Originally published at: Grad student commuted by plane from L.A. to Bay Area to save money in rent | Boing Boing
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I mean, good for him if it worked out for his needs… but having lived in both areas I’m skeptical that it really worked out to a big cost savings since both are expensive Californian metropolitan areas. Rent is a little cheaper in the greater Los Angeles area than the greater SF Bay Area, but I don’t know about $5,600 a year cheaper for a low-end apartment.
Maybe it was more about making sure he’d still be able to keep his current living situation after graduation than about saving money.
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A place I rented out for $2900/month in Berkeley in 2013 is now Zestimated at >$7K/month. (I don’t know how LA rents have changed in that time, though.)
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Yeah both are bonkers now. Maybe he had a good long-term lease agreement and knew he couldn’t get a better one in either city if he ever let it go.
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I was very comfortable and had no work schedule constraints or value attached to my time, but you’ll never guess the one trick that let me go viral! Don’t forget to smash that like and subscribe button
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A few decades ago, a cow-orker commuted weekly by air from her weekend home near Reno NV to her software-engineer job near San Francisco CA, crashing with pals during her work weeks.
ProTip: make friends near wherever you spend much time.
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A quick estimate shows that the student added 16 tons of CO2 to the atmosphere with this approach.
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Well, fuck the environment I guess. On the other hand, I’m impressed at the discipline on display. I had to commute about an hour and a half to uni by train and bus for about half a year once, and I didn’t enjoy that experience at all.
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My SO knows someone from Seattle getting his law degree in SF via flights for two years so far.
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Yeah, I did something similar a while back where I had one academic job in the Bay Area and one in Orange County. It was a weird year.
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I bet that last part of his daily commute - the 2/3d mile walk up from downtown Berkeley BART to the civil engineering buildings – all of just slightly uphill – got to be a bit of a drag! I swear, every time I had back-to-back classes at Cal, it was always a West-to-East (and uphill) walk.
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I look at either price and am thinking - what the actual fuck??
Work a full time job, can’t afford either price if I put 100% of my pay towards it. I guess this is why salaries are so much higher. Though, if you’re in school, who could afford that?
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Considering how awful airports and air travel are, I struggle to believe this is ever actually worthwhile.
There is no city in which an affordable apartment is more than three hours away by car, and I guarantee all that driving to airports, going through security, sitting at gates, waiting for Ubers, etc, is taking at least three hours, even for a 45 min flight. Flying always manages to take most of a day somehow, no matter how short the flight.
I think these people have to be motivated by other variables, as suggested upthread. Like, you have some really compelling reason you need to keep that apartment in that other city or whatever. By strict measures of time, money, and hassle, there’s no way plane commuting is ever worth it. I think this whole “OMG flying in is cheaper than living here” story is a post-hoc rationalization that makes catchy headlines.
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He acknowledges in the reddit post that it was a 4-5 hour EACH WAY commute. He almost certainly was motivated primarily by wanting to keep his living situation in LA.
Also, the boingboing post says he spent $5,592.66 on his commute, but that’s only the cash he spent. He also spent 576,355 frequent flier miles on various airlines, which at a conservative 1.4c/mile valuation is another $8k or so.
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