This article is insane! (In that, it points out something that's very obvious, but that we somehow miss): http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting/
I didn't do all the math that MMM did, but somehow it stood out to me the first time I went to choose a place to live that I did not want to be stuck in a car for a significant chunk of my life (I was evaluating an apartment option a friend owned that would have involved a 30+ min. commute, and finding something on my own closer to work, so I did look into the time cost: 6+ hrs. per week, times the 2-3 years I expected to have that job... So 600-900 hours!). In seminary I chose to live in an apartment complex 10 miles from school, but there were a lot of other students from the same school so we could share rides and thus build community and save money by carpooling (while avoiding having to live in a soulless suburb near the school...); during grad school we bought a house 2.5 miles from my school, and 2.5 miles from Abby's school; and now we've been able to live about a block from work, and are starting to see the savings of not being auto-dependent (which has also allowed us to ditch the second car).
