I live in Northbrook most of the time and there are way worse places though you might want to wait until you have a family to move there.

I see many people get off the Metra train in the morning and take a cab to their office, I would suspect most of them are going to the Allstate headquarters. There are many firms located along the Edens Highway, taking a train would defeat the purpose of saving time. You are heading back east, it would take +/- 10 minutes to get there. If you had a car you are right off the Dundee exit.

Evanston has some fun things going on, if you like college sports there is always something going on.

Unless your job is downtown it might be very difficult to commute to Northbrook without a car.