Answer was a firm no out of all the few friends whom I asked. One old friend did however drive around 100km daily from his home in Penang island to his office in Kulim, Kedah. However, seriously if your office is at the fringe of the city and you can buy a property of your dream 100km away, would you want to drive 100km per day to work? At a constant speed of 110km per hour, point to point may take you just 1 hour. This is no huge difference from a slow moving jam of 20km which would take up almost the same amount of time, not to mention the stress that you need to endure from the unprofessional drivers.
How far is 100km away? 100km is already halfway to Ipoh from KL. Tanjung Malim is 70km away. Seremban is also 70km away. Port Dickson is slightly below 100km away. Malacca is 142km away. Average property price in KL is RM673K. The average price in these secondary cities are much lower than KL’s average, not to mention bigger as well. Have you now decided to think about it, seriously? My friends are still looking at me and shaking their head. Haha. Ok, I give up, perhaps 100km is still not a distance which majority of Malaysians would accept.
In terms of actual costs of this travel, assuming you are driving a 1.6 litre car like me, it would be RM32 / day. Please do not say, why not drive a 1 litre car? Well, except for the minimum expectation Ford Fiesta 1.0 turbo, I seriously do not think it is a wise decision to drive a small car over 200km per day, everyday. You would need much more attention due to the size of the car. RM32 / day x 22 working days means RM704 per month. So, even in terms of just the fuel costs, it will be prohibitive because if you stay closer, you can save enough for a small second hand car for your wife. 🙂
Okay, unless we have bullet trains, I think 100km per day is totally out for now. My ex GM, a Japanese said he is used to travelling of over 450km per day everyday as he could not afford to buy a big house in Tokyo for his family. Thus, he stay at places with easy access to bullet train and thus travels around 3 hours daily, to and fro from his home to office. He said, it’s quite a usual thing to do. Some travel even further away.
written on 26 June 2014
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