Anyone done big commute for dream home?

[MonkeysWedding]

We (DH & 1 year old DC) have been looking at joining the London exodus, freed by the fact that we won’t need to be in the office everyday. But we’re quite late to the trend and so everything within an easy commute is already so expensive.

We’ve found what would be our dream house but it would mean 2.5 hours on the train each way. We’ll probably need to be in the office 2 days a week. We could work in the train so could be reasonably productive time. Train tickets would be very costly, but doable for the right home.

Has anyone done this? And was it a case of getting into new routines, or was it too exhausting to do long term?

I’m so tempted for the fantastic lifestyle we’d have, including being near family. But nervous of doing something we’d regret if it was a strain to do over time.

I was sent on secondment for 3 months before. It was 2.5 hours each way. 1 hour driving, then train and dart. I usually didn't get a seat on the train and never on the dart.

It ended up being for over 1 year. It was awful! It might not be so bad for 2 days a week. But it nearly broke me, I was physically sick with exhaustion from it. And I didn't have kids.

If you can be 100% sure it will be 2 days a week and you will most likely get a seat it might be do-able. But it will have a knock on affect on your other days of the week and a very uneven sleep/ wake pattern.

Would it be possible to move and keep an eye out for a job closer to your new home where you wouldn't have the commute. Also if you are both 2.5hrs away and one of the kids has to go home from school sick or something you won't be able to get home quickly.

Also I had some colleagues assume I wasn't putting in as much effort as them, I arrived to the office at 08.50 and left at 17.00 on the dot as if I missed the 17.06 dart I missed the connecting train and would be an hour later home!

Oh and I’d also want to be sure you and DH weren’t both in the office on the same days for the reasons given above - childcare emergencies, sickness, travel disruption then causes a complete nightmare.

DH will be working 3hrs door to door away from September. He'll travel early Monday morning, home Friday.
Only works as they don't start until 10am on a Monday for that reason. And finish at 2pm on a Friday. (Tuesday-Thursday they work longer).

For a normal 9-5 job, that sort of commute would be 6am- 8pm.

Twice a month a push. Twice a week no chance.

Also when I considered the travel costs inc diesel, tolls, parking and tickets (didn't even factor in wear on the car). Along with the extra salary falling into the higher income tax bracket. I found I was just as well off financially on a good deal less money in the countryside than commuting.

He does 90mins at the moment. He left at 6.30am to be at his desk before 8am. He'll be home Friday. Fortunately he gets free work accommodation (he actually doesn't have to ever leave one building...)

No, it’s far too far. We commute a few days a week but one hour each way. That’s enough!

I was doing 1.5h each way 4 days a week and it was draining and I felt like I was hardly home, so I resented paying for the house. I wouldn’t cope with 2.5h personally - it would undermine the quality of family life IMO because you’d be getting home so late on your days in the office. Would you both be in the office on the same days? You would barely see your DC on those days, but if you did different days you would barely see your DH.

Ugh that sounds horrible. It's an extra ten hours per week, unpaid (actually you are paying a lot for the privilege). And that's if the trains are on time. I wouldnt count on always being able to find a seat and table to be able to work either. Plus privacy issues if you work on confidential things.

What if your kids got injured or something else happened...it would take you hours to get to them?

Is the two days a week thing definite or is there any change your company might change their minds?

The only thing that might make it doable would be if you could do the two days consecutively and stay overnight somewhere cheap, so would save 5 hours of commuting, get in the office early and leave early on the second day, and a cheap hotel room would probably be less than the train ticket....depends how that would work with your family life though....

I used to do it. For 2 days it was doable. Wouldn’t want to do any more than 2 days.

During the 1991 recession, my husband was made redundant, so had to take a two year contract in London to keep us solvent. He got up at 4.45am to get the 6.00am to London, and wouldn't get home until 9.15pm, and that was if everything was operating normally, which in winter was not always the case. He would get in, eat his dinner, and then go to bed. He did this for five days a week, and it nearly killed him, and I'm not joking! It got us out a a difficult situation, but it would not be something I would do from choice. Over the short term it sounds feasible, but long term it really grinds you down!

