> it's too expensive for many people to live near where their office is On the contrary, a major recommendation from early retirement folks is to ditch your ca

> it's too expensive for many people to live near where their office is On the contrary, a major recommendation from early retirement folks is to ditch your car and instead ride a bike to save money on net: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/05/07/what-do-you-mean-you-dont-have-a-bike/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/05/07/what-do-you-mean-y... You might need to change where you live to make a bike commute possible, but at least where I live (Austin, TX) I find that living close to my work and riding a bike seems isn't any more expensive than living farther away and driving. Some of my work friends complain about the cost of parking, gas, car repairs, etc., yet I make the same amount they do and I have no money problems. I don't know their precise expenses, but I get the impression that I put a lot more money into savings than they do. I can't find it right now, but I recall a journalist once crunched the numbers for several US cities and found that living downtown without a car was about as expensive as driving in from the suburbs. You don't need to live downtown, too, saving more money. Living in a reasonably cheap area that's also close works too. Admittedly, living close and cycling in won't work in every case. Particularly given that many if not most places in the US are very car dependent. But most people pick where they live based on their driving commute, so if one prioritizes cycling they should at least give the same consideration to a cycling commute. It's not uncommon for people to avoid particular cities because the driving commute would be bad, so when choosing where to live it should not be unusual to pick a city based on a hypothetical cycling commute. So far in my life I've been able to pick jobs and where to live such that cycling is not just possible, but desirable. > People want to reclaim as much time as they can for living. Cars give them the ability to do that. You can find a lot of discussion among transportation cyclists about the concept of "effective speed". Cars might high absolute speeds, but that doesn't mean you save time from using them. The effective speed is defined as the distance traveled divided by the marginal time needed to travel that distance. Most obviously you need to factor in time spent parking (usually much longer for driving than cycling). Less obvious is the amount of time you need to work to pay for the vehicle and its use. Depending on the price of gas the effective speed of driving could be a lot lower. I've seen people argue that it's slower than cycling when gas prices are high. I've had people tell me that they'll work the same amount of time either way, so the gas price isn't really a factor. This is fair, but not relevant for me. The money I save allows me to retire earlier.