at the moment due to COVID. My monthly ticket is about £800 including parking at the station then there are tube costs on top. Your salary has to be enough to absorb that extra cost.

But it works well for me. I quite like the time on the train and I get a lot done while commuting. I couldn't really imagine ever working in Devon (there would be few jobs in my niche sector anyway), but I wouldn't want to live in London either. Been there, done that. I like having the best of both worlds.

Thanks all sounds doable for us then, very exciting

Where in Devon do you live?

South Hams

My husband does this commute - the train from Totnes to Paddington is a relatively quick journey. He goes up early Monday and comes home Friday after doing a half day in the office. It’s pretty hard during the week when he’s away (I have a two year old and a five year old) but he couldn’t do his job locally. Neighbours used to fly from Exeter to London City pre-Covid/Flybe collapse. He misses out on a lot, as do I during the week as there’s no support, but the weekends in Devon are worth it.

I would catch train at Totnes - that must be hard with a 2 year old