EllieThornton

I remember the 4.30am get up times as Dh did the same except I had to take him to the station 17 miles away across country roads

I think I got it down to 23 minutes. On the journey I would be coming down one road towards a cross roads heading north and there was a bus that you could see over the hedgerows approaching the same junction coming from the east. It went really really slowly and you had to make sure you had crossed the junction before it otherwise it turned down the same road and if it was in front of you then he could potentially miss his train.
I know I did some driving that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a F&F movie.

He lasted a year and then whilst on holiday he admitted he could not keep it up.

We moved house very quickly and within a couple of months dh was asked to leave. (Because he was not a team player and had not told them he was out of the country when we were on holiday and hadn’t checked into the office regularly)

Not sure if anyone else has mentioned it but even if this worked out ok, it is surely predicated on conditions remaining exactly the same in your current jobs and indeed that you keep those jobs. If your conpanies closed or demanded you be there more you'd be kind of screwed unless where you are moving to has an especially good jobs market itself and/or you could afford to take the hit. I would be very wary of putting the dream house at the very centre of your decisionmaking and tying yourselves into a high mortgage on a dream house based on two London salaries. Things change, jobs are lost or changed, people get illnesses....

Long term definitely not. My husband has got a job in Cambridge and we live 2 hrs 15 minutes away. He has been working there since December 2019. He rented a 1 bed flat there and stayed 5 days a week and came back for the weekend but even that just wasn't great because he's a hands on dad and we missed him a lot. He has been working from home since March last year and the company are slowly getting the ones who need to be in back. They're also talking about working remotely on a permanent basis which we would love. We have our dream home here. He may have to go in once a week but that will work well as he can just stay in a hotel for one night so he is rested for work. A daily commute would just be too much.

2.5 hours door to door is bad enough.
If the 2.5 hours is just the train journey, I wouldn't even consider it.

I used to commute to London 5 days a week, dropping to 2 days after having Dc.

The little waits and breaks of journey can all add up, so it takes longer than you think.

Mine was: walk to bus stop (6 mins), arriving 5 minutes early as sometimes the bus would arrive a bit before timetabled (5 mins). Often it was late (10 mins).
Bus to the station (17 mins).
Walk to correct platform (2 mins)
Wait for train (1-9 mins) - I was lucky that I went from a major station with 5 trains an hour, so the bus being late didn't ruin the day.
Actual train journey (50 mins)
Transfer to tube platform (4 mins)
Wait for tube train (3 mins)
Tube journey (15 mins)
Walk to work (8 mins)

Best case scenario 2 hours, and that's not counting all the times when a little delay early on had a knock-on effect.

Coming home, you might leave a couple of minutes later, your tube is delayed, you miss the fast train home and have to decide between the slow stopping service or waiting another half an hour for the next train.
Either way you've missed the bus and they only run every hour after 6pm.
Suddenly your journey takes 3.5 hours instead of 2.

Or there's a signal failure and you have to choose not going home at all, or traveling to a station 20 miles from home on a different line that's not been affected.

It's doable, but not the quality of life choice.

Some valuable food for thought - thank you all. To reply to some of the comments and questions about how it might work:

• I’m reasonably confident the expectations from our jobs to be in 2 days/week will last. (Both our companies are consolidating office space as they don’t expect to need as much going forward).
• I would also expect that time working on the train would count as time towards the work day. So routine might be get the train at 7:00, in the office by 9:30, stay overnight in a cheap hotel, leave office at 4:30, home by 7pm.
• I expect my husband and I can go in on different days, but if not then a big draw to our dream home is we’d have 2 sets of grandparents who’d love to support with childcare.
• The station is a walk away from the house, so no complicated journeys … train to London (no changes) and then tube to the office.

