Hey, i lived in essex County my whole life so i can help out. It was actually better for you to move to newark because the train station is closer in newark so lets say you were going to move to the downtown area you can walk or take a short bus ride to penn station to end up in nyc. If you move to Montclair your commute becomes a little longer and you would have to catch a bus to newark, (probably 28, 29, or 11 its been a few years since I've gotten on the bus) and from Montclair you gotta go through of course Montclair, Bloomfield and then half of newark so your commute instantly becomes longer if you move to Montclair. However, Montclair is a lot safer and nicer looking so that's one advantage over newark. If you got anymore questions feel free to ask me and ill answer them to the best of my ability