picard has intended this thread to be focused on economic and real estate side of things. However, I am more interested in the prep side of it. Has your commute influenced your EDC and prep decisions in any way ?

martinfocazio: has your "extreme commuting" affected your type of EDC stuff, especially that a bus commute limits your choices in case of anything happening. I mean that if you have your car, you can even use it as a temporary shelter or decide to take another road , even to another town. That may not be as easy when your bus is crippled and you had to walk carrying your laptop and stuff in a messy situation.

My commute isnt that long (about 25 minutes) but having the kids with me makes me worried some of the time. However, the afternoon trip back home is usually a good chane to see what they do at school and what some of their problems are. If nothing, its time for daddy-kiddy funny chats. I delibrately chose to live a bit far from work for economic and other reasons. In general, if you are paid well, it is too expensive to live there.

Lucky devil

In my current position I commute just under 10 miles each way through mostly residential areas to work. That's the good news. The bad news is that while at work I travel to many of our client locations daily (using my own vehicle and being re-imbursed for mileage). I average 250-300 miles per week on the company dime.

Fartherest distance from my home to client location is 25 miles mostly all interstate, closest is less than 3 miles through the town that I live in.

I use 1 of 2 different Jeeps every day, each one has a GHB in it. Worst case for me would be the 25 miles.

I worked for a company like that and one day they tried to tell me how I was getting rich off of all the miles. So I found a flyer from a goodyear or firestone place and took the prices of all the maintainence and added in the price of gas and insurance, estimated a payment and added it all up showing that one would just break even.

My commute is just around the corner - from the bedroom to the office in my home.

Mostly by reducing what I feel I need. It's easy for me to walk home and shelter in place there, so I don't feel I need a whole lot of overnight stuff at the office.