[quote=bearishgurl][quote=earlyretirement]…Yep. Me too. Goes the same lines of the job market here in San Diego being poor compared to other areas. I don’t think it’s so much a case of “willing” to commute an hour as it is “forced” to commute that distance.[/quote]

ER, you must bear in mind that no one … and I mean NO ONE is FORCED to commute for work from one coastal county in SoCal to another, unless they CHOOSE TO do so! As soon as an adversely affected commuting family feels they are no longer “underwater,” they should immediately list their home in attempt to “get out from under” and move to a more convenient location for themselves.

In the current market, there is no excuse for this travesty unless the family is so underwater that they should have handed in the keys to their house in long ago, IMHO.

The reality is that all workers in CA coastal counties can live reasonably close to their employer if they wish to do so. They are CHOOSING to do otherwise.

The issue of CHOICE is the “elephant in the room,” here.[/quote]

Well, I say “forced” in a broad sense of the word. It sounds like you aren’t married or have kids. And moving to another area isn’t always easy or easily feasible when you have young kids.

At least in the cases that I’ve seen where people are doing wicked commutes, I say “forced” because they need to work to live and pay bills. Like many locals in the SD area, they don’t have a big emergency savings fund to fall back on. Some of them made poor financial decisions. Others lost houses in the last bubble to foreclosures. So their options are more limited and in the shorter term they need to work and bring in cash flow from paycheck to paycheck.

So the only option for them is commuting to areas as far away as Los Angeles. For them it’s not easy to uproot kids out of schools. Or their spouse might be working and they depend on their income as well. All their friends are here, etc.

Also, even if they aren’t severely underwater. Some are barely above water (positive equity). And some are in between jobs. So it’s not like with these stringent requirements it always means they can go out and buy a new house now. When you have kids (or several young kids) things aren’t so cut and dry.

So when I use “forced” I use it in that sense of the word. Maybe I’m wrong and you are married with kids… but it doesn’t sound like it. And when you are married with young kids, life isn’t quite as simple or easy as when you live alone.