Homes away from home.

• Author: Gray, Carol Lippert
• Position: Working away from home

What's it like to live and work hundreds, even thousands, of miles from your family and friends?

For many financial executives, home is where the heart - and their weekend wardrobe - is. That's because, by choice or corporate mandate, they live and work away from their families during the week. Whether they're several hundred or several thousand miles away, the arrangement takes planning, organization and an understanding spouse.

Since his company was taken over last August - and for the foreseeable future - Robert J. Dickson, treasurer of Carpenter Technology Corp. in Reading, Pa., has been commuting to his Pittsburgh home on weekends, a distance of 270 miles.

"In Reading, I'm five minutes from my office. It's a much less stressful working situation," he says. "When I worked in Pittsburgh, my commute was one hour each way, two hours a day, 10 hours a week. Now my weekly commute is about the same number of hours, but divided over two days. I basically traded a long commute daily for a long commute weekly." He prefers the flexibility of driving, noting that, if you fly, "Your car may be in one end of the state while you're in another."

Dickson bought and furnished a new town-home but usually eats out ("It's a way to relax after work," he says), and thinks having a hobby is important (his is golf). "At the end of the week," he adds, "it gets very old. You need diversion."

Dickson mentions a friend who balanced long-distance housekeeping three times, in three different locations. "It worked out perfectly over a long period," he says. "He didn't have to uproot his family. Other people have moved their families and, six months later, the company was sold or restructured and they had to start all over again. If you have to travel a lot, it's less of a burden on your family to do it this way. You have to weigh the aggravation against the career move - whether you're doing it for financial reasons or to get more experience. It's highly dependent on location. Sometimes, if you live in a particular area of the country, there isn't a critical mass of companies where you can get experience."

Commuting exacts its toll

William Goeckeler, vice president and resident branch manager at Prudential Securities' Red Bank, N.J., office, has a home that's a 90-minute drive from his desk but also prefers to minimize the physical and psychological toll of commuting. "I work between 12 and 13 hours a day," he says. "Being five minutes from the office Monday through...