Bit of both. They’re my best friends, and the way the rent works out it was a cost improvement for all of us. I won’t get into the whole story. We are all mid to late 20s (I’m about to turn 30 😅) and all very far from being able to afford homes of our own. Though even if we did I think it would still be together. None of us want to have kids, so we operate as a family unit with two cats making up for the chaos of not having kids running about.
Short version: yes, 100% and I kind of already have…
I am (somewhat unhappily) living in a suburb, but I have transit stops for multiple lines within a 5 minute walk, and a bunch more options if I’m willing to walk 10-15 minutes. I was paying something like $500/month (lease, gas, insurance) for my car before being hit by a semi and not replacing it. That was 2-ish years ago and I haven’t really looked back.
Now I pay about $100/month for basically unlimited transit use. My commute time tripled, but in theory got slightly more consistent because car traffic could get bad on the route to work. The transit system here is far from perfect, so sometimes I’m still late, but I’m lucky enough to have a fairly flexible start time. I’ve got 3 roommates with 2.5 cars between the 4 of us (one borrows a car from family periodically). I’d love to be a 1 car household, but two of the roommates “can’t give up their independence”, which I kind of shake my head at. One works further out of the city fully in a rural area, so I suppose it is kind of necessary for them to have a car, and then still having one car at home available for the rest of us works out fairly well.
I actually quite like the longer commute. It gives me time to read, or just listen to music, browse the internet, nap, whatever. Plus I’ve discovered a ton of small, local businesses I now love!
git.gay for the win!!