How to weigh up commute vs pay / experience

[HangTime]

Hypothetical question.

If you were in a job that was:
+Decent money
+Prestigious employer
+Good experience / exposure
+Good people / supportive boss
-Very busy
-Long commute

How do you go about weighing up the options of ditching that job and getting something closer to home, giving less money, probably a lesser employer, less valuable experience?
It's something I struggle to reach a conclusion on; a few years ago I made the move in the opposite direction, which has worked out well in basically every regard except for the commute and amount of work. But it's like, if I were to shave say 10-12 hours a week off the commute, how do I really know what level of sacrifice is worth it? How much money should I throw away? Might I be jeopardising my future prospects too much by leaving the rat race?

 

[HangTime]

Thanks for the responses, a few answers to questions:

-I'm married with a child and another on the way (which is partly what is making me consider things, as I can see things being quite tough with a newborn baby and mammoth commute)
-I don't 'need' the money, as my house is all paid for and I have considerable savings by most people's standards, although kids are expensive
-The 'utility' of the money isn't massive right now, we haven't taken an overseas holiday in 7 years, I don't have particularly expensive tastes etc although I do value being able to pay for important things for the family without thinking about it (e.g. private health screening), and ultimately building up some cash opens up the potential for moving to a better house if we want to go down that route. And just generally having the cash available to get things we want, get a new car or whatever.
-I typically work from home one day a week, but I don't think I could increase this due to various factors (meetings where being present increases influence / makes it easier, need for facetime with my team, general desire to be around and see what is happening)
-I don't really know what I would do with the time saved beyond spending more time with the family and it making it generally easier for things like meal times, if people are taken ill etc
-Not really talking about a career change, the prospects thing is more about how it might be perceived to leave a widely respected company in the city and go and work for some mickey mouse joint out in the sticks, i.e. in the future would I be able to get my foot back in the door if I wanted to. Or indeed if I stuck it out where I am then potentially good opportunities could just naturally open up as my experience and network of contacts expands.

One other factor that has come to mind is I think my social life might suffer a bit if I changed work location, currently because of where I work it is very easy to do stuff in the evenings like go for drinks, attend football matches etc. Aside from other parents that I have been introduced to by my wife, I don't really have any friends or family where I live, everyone lives miles away.

Finally another option I had originally expected to pursue was to move closer to my work but I found that we really struggled to make progress on getting the house ready to sell (in part because I don't really have much free time on weekdays and thus wanted to enjoy our weekends as a family), and then my son was approaching school age so we didn't want to disrupt that. Essentially I can't see us moving for perhaps another 5 years.

 

[HangTime]

What does valuable experience mean - that you get knowledge which others will pay you more for in the future or that you are doing something that you love?
It really depends if you work only for the money or you work because of your own vision and goals how to help this society.

Knowledge, contacts / working with very good people, opportunities for advancement, better looking CV etc - so basically the former rather than the latter. I could get similar levels of overall job satisfaction from something more local, for sure, but with significantly reduced current earnings and probably future earnings potential. The [segment of] industry I work in is heavily centred around London so dropping out of that market for too long might restrict my options with competitors if I found myself wanting to delve back there in future.

 

[HangTime]

As mentioned earlier school is the main reason we don't want to move and disrupt my son's education, and moving nearer to my office won't really put us much closer to relatives, the realistic sort of areas we've looked at are about the same travel time. My wife would also be happier here where she has a network of friends I think.
The original plan had been to move and my wife took a job nearer to where I work for a while (so we could move to that area), but it kind of back-fired a bit because it just restricted how much time we had to do chores on weekdays even more and before we knew it it was approaching time to apply for school places which had to be done before my son was even 3.5.

In some ways it would be easier if we disliked where we live (which we did with our previous house) as that would give a stronger drive to move but there's always that nagging feeling about moving and finding the area isn't quite so good or our son struggles at school etc.