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I live in Westport and I worked in Lyndhurst, NJ for two years -- 60 miles one way. The difficulty wasn't driving in in the AM, but driving home in the PM. And then there are the days like the day before Thanksgiving and Memorial Day, or any Friday in the summer, or any day the weather is wet. After two weeks of driving every day, I wound up renting a spare bedroom with kitchen privileges from a friend of a friend, for $500 a month. This made it easier to focus on the job while I was there, and made the two-hour Friday night drive home tolerable, since I only had to do it once a week.
In the strongest of terms, I do not recommend driving this every day.
You also have to weigh in other factors: doing this commute and/or living remotely a few days a week is much easier for a bachelor/bachlorette. Assuming relations with your spouse are strong, this distant lifestyle would surely put a strain on your marriage even if it's only for a year. Then again, you may actually enjoy the time/distance apart a few days during the week.
Thanks for all of those additional comments. Yes, there is an option to work at home on Friday which will help quite a bit. I do have a good relationship with my spouse and we have children so I'm aware of the strain that this will place. We'll likely hire someone to come in the morning to help my wife get the kids dressed, fed, and ready for daycare. Ridgefield seems a little far for her as she'll be driving the kids to onsite daycare at her workplace. Newtown and Southbury are where I'm looking now.
Good choices. I would focus on Newtown, Southbury, Oxford and Middlebury as Stylo suggested. All are great, family friendly towns with good schools. One advantage Southbury and Newtown have over Oxford is access to 84. Oxford is about 5-10 minutes from the highway, depending on where you live in town.
In terms of cost, they're all fairly similar. Median value of homes:
OP, I assume NJ & your current employer are the same (at least) parent employer. If so, and if after a few months you discover this is too stressful, can you resort to working from NY again, quitting the NJ position, without a long-term negative impact on your NY employment? Would your wife be ok with you perhaps, as option 2, staying in NJ M-F, driving in early Monday, getting home late Friday night?
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