Where you choose to live is life changing. Where you choose will close a lot of doors. I live in Austin, so I’m not going to be able to work in person in SF or NYC. Similarly I won’t be able to pay $500 a month in rent to be in Bali. I can’t hang out with my friends who live far away every month.
Routine
You have some sort of daily, weekly, and monthly routine. On weekdays that may mean commuting to work and/or school. The time it takes depends on where you live. If you have kids, the shortest commute may be walking across the street to school and then back to your computer for remote work. Then there are others who have to fight through traffic to drop off their kid 30 minutes away, then go in the opposite direction an hour to get to their job. The more frequently you do something the more valuable reducing the time of the commute will be.
Friends and Family
Where you live determines how often you get to see friends and family. Sure, I can see some friends once a year if they don’t live near me, but if they live 30 minutes away I can probably see them twice a month. If they lived a few doors down then daily is possible.
Housing
Do you want a better house? You could pay more or you could move further away. Generally the further you are from the city the cheaper things become. You are trading cost for time. However, you can still make a fine life in plenty of places. Round Rock is 25 minutes from Austin, but you could still do everything in Round Rock without needing to visit Austin. Maybe less so in Bastrop which is 40 minutes and less populated.
Hyper Local
Your routine may be a grocery run several times a week. If you live close to that it could be time saving. Yet, that is something you could outsource. If you have a hobby you can figure out where to do that. I would love to play squash but the only place would be an hour round trip, so I’ll settle for pickleball or tennis nearby.
Near An Airport
One criteria that I hear from many online is that they want to live within an hour of an airport. I’m not sure why people are so fixated on this criteria if they travel 4 times a year. Let’s say you live 2 hours away instead of 1 hour. That means even if you go on 10 trips a year, that costs you an extra 20 hours. Living 4 minutes closer to a school you commute to 160 days a year would save you more time. Or you could choose to fly more directly to save time. There are plenty of choices to save time, I just think the airport angle is a nice to have rather than a hard requirement.
Conclusion
You are trying to minimize the sum of (Frequency of task) * (Time of task) while staying within your constraints. Currently we work remotely and live super close to the grocery store. School is 12 minutes away, so in theory we could move closer, but the cost to do so wouldn’t be worthwhile, so I will pay in time.
Like other topics I write about, I hope you take stock of your situation and find whether it works well or if there may be a better option. In the words of T.I.
And, baby, you can go wherever you like
I said you can go wherever you like
Feels like these blogs are so relevant to my daily life - within the past week I’ve had conversations about proximity to airport, coworkers commuting 2.5+ hours Per day, and myself biking to work 15 minutes.
Love the way you think about optimizing life without overcompensating (like keeping a smaller bottle of ketchup to cut down on excessive storage).
Can’t wait to see what’s next!