This feels more doable than some people’s experiences (I certainly wouldn’t want to drive long distances). But the comments about useless WiFi on trains, cancelled trains, and risks if someone loses their job/gets ill etc do weigh on my mind.

Honestly I wouldn’t. I commuted into London from a midlands city in my early twenties. With the commute and the working day it made for 16 hours out of the house every time I did it and it was exhausting. I didn’t have family commitments then, and I don’t think I could fit a family life around that kind of job and commute now. I also sincerely believe there’s no such thing as a “dream house” worth having this kind of work life balance for.

Sounds hellish.

None of your friends in London will see your massive house because you’ll live too far away and will be too tired to entertain. And you wont see them in evenings, because you have trains to catch.. nor husband, because schedule, but you’ll all see the kids at the weekend. Let’s hope they never need you on a Tuesday….

I’d only do this on a bet that remote working was coming in for good, all week. And I’m not bold enough to bet that atm.

Or I’d do it to leverage london salary and release equity to get big mortgage- then spend journeys applying for nearer jobs so can switch to local job/salary so long as mortgage still affordable, after (it may well be as cost of living would reduce)

My commute from Surrey into the West End takes 1hr 45 each way door to door and up until the start of the pandemic, I was doing that between 3 and 5 days a week so I don't think 2.5 hours is that bad for 2 days a week.

In fact, we're considering doing the same in a couple of years and it will be a similar commute to what you'd be doing. It will be a compromise but everything is so if on balance the other positives outweigh the commute then I'd go for it.

Could one of you look for a job closer to your new house? Otherwise it’s a no from me. What about after school clubs for the kids who will take them to those, dinner, childcare etc I know you’ve mentioned grandparents but that’s a big burden for them even if they don’t say so, also circumstances change we used grandparents until one of them got sick. All things to consider

@ladamanera

None of your friends in London will see your massive house because you’ll live too far away and will be too tired to entertain. And you wont see them in evenings, because you have trains to catch.. nor husband, because schedule, but you’ll all see the kids at the weekend. Let’s hope they never need you on a Tuesday….

I’d only do this on a bet that remote working was coming in for good, all week. And I’m not bold enough to bet that atm.

Or I’d do it to leverage london salary and release equity to get big mortgage- then spend journeys applying for nearer jobs so can switch to local job/salary so long as mortgage still affordable, after (it may well be as cost of living would reduce)

A 2.5 hour commute each way is pretty standard in central London (it’s the commute a lot of commuters do from the southeast) so it shouldn’t impact friendships. The thing you need to remember is that most London workers beyond a certain level aren’t Londoners and so friendships can be meaningful. I still have friends from my old (highly paid career) back when I was a London commuter and we visit each other regularly as they also commuted and so were familiar with cars and less stuck to London in a way London based workers really aren’t.

It does affect friendships slightly for me. Always worrying about making the last train, or leaving before other people so that I can get the train, and people always expect me to come to London rather than them coming here. I was recently offered a job locally and one of my friends was like ‘nooo you have to work in London or I’ll never see you’ ! This is for friends who live in London. I don’t have any friends who commute.

It could work. Just be aware that the trains will run late sometimes, and there may be a need to stay late at the office on occasion, or go in on additional days. But this happens to everyone whatever the commute, e.g. a 1 hour commute will occasionally be 2 hours due to transport issues. Many people commute for 1+ hours 5 days a week; a longer commute 2 days per week will be better for some and worse for others, what counts is whether it works for you.

Be aware of the changing nature of child care as DC gets older, check time working on the train does count (doesn't it defeat the purpose of working in the office?) and have a Plan B (move closer to London, get local jobs?) if 2 days per week increases, one of you changes job, grandparents’ circumstances change affecting their availability for childcare, etc.

DH gets asked to do a similar journey occasionally (contractor). He’ll only agree to 2 days per month, preferably consecutive so he can stay overnight. He’s knackered afterwards.

I had a 2 hour door to door commute in my late 20’s. I hated it.

Can you say which train company it is? Someone will have experience of what it’s actually like commuting with them.