Young, just starting school.

I had a $2500 mtg and $1100 a month in personal property tax in VA. On a 1450 sqft 3/2 on .25 acres in VA Beach.

Upgraded to 7ER Captain from 320 Captain

Bought a 6000sqft 5/5 on 3 acres (really 9, but 6 is wetlands and conservation land I can't do squat with)

$7400 MTG and $0 in personal prop tax.
so I went a little more than double.

I can sit short call in bed. 35 miles to EWR, 45 LGA, 55 JFK.

Especially now with the commuter unfriendlyness with the RJ frequency reduction it's nice.

Honestly in that case this is the time. It will only get harder/impossible as the kids get older. It's a different job when you can drive to work (more importantly when you can drive home from work.

Always drive to work. Your family will thank you for it. I commuted for 3 months and couldn’t even fathom doing it anymore than that.

While the kids are young is the best time. I moved because of my dad's job in elementary school, and twice in high school and the last 2 sucked. I'm based in Chicago but live in Indiana. I have at least 6 options a day if it's commutable on both ends, and a 3 hour drive if I choose that. I mostly drive since there's no weight restrictions or full flights to worry about. If it's a major hub and you don't want the expense of living in a big city, the drive from another state might be worth it. My state income taxes and property taxes are much lower compared to Illinois

Sure, the concern is not the kids so much as weighing the risk/reward of going from a good setup to a great setup at higher cost, given the real estate market.

If it’s only money, for a senior FO, a 4K per month difference isn’t anything earth-shattering. If you’re on a domestic fleet, that’s like picking up an extra day of premium per month.

I have commuted to every airline job I’ve had (20+ years). I do a long drive AND a flight. I’m totally over it. It’s a complete waste of time and tough on the body.

That said: I’m not moving to a base either. Some reasoning: We aren’t city people. We like rural areas and our friend/family network where we are. We live well below our “possible” means. This allows me to work less and have more time off to keep the sanity vs. continually commuting. I’ve found flying less at a higher rate (CA) is preferable to “working the system” as a senior FO. Fly a few trips a month and chill. We’ve got quite a bit of acreage and built the “captain’s house” in the country. If we sold it all, we might get a 3 bed/2 bath on a 1/4 acre built in the 80’s at most of our bases. Just can’t justify that.

Commuting sacrifices lots of career opportunities if you hope to keep your family and sanity, but I think it can be worth it if you don’t have the mentality that you need 100 hours every month until age 65 to make you happy.

Good luck. Tough decisions.

Surprisingly (to me not from there) northern New Jersey I actually have a bigger house and more land than I did in Wyoming (granted I lived in city limits in Casper, WY)

I can only see the nearest neighbor if I look out two windows on that side of the house on the 2nd floor.

200 acre boy scout camp across the street and a couple thousand acres of state forest behind that. Running water/waterfall on the property. Backs up to a large pond, although the pond frontage is conservation land so no building a dock and walkway to the dock. But it cuts my property tax bill in half.

5 miles from downtown Denville which is basically Mayberry with better delis. 6 miles to the train station. 1 hour to NY Penn on the train but I normally drive vs NJ transit to Penn, LIRR to Jamaica and then Airtrain to JFK.

Another 10 minutes down the road to basically any shopping I need to do. That was a problem for my wife in some of the more rural places we lived when I was doing oilfield stuff. 90 minutes one way to the nearest Walmart/Target/non IGA grocery store gets old.

The only "wanted but didn't get" was room to build a motocross track on the property. Technically have the acreage but the terrain isn't conducive to mx. Hard Enduro or trials it's great for.

You're correct! It wouldn't be a problem as things stand right now. The thing is, I wouldn't want to be in a position to rely on premium or perhaps no longer being able to upgrade if things didn't work out. Maybe I'm too risk averse but when old timers told me the stories of FOs buying million dollar houses only to get furloughed a year later, that stuck with me.