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

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.

For 10 years, Albertson rode the vanpool. He calculates that he spent so much time on Interstate 5 that one month out of every year was spent inside a van.

Eventually, he and his wife had their first child, and Beth Albertson got a job at Evergreen in 2001.

“That was all the provocation we needed” to move, Albertson said.

They also got a lesson in home price appreciation. After paying $160,000 for a home north of the University of Washington in the early 1990s, they sold it for $272,000 in 2001.

With this new level of buying power, the Albertsons quickly realized they could buy a home twice as large in Thurston County.

Other South Sound residents also seek the lifestyle changes made by the Spencers and the Albertsons.

James Morton of Tenino continues to be a long-distance commuter, but he hopes to have a shorter commute soon.

For four days each week for 21/2 years, Morton has commuted from Tenino to his job in Everett, a distance of 103 miles. It takes him two hours each way, a total of 16 hours a week.

Morton estimates he puts up to 1,000 miles on his car and spends about $140 on fuel every week.

Why does he spend so much time and money on a commute?

“It got me back into corporate America,” said Morton, formerly a business consultant, but now a director of operations for an ­Everett-based restaurant equipment manufacturer.

It’s a job that pays $100,000 a year, and his company pays the mileage for two of the four days he drives to work.

Yet Morton has finally had enough.

“I want to live closer to home,” he said, citing the time he has missed with his family and the daily struggle with traffic. “I couldn’t do this for another year.”

The eventual sale and relocation of his company has given Morton another reason to find employment closer to home.

His first idea is to start a Family Fun Center in either Tumwater or Lacey if he can secure financing. Otherwise, Morton expects to have another job by June.

Rolf Boone covers business for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5403 or by e-mail at rboone@theolympian.com.