[quote=UCGal]…That’s 90 minutes I didn’t have to do other stuff. …[/quote]

We are at the same point in our lives: time with each other and with the kids is a top priority – especially when the kids are young and still want to hang out with us. This is my original post lists wife’s commute as the top location priority, and proximity to a good school the second location priority. At the moment I’m lucky enough to work at home roughly 3 weeks out of 4 (and commute to the airport just once for a week-long trip), but I do think longer term about being close to possibly future local employers (for me technology / software development / project management).

A co-worker reports the commute from the 56 at Camino Del Sur is about 30 minutes. Google puts it at roughly 12 miles and 16 minutes. We drove it (after looking at Pardee’s Terra Mar development and other homes in the area) on a Sunday aftenrnoon and it was 20 minutes, so 30 with rush hour traffic seems right. By contrast, from the area near Sage off Carmel Mountain it was right about 10 minutes. And my wife once test drove it at 7:45am – only traffic was off-ramp from the 5 to Genesee, and she’d be getting off at La Jolla Village so can go right around that traffic with ease.

So let’s assume it’s 20 minutes further out to Camino Del Sur area. That’s 40 minutes a day, 2hr 20mins per week, and roughly 154 hrs/year (figuring 46 weeks just as a rough number) of extra time sitting in a car. She figures to be in this job a long time – say 15 years (maybe more). For 15 years, you are now talking 2310 hours in a car. That’s like working a whole extra year and then some!

What’s worse is the the time that is lost is prime time with the kids for the M-F rat-race. Daughter typically wakes up at 6am, so if you can leave for work at 7:45 (to arrive at 8), you get 1.75 hrs. Bedtime for her is 7:30, so if you get home at 5 (leaving between 4:30-4:45), you get 2.5 hours. If you loose 40 minutes of that (20 each end), you lose about 15% of your time with her. May not seem like much, but you can do a lot in 20 minutes – rather than a race to get ready for the day in the morning, you can read a story or maybe have her “help” cook breakfast (where of course the “help” doubles the time it takes and triples the mess). Working from home most of the time I’ve been fortunate to have those little daily experiences with my daughter over the last 4 years. I can’t put a price on that.

The other big thing I enjoy is walking my daughter to school. It really is different than strapping her in a car seat and driving because you talk more and interact with the environment. And there’s nothing like that little hand reaching up to hold yours as you walk. A good school is important to us, but scores/ratings are everything, and I figure in the walk-ability factor pretty heavily too.

So like they say, it’s “Location Location Location” – well in our case, it’s just “Location (work) and Location (school).”

My biggest reservation about buying near Ocean Air and Sage is that we could be across the street from them but still not get her in. I wish I knew more about how it works and what the chances are – e.g., if we bought at Bridle Run by the models and could walk to either Sage (couple blocks) or Ocean Air (have to cross Carmel Mountain and it would be a bit of a long walk), what would our odds be of getting in to one of those two? Schools out for the holidays, so I can’t go talk to the staff at the schools – no doubt they’d just tell me the process and not make any firm statement about odds.

Seems like this wouldn’t be an issue in UC for schools like Curie and Spreckles – if you bought near one of them and wanted her to go there, there wouldn’t be much doubt? Still not sure if UC is an option given traffic on Genesee and Governor – but hope to test that out soon. Also, wife seems to be leaning heavily towards the area around Sage and Ocean Air anyway. But we’ll see!