The perfect property vs. commute

Not only is the connection to the current job important, but also, when changing jobs, having the best possible connection (highway, S-Bahn, airport). Who works for the same employer for 25-30 years?

I also think that is an important point. In our case, it is clear that neither my husband nor I will/can be with the current employer for another 3 years. Because of the highway connection, we have a wide catchment area with 3 major cities that we can reach very well by car, better than if we lived in the city or closer to the current employer.

We built last year in the commuter belt around Dresden.

We are both "small-town plants" and both used to good transport connections (less than 5 minutes to the highway). After 7 years of living in isolation in the countryside, we have finally moved back to a small town where you can find everything you need for daily life (shopping, schools, kindergarten/-daycare). In addition, there is an ideal transport connection with 2 highways reachable within 5 minutes and a top connection to Dresden (20 minutes to the city center). This way my wife gets to her workplace in the middle of Dresden faster than some of her Dresden colleagues. My commute has shrunk to less than 5 km. Besides the currently shorter travel time to work, we are also well positioned in terms of traffic in case of a job change. Furthermore, the travel times to the parents have decreased, which is not uninteresting with a small child. Despite being over 80 km away, my parents could be there within 45 minutes or we there.

City life itself would not be for us. Although you might save a car and thus compensate part of the higher property costs, in my opinion many city dwellers spend more money on everyday life (quickly going to the cinema or an afterwork party in the evening), so effectively not much more is left over.

The plot is nice but not perfect. It could have been 50-100 m² bigger. But all the overall conditions fit us perfectly, the price was right, so we went for it.

We neither needed a kindergarten nor schools, a bus was important to me, not to my husband. He drives to work at times when hardly anyone is on the road and no buses run, not even in the big city. I needed a bus stop because I don’t have a driver’s license. Besides, the property shouldn’t be too far from my husband’s workplace. We found a place 25 km from WI, everything fit. Unfortunately, the bus was then cancelled, so a year after moving in I suddenly had no connection. The nearest baker is already 5 km away, even though we live in a city (even if you wouldn’t notice because our district is secluded and cut off from everything, right in the middle of the forest). However, even when the bus was still running, I could easily spend 3 hours getting 35 km one way and 4 hours back. I will now have to get my driver’s license after all. Otherwise, the location is good; my husband needs fifteen minutes for the 25 km in the middle of the night. It takes three times as long WITHIN the city at normal traffic times when traveling by bus. In my opinion, what matters more is the time it takes for a journey, rather than the pure distance itself.

In my opinion, it depends more on the time it takes to cover a distance than on the distance itself.

Not necessarily. The greater distance also affects the mileage on the car (you need a new one sooner), and the fuel costs are still higher if you drive further, even if you arrive faster.

You can't really say that. If I am stuck in stop-and-go traffic all the time in the city, I consume more gasoline than on open country roads. The pure number of kilometers is also not that crucial, because, for example, we don’t drive 10,000 km per year with 25 km one-way commute and 7 working days/week. Previously in the city, it was 5,000 km per year because we lived right next to the company parking lot and my husband walked to work. So 10,000 km is not that much that you would need a new car faster because of it. If we had moved within the city, the kilometer consumption would certainly be as high as now, but the time required for the commute would at least double (city traffic). Just the bus to the city center from our previous apartment took 45 minutes, which is three times as long as my husband now needs for the 25 km to work.

For me, the wrong unit is chosen in the survey. For me, it is not the kilometers that are relevant, but the time.

In rush hour, 5 km in a big city are just as time-consuming as 50 km on the highway.