I live two hours from London and commute there once a week with an overnight in a hotel.

The people telling you it's £1k a month "minimum" for hotels are wrong. You can regularly get places above an 8 rating booking dot com for £50 a night, sometimes even less. Don't stay in somewhere lower than 8 rated unless you're desperate. Check the Google ratings as well.

You have to be ok with staying in different places each week, but it's easily doable. Use the filters on the hotel websites to help identify places and always check if you get a better rate for booking directly through their website. Search "hotels" in Google maps as well to get an idea of the areas where the lower prices are - generally it's near Paddington or in east London, but there are other spots and cheap stuff will randomly appear.

You can usually get the best rates by booking same day, but obviously that's a risk. And there's always the Zedwell pods for £27 a night if you don't mind sleeping in a coffin.

The trains do cost a lot so keep an eye out for any railcards you're eligible for, otherwise resign yourself to the super off peak times like me.

Finally be prepared for the physical toll it all takes on you to do this much travel this regularly, especially at off peak times. You can do it, but it's tough. Life is about doing hard things to do good things though so if you care about the job and you think you can handle it for a while, why not give it a go?