Gutted and hoping it can be salvaged

jobbingmusician

No bus direct to London from where you are, I suppose?
Might it be worth asking your employer about car-sharing schemes?
Are there any internet sites about car sharing?
Start something like a Facebook group for Swindon to London commuters?
Googling 'swindon to london commuters' brought up a range of interesting possibilities, including http://www.nationalexpress.com/coach/destinations/newcommuterservice.cfm

Just some random musings really - good luck and I do hope you solve this one!

NoKidsAllowed

Bus. Hmmm. Maybe.

Not sure what the journey time is and that would be quite a journey on the bus each way every day but definatly a consideration.

Feel a but naughty asking about pay increases before I have even accepted the job but if I can word the e-mail right I will see what they can offer.

Fortunatly/Unfortunatly I have family commitments which restrict travel time as I don't want to loose too much time with my kids. Some loss will be inevitable though.

Its a hard decision and I guess one which is going to take a few days to sort out.

Still got a couple more irons in the fire as well so using this to give them a little push.

Really appreciative of all the advice and ideas guys and gals. Keep them coming.

Owain_Moneysaver

NoKidsAllowed wrote: »

Bus. Hmmm. Maybe.

Not sure what the journey time is and that would be quite a journey on the bus each way every day but definatly a consideration.

And it says it's got power points and wifi, so you might be able to agree with your employer that 1 hr working on the bus = 30 mins less at the office.

If you're doing project work or similar could you do condensed hours (4 longer days instead of 5) or 4 days work / 1 day work from home. And if you could do 4 days then you could do that with four single journeys and 2 nights in a B&B, per week.

SandC

Nokids, you said in your first post that this would incur 'the extra 30 minutes each way' in your journey.

I'm just wondering are you allowing for the commuting costs that you already pay - are you offsetting those against the £9k?

NoKidsAllowed

SandC,

I have taken that into consideration. At the moment I am driving 54 miles in a diesel engined car amounting to approx £151 per month taking into account 60 litre tank with a distance of 500 miles per tank at £1.20 per litre.

As you can see a big increase in expenditure.

Just seen the new article on how Swindon is classed as the most expensive train route in Europe at 70p per mile.

My Diesel is currently 14.4p per mile.

Working on whether driving to didcot/hungerford etc is a possibility.

paulwf

I managed a bike shop near a train station on a commuter route into London and we sold a heck of a lot of folding bikes. If you are a mile or two from a station at either end it could be ideal, saving you car parking fees and a travelcard. As an example if I walk to my local train station I leave 35 mins before the train is due, by bike I allocate 10-15 mins.

Bear in mind that a 3 hour round trip turns into 5 hours when there is a problem on the trains. I had this happen to me a lot in the winter and it makes the commute unbearable. Days when you have a cold or other winter bugs are also a lot worse if you have a long commute home rather than a short trip before you can crawl back into bed. You are really at the limit of what is comfortable as a commute IMHO and I wouldn't want to do it again. If you are actually going to be losing money there is no way I would take the job for the sake of your sanity long term

The only reason I put up with the long commute was to live somewhere I really loved. If you love Swindon then fine but from my experience of the place I think I'd move elsewhere rather than put up with the long commute if you are set on the London job. Seems to me you have the worst of both worlds, a long commute and without the advantage of a nice home town.

Couldn't you use the job offer as a bargaining tool with your current company? If you can get a small pay rise the work/life balance means it'll certainly pay to stay where you are.

crackerberry

NoKidsAllowed wrote: »

SandC,

I have taken that into consideration. At the moment I am driving 54 miles in a diesel engined car amounting to approx £151 per month taking into account 60 litre tank with a distance of 500 miles per tank at £1.20 per litre.

As you can see a big increase in expenditure.

Just seen the new article on how Swindon is classed as the most expensive train route in Europe at 70p per mile.

My Diesel is currently 14.4p per mile.

Working on whether driving to didcot/hungerford etc is a possibility.

Current job

£1,885 per month net pay

£150 per month travel costs


New job

£2,787 per month net pay

= annual net salary increase of around £10,800

£8,500 new annual travel costs (£9,200 less current costs of £1,800)


By my calculations you'd be around £2,300 per annum and almost £200 per month better off financially by taking the new job.

HO87

Was in much the same situation some years ago and the new job was such an opportunity I couldn't afford to look up, from a professional point of view. Driving was going to be far too expensive both in terms of time and cost. A 2.25hr each-way commute by train was going to turn a 10 hour day into something horrendous and the season ticket was stupid money anyway.

So. I bit the bullet. Stayed in a hotel in Bloomsbury to start off with and spent each evening trawling through the papers and shops for ads. After about 10 days found a good bed-sit in Ealing at sensible money and moved in. Drove there early on Mondays, camped there through to Thursday night - even if I continuously ran out of 50p pieces - and drove home again for the weekend. It was a 5-10 minute walk to Ealing Broadway every morning and 40 minutes on the tube saw me in the office. Being away from the OH was a pain especially as the kids were still young (pre-school) but we planned our weekends well and got into the swing of it quite quickly.

After a couple of months picked up a house-share through work just off Western Avenue near Hanger Lane tube and moved in there. That was far better and made the separation easier - more home comforts. 14 months in I was offered what was effectively a sideways move - on the same money but even more autonomy - and bit their hands off. That represented an overall promotion that had I stayed at my original office I would never have seen in 5 years let alone 14 months. We felt the domestic sacrifice was well worth it and we still saw enough of the salary uplift to make it work and when the move back came about we really saw the difference.

There are alternatives to long-distance commuting and having done both now I wonder how some are able to function effectively at work at all, given the time they spend in their cars or on the train, whilst some are pretty lacklustre most of the time, probably as a result.

Cheery_Daff

Congratulations! Good luck with the decision. Just a quick (probably irrelevant) thought - have you taken into account holidays? Presumably you won't need to travel for 5? 6? 7? weeks of the year? Not sure whether it'd make any difference if you buy an annual pass though...

Well done on weighing it up and thinking about it properly before. Sounds like a great opportunity, and if it turns out that you are only losing £200 a year, it sounds like you may make that up over the next few years anyway with prospects at the new job...

NoKidsAllowed

The calculations above are spot on.

I think I worked out to be between £150 and £200 a month better off which is not to be sniffed at and I am grateful for.

Question is with an increase like that is max £200 per month after travel expenses enough to give up and extra hour in bed. The wife having to drop the girls off at nursery which I normally do and turning a maximum hour commute into at least an hour and a half.

But then I come back to the opportunity. Depends on their plans for me in the next 12 months which I have asked the question.

I know its not concrete like this offer but I am still in the area for an offer of £40k at another job which would be the dream one. Trouble is the decision will not be made for the next 3 weeks.

Add into the mix the risk in my current job which I think I will be layed off inside of the next 6-12 months and we sway back to going for it and seeing what life throws at me to help make things easier and maybe move closer to london and out of s******don.

NK

P.s. I actually want to get out of swindon but the wifes work and lifestyle keeps us there at the present time and this may be the break we need to realise that.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions.