<prompt> Human: My degree is very specific to one geographical area and in this geographic area housing costs are outrageously expensive. For my spouse and I to have anything more than a 1 bedroom older apartment we would have to live at least fifty miles away and I would have a commute of over an hour and a half. We would more than likely need to spend more than 40 of our income on housing. With my degree this place is basically where I need to be. However I dont want to deal with an hour and a half commute, I dont want to spend nearly half of my income on housing, I want to be able to save for retirement, and I want to have a little leftover and not live paycheck to paycheck. For my career to grow fast and blossom to its fullest extent I need to live in this location that we both dont want to live in. However, I just dont feel that this is what I want to do with my life. I want to be able to not have an almost 2 hour commute, to see my wife and my family every night, and to be able to have money left over for savings, to buy home, and to not live paycheck to paycheck to paycheck. Combined my wife and I would bring home over 100,000 per year. Living in other areas of the country we can live very very comfortably. Has anyone else chosen quality-of-life over a larger paycheck? I dont think that I would regret it but I would always wonder what if. The places that Im looking at now to live her places I never thought I would want to live but they have fairly large job markets and also very affordable housing and cost-of-living. Any advice or even anecdotal stories would help me right now. Is it worth it or should we always strive to make more and more money?  <response>: Maybe this will help.My wife and I both walked to work for 3 years. Recently she and I both took new jobs with a 1:30 and 1:45 min commute not in the same direction respectively. Neither of us could refuse these jobs, they put us at the top of our field with enormous incomes. Our future looks amazing, retirement by 45 if we wanted well see, boat, vacation properties emphasis on the plural, nice cars, you get the point. We both agreed to take these positions on the condition that we move to a more central location between our commutes, 40min and 55min via train commutes. We are listing our house shortly and with any luck we will move in the next few months. Until then, let me tell you what life is really like with the big job and the big commute. I get up at 6 am getting ready so I cant give the attention to my 1 year old son that he needs, so he cries. My wife is also getting ready, but it frustrates me that she wont cant pick up the boy. Im out the door at 6:45 and normally talk to my wife via bluetooth during the drive. Not about enjoyable stuff, but normally about the administration of our lives. I get to work at 8:30 leave at 5:30 and home by 7:15.Normally my wife is annoyed at me because we dont have time to cook eat a nice dinner, so its something reheated. After dinner its time to get in bed at around 8:30, but our son doesnt get to see us enough so he plays around fighting sleep until about 9:30. At which point Im asleep due to exhaustion. Wake up, repeat. On the weekends we do get a little bit of quality family time, but we also have to pay the bills, run payroll for our child care, organize seeing friends, etc and get the house ready to sell. Without the end in near sight I dont think I would last longer than about a year, at which point Id and my career would burn out and Id be done. The commute kills, so either make the decision to live in the expensive neighborhood or dont commute at all. 