DISQUS

Joanna · 3 years ago

"my optimal happiness balance..."

sounds lovely! let's do it! we'll have lots of money. ;)

Will Wilkinson · 3 years ago

Sweet!

Nicholas Weininger · 3 years ago

Well, I have a pretty high income, am fairly sure my optimal consumption pattern is not available to me at it, and I also am an example of how the housing cost vs commute time tradeoff doesn't always go in the direction you think. But maybe I'm just in such an atypical situation that my life does nothing to undermine your theory.

I live in San Francisco and commute to Mountain View, about 40 miles away and anywhere between 45-90 minutes travel time each way, depending on the whims of traffic. It is significantly *more* expensive (especially per square foot) for me to live where I do than it would be to live 10 minutes from work. Nor do I get a quick, gridlock-free "reverse commute" from city to suburbs: lots of other people do the same thing I do. Some go even longer; I have several co-workers who live in Berkeley, 20 miles further away.

I live where I do because San Francisco is one of the great cities of the world and Mountain View is a pleasant but not particularly great town in the middle of a soulless sprawl-o-mania. My neighborhood is a New Urbanist wet dream: within six blocks of my apartment there are approximately thirty good restaurants, several independent bookstores, an artisanal cheese shop, an artisanal chocolate shop, and an artisanal bakery, as well as all the more mundane conveniences like groceries, banks, etc.

I work where I do because (a) my job is really cool and (b) as far as I can tell, none of the jobs that pay enough to enable me to live in my neighborhood are in the city proper: they're all down the Peninsula. Probably this is partly because of weird SF geography and partly because the city government is run by a bunch of self-caricaturing Communists. My optimal consumption pattern isn't available to me at my current income because my optimal consumption pattern involves buying an actual house in my neighborhood, and to afford *that* you pretty much have to have hit the pre-IPO-stock-options jackpot.

R.J. Lehmann · 3 years ago

I may have had an even stranger Bay Area commute than yours, Nicholas. I used to live in work in Oakland and live in Alameda, and voluntarily chose to move somewhere both more expensive and further away -- Palo Alto. But at least I never really faced any traffic once you'd get over the Dumbo bridge.

Will Wilkinson · 3 years ago

Nicholas, That's definitely an understandable tradeoff.

More stories!

Robert Schwartz · 3 years ago

"He awakes at 4 a.m. to come to work and often waits until after 7 p.m. to leave so he can miss the heaviest traffic."

Did they mean 7 a.m.? maybe he should sleep-in.

John Thompson · 3 years ago

"'He awakes at 4 a.m. to come to work and often waits until after 7 p.m. to leave so he can miss the heaviest traffic.'

Did they mean 7 a.m.? maybe he should sleep-in."

Nope. Read it again Robert.

Han Meng · 3 years ago

I live in a small midwest university town, where I ended up because that's where I found a job teaching. I like to walk and walk a half hour to school five days a week. I would prefer being able to enjoy what a big city offers, but didn't find a job in one. Even if I did, at my current salary I couldn't afford to live in my own house in a decent neigborhood.

My consumption is just about optimal. (I can afford to visit big cities on those long academic vacations.) I'll accept a raise, though! PhD's in my field (one of worst paid in the Liberal Arts) make far less than in most others; in fact, the average local high school teacher's pay is the same as mine, and I've been working here almost 20 years.

ptm · 3 years ago

My hedonically optimal consumption is available on my income, and is close to the life I live.
I live and work in Salt Lake City. It's a midsize city whose work- and housing- sectors are pretty evenly distributed, so it's easy for me to choose to have a short commute (others choose to live in urban neighborhoods, or religious ones, or nearby small rural towns, etc). Most significantly, I'm really into outdoorsy stuff, and it's easy to do that here.

Tim · 3 years ago

Back in 2003, I had a commute on precisely the stretch of 395 that article discusses. After 6 months, I hated it so much that I broke my lease and moved into the city. It wasn't significantly more expensive, but that's only because I went from 0 roommates to 2. My happiness level went up a lot after the move.

Now I live 7 minutes from work just outside St. Louis. At its worst, traffic might add 5 minutes to my commute. My girlfriend is 10 minutes away, a major college campus is 5 minutes away, and virtually any type of store you can think of is less than 5 minutes as well.

The only real downside to my current situation is that most of the interesting people I know are hundreds of miles away. If I had the income and leisure time to visit New York and DC several times per year, it might be an optimal lifestyle.

smg · 3 years ago

Another Bay Area commuter, I go the opposite direction: I live on the "sprawling" peninsula and work in San Francisco, with a 45-80 minute commute each way, length dependent on time of day. My partner has a job on the peninsula that requires living close by. The commute is grating and expensive. I am moving up to San Francisco alone soon, and the increased rent I will pay living alone will not hurt my lifestyle, as I will no longer have commuting expenses. The trade-off, of course, is that I will no longer regularly see my partner, which is hardly an optimal lifestyle. Perhaps if I had the money to hire a personal limo driver...

Jen · 3 years ago

Maybe they live in Gaithersburg and mom has a 10 minute commute. But it takes dad two hours during rush to get to Alexandria. Isn’t it just bizaree that people do this.


Not so bizarre. Have you heard the saying, "if Momma ain't happy, then nobody's happy?" What is his wife's happiness worth to him? Is her shorter commute essential because it is necessary for her to get to daycare becore they close and put the kids out on the curb? There's many factors that come into play in these arrangements including interpersonal relationship factors and practical factors that come into play in cases like this. The partners in this scenario has to put these factors into play with other considerations such as how much he loves his particular job, if that job can move, the quality of the schools closer to work, etc. etc. etc. I work in downtown KC and there are neat lofts here and would live there in a heartbeat without kids and have no commute, but since I do have kids and couldn't afford the loft and private school, I can't do it because the public schools in that area are unacceptable to me. So, if my trade off is happy commute, unhappy/horribly educated kids, then I drive for awhile. You can never generalize these decisions as smart or not smart because the factors that come into play are so different for each individual.