Forbes.com reports today that one of the best ways to shorten your life is to sign up for a long commute. That’s right: Sitting in your car for long periods of time each weekday morning and afternoon could very well slice a few years from your life. Additional exposure to pollution from cars and trucks on the highway, the added danger of being involved in a wreck, and of course the mounting stress from dealing with the other chumps on the road are all conspiring against lengthy commutes.
What does that mean for most of us, who probably live a whole lot closer to work than many of the people in our surrounding suburbs? Two things: We’ll live longer, and we’ll probably benefit from rising housing prices because of this phenomena.
How can we become older and richer just by living here? Well, remember our discussion last week about the young attorneys who are commanding starting salaries of $160,000, while the partners at their firms are pulling down about $950,000? Where do you think those people are most likely to live? Near work, and most of the largest law firms (and hospitals and many large corporations) are Downtown or nearby. And where are they going to spend (overspend, some may say) all of their loot on housing? Right here, where the commutes are relatively non-existent, and they’ll have an extra couple years of their life to enjoy all of that money they’re banking.
