I have a dilemma!

msflowerfairy

I think i may be offered 2 jobs.

The first one is very local, i get days off in the week as it is shifts, and i will be worse off by £500 per month, but OH is going for promotion which if he gets it should balance things out.
The second job is 7K more than i earn now, but to get there i would have to get 2 trains, and two buses, the hours are Monday to Friday, but i will be spending around 2K a year on travelling to the new job.

I don't know what to do, i have tried weighing up the pros and cons, but i can't seem to decide what to do if i am successful.


What would you do?

hanny83_2

Hmm toughie, guess it depends how much you need the money and the chances of your hubby getting the promotion. The local one seems to be the most practical option for reliability as I don't know where you live but here the public transport is pretty poop!

msflowerfairy

Well i have just been made redundant, so money is quite an important factor LOL, i may be getting my knickers in a twist about nothing, knowing my luck i won't be offered either of them.
I guess this question is hypothetical.

Cat695

i'm going to say 3 words

Quality of Life

Being 7K better off is no good if you can't enjoy it....but only you can decide that

I know what I would do.

Dime_Bar

With that extra £5k after you have paid for the transport you will have plenty left to get yourself some books, mp3 player, dvd player etc for the journeys so you could make the most of them.

I also always found when I used to do a 1.5hr commute on public transport a very good way to unwind after the day. However it is always better if you can tweak the hours to suite the trains better like start 20 mins earlier or later etc.

ali-t

At the moment I would be thinking less about convenience factors and more about longevity. Is one of them more likely to be in existence in 5 years or months than the other one?

If they are both pretty equal, i would go for the closer one. If the money is an issue then you could get a part time job to equate to the travelling time and that would make your money up.

Personally, the only way I would take the better paid one would be if I was using it as a step up the career ladder and it would lead to one £10k better paid in a couple of years.

msflowerfairy

The local job is 10 minutes away, the other better paid job is 4 hours away using two trains, and two buses.
For quality of life i would be inclined to go for the local job, but the other job will improve my skills, and give me a chance to progress in my field of expertise.

carlita

4 hours away !!!! is that 2 hours each way?

if you work 5 days a week thats 1040 hours travelling per year at NMW that amount of hours is less than 5K

I know what I would do

msflowerfairy

No that is 4 hours one way, so 8 hours travelling all together! I could work on the train as they will give me a laptop, but it would be a heck of a long day.

penguin83

How long will your working day be in the other job (long distance one)? 8 hours of travelling on top of an 8 hour working day is one hell of a long day. You may find that you cant keep it up.

Definately think of quality of life and work/life balance.

If your hubby doesnt get the promotion will you be able to manage on 500.00 pm less?

carlita

omg ~ you cannot be serious !!!! <I've always wanted to say that>

that would be a 16 hour working day, and thats not allowing for delays