A better-paid job an hour further away: doing the sums

Treat the sections below as a sequence. With commuting trade-offs, getting the early decisions right makes the later ones much easier.

Convert the distance into a year

An extra half hour each way is an extra hour a day, which across a working year runs to several full weeks of waking time. That time is unpaid, unrecoverable and taken from the part of the day people most want back. Comparing it against the pay difference immediately reframes what looks like a straightforward improvement.

Divide the annual pay increase by the additional annual hours to see what the extra travel is being paid at. People are frequently surprised to find the implied rate for their commute is well below their actual hourly pay.

The cost comes out of the net figure

Fares, fuel, parking and additional vehicle wear are paid from money that has already been taxed. That means a gross pay increase has to be noticeably larger than the travel cost simply to break even.

Season tickets and annual passes complicate this further, since they are large upfront commitments that lose value if the job ends. Where an employer offers a travel scheme or a season ticket loan, the terms on leaving are worth reading before committing. Vehicle costs in particular are underestimated, because depreciation and maintenance do not arrive as a monthly bill.

The costs that only appear later

A longer commute makes childcare pickup times harder to meet, which sometimes forces a more expensive arrangement. It reduces the practical possibility of doing anything after work, which can quietly end activities that were free.

For most people, it increases the amount of food bought out and the number of days when cooking does not happen. It also makes a second income or study considerably harder to fit around, which closes options rather than costing money directly. These effects are diffuse and real, and listing them explicitly stops them being omitted from the comparison.

Where distance is worth paying for

A larger labour market usually means more employers, more progression and a better position next time you look. A role that builds specific experience can justify a poor short-term trade because of what it makes possible afterwards. Hybrid arrangements change the arithmetic completely, since two office days a week is a different commitment from five.

The useful part is this: where remote days are informal rather than contractual, they can be withdrawn, so it is worth knowing which you have.

The honest version of the decision states what you are buying with the time as well as what you are paid for it.

Running the comparison properly

Build an annual figure for each option: gross pay, employer pension, guaranteed allowances, then subtract travel and any changed care costs. Add the annual hours of travel to the working hours for each, and calculate earnings per hour committed to the job.

Include the cost of a season ticket or vehicle as an annual figure rather than as a monthly inconvenience. Do the same for the current role, since the comparison is meaningless without a baseline calculated the same way. Where the two are close, the deciding factor is usually reliability of the journey rather than its length.

Some of this will suit you and some will not, and that is the point.

Reliability matters more than distance

A predictable ninety-minute journey is easier to live with than an unpredictable fifty-minute one. Disrupted journeys generate lateness, stress and occasional extra costs, and they make any fixed commitment at either end difficult.

Trying the journey at the actual time you would travel, before accepting, is worth more than any timetable. Ask colleagues at the organisation how long it really takes them, since official journey times are optimistic. Where the route depends on a single connection or road, a single failure point will define your year.

The takeaway

Calculate earnings per hour committed to the job, including travel, and test the journey before you accept.

The version you keep doing is the version that works.