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My spouse works in NY while I am working in Washington, DC.
Can someone suggest us a good midpoint to reside from where we can conviniently commute to our workplaces?
Conveniently? The two cities are about 240 miles apart. There isn't anywhere that's convenient to both. Wilmington, DE is at about the midpoint, but living there would mean that each of you would have at least a five-hour commute every day, not counting the stop at the gas station you would have to make every morning before starting out. The only way to have these two jobs that I can see is to have two households (one in DC and one in NY), and then you take turns driving up or down to the other one's place for the weekends...
Flying from Washington National to JFK is $120 round-trip (plus fees and taxes) if you purchase in advance. Amtrak one-way from Union Station to Penn Station in NYC in the morning is $90 on the slow train...it takes 3½ hours.
There is no way for two people to split up nearly 500 miles of daily commuting that will qualify as anything remotely resembling convenient...or affordable...
My wife and I did that for a few years. It can be rough. I must have had about 100,000 Amtrak miles I ended up flipping over to United or so.
As for where to live, well, that really depends on how frequently you'll be together. If you are only going up once a week, or even once every other week (and they come to visit you) or even less frequently than that.
Say you lived in New Carrolton and worked around Metro Center. Metro to Metro that is say 30 minutes each way, every day, or about 5 hours a week. Living in New Carrolton will shave 10 minutes off your 3 hour Amtrak ride.
You can carry that a bit farther. Say you lived in Baltimore. That's what, an hour on the Marc to DC (?). You're looking at ten hours a week to commute to work to save about 45 minutes on the trip to New York.
It makes no sense to extend your commute daily by an hour to save a ten minutes or so biweekly.
I'm not sure exactly where you work, but if it is in the city core, then living somewhere in Chinatown would be very close to Union Station and the (Yellow line to National Airport) along with easy to get to your office.
I wish you luck. At first the commute was kind of fun--kind of like 'yea, I'm off to NY this weekend for some good sushi' but later on it got to the point that 'ok, there's the clump of trees near the gas station, 2:15 minutes to DC. There's the fire station with the broken sign. 2:13 minutes to DC....Can't this damn train go faster?....etc. etc.'
That sounds like a horrendous idea and I have no idea why anyone would want to subject themselves to that.
Sounds to me like you need to re-evaluate your priorities in life. There is no way that one of you wouldn't be able to find an equivalent job in the other person's work location. Is it about money?
Seriously, you need help that nobody on this forum can offer you. One person working in D.C. and one person working in NY sounds like a good arrangement for a couple that doesn't like each other or their kids and wants to focus on seeing the numbers in their bank accounts go up to avoid having to even look at each other.
I recently interviewed for a job at a GS9 in DC. I know the locality pay and even at the low end know that to live in District will be tough, but out 30-40 minutes should be doable, right? I'm a white single female, middle 50's. I lived in the SF Bay area several years ago and could not live all that well on what a GS 9 would make, but I managed. I have pets and frankly that's my biggest concern in finding a place to live (one dog, 4 cats...I know the cats are ALWAYS an issue but not negotiable as to giving them away...crazy cat lady, what can I say). My over riding reason for going to DC this late in life has more to do with being near family (Falls Church and Alexandria) than anything else. Nightlife is not a priority, living in a safe, walkable neighborhood is. Don't mind a commute at all. I've been looking at the housing market and see that the current economic crunch is bringing housing down in a lot of areas. Ideally I'd like to live in Virginia (giving me a 40 minute average commute to work), but will take Maryland with roughly the same commute time. Thoughts?
A basic GS-9 is going to be in the $50K ballpark, and if you threw the theoretical limit of 30% at rent, that would $15K, or $1250 per month. That's going to be short of what a decent 1-BR is going for in most places, particularly those that will allow you a dog and four cats. I would guess that at maybe $1400/month and more than an hour commute from downtown, you'd start to find stuff...
If you like Virginia, and want to be close to your budget, you can try looking around the 395 & King, Foxchase, or Landmark areas of Alexandria. They're a little cheaper, and from there you can take the bus to a metro station. When I did it, it took me 40-45 minutes to get to my office near Union Station in the morning, and about an hour back to the door of my apartment. If you work near the blue or yellow metro lines, it'll be easier than that. Really, it wasn't that bad. It was mainly inconvenient because all of my friends lived in DC and wanted to go out after work, which was more difficult for me. Other than that, it really was fine. Also, you'd be close to your family, since that seems to be your priority.
I should also mention that when I lived in this area I was on a GS-7 salary, but I had a 2-bedroom and a roommate. But still, it's doable.
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