Generous pay isn’t enough to keep some on the road

By Rolf Boone | The Olympian • Published April 01, 2007

The number of commuters in South Sound continues to grow, but some people are bucking the trend.

They’ve quit.

Melinda Spencer of Olympia took the step a few years ago. Spencer used to commute from Olympia to her job as a technical writer at Redmond-based Microsoft, where she earned about $73,000 a year.

Making that kind of money, Spencer’s husband, Keith, could complete his degree at The Evergreen State College, and they could invest in property. In 1997, the couple paid $110,000 for their Olympia home.

“The pay was good, and the experience was phenomenal,” Spencer said about her time at Microsoft.

Yet after three years of driving to Redmond, spending three hours in her car each day, something had to change. “It was awful,” she said about her commute. “I felt like I showered (in the morning), ate (at night), and turned around and did it all over again. It was time to end this lifestyle.”

She ended it by starting her own home-based technical communications business. Another reason to stay home was the birth of her first son, she said. Today, her husband works as a high school teacher in Rochester, while Spencer works at home and raises their two children. The money is tighter. Spencer estimates their combined income at just more than $2,000 a month after taxes and health insurance are deducted.

But in the 10 years they’ve owned a home, it has tripled in value to $300,000; they would be unable to afford it today, Spencer said.

“We would be looking at one of those old dogs that has been foreclosed on,” she said.

Spencer thinks that the decision to stop commuting was the right one.

“I’m happy to be the gal who wears the same pair of jeans and big black boots ad nauseam if that’s the price I have to pay for our simplified lifestyle,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Skip Albertson, an oceanographer with the state Department of Ecology, also recently stopped commuting. He moved from Seattle to Olympia.

After he received his master’s degree at the University of Washington, Albertson and his wife, Beth, bought a home in Seattle, and he took a job in Olympia. To get here, Albertson took advantage of a Metro King County vanpool that he and 18 others used.