Thanks to cheap Ryanair flights, man saves money by commuting 5.5 hours from Barcelona to London
Not everyone could put up with Sam Cookney's tolerance for commuting torture. Tired of shelling out for London's exorbitant real estate prices, taxes, and transportation costs, Cookney decided to strategize:
Move to more affable and affordable Barcelona? Yes. Quit his London job as a social media manager? No.
Cookney crunched some numbers and realized that, thanks to cheap airfares with airlines like Ryanair, he could spend less by living in Barcelona and flying back and forth to London each morning than actually just living in London full-time. He must like his job. Like, a whole lot.
Now that he's in Barcelona, Cookney's commute takes about five and a half hours from his door to his office, but is overall much cheaper than when he lived in London. This is good, as he'll have extra money to invest in super fancy bedding, since, we imagine, all he'll have time to do in Barcelona is sleep.
Each morning, Cookney hops a cheap flight to London Stansted and reaches his desk by 9:30am and then does the inverse of this trip when its quitting time at work. We imagine he's gotten quite skilled at in-flight trivia by this point, but sadly, frequent flyer perks are quite slim with the budget airline.
Cookney's new commuting routine has slashed his monthly expenses by a quarter. In London, he was paying roughly $3,600 with rent and transportation costs. Including his flights and his new Spanish digs, he pays about $2,700 living in Barcelona where he says there is constant entertainment to keep him busy...at least when he's around. We bet the savings make it easy for him to pay for unlimited Amazon Prime downloads to watch in-flight.
He swapped his shared apartment for his own multi-bedroom place complete with a rooftop terrace and quick access to the beach. We hope his weekends there are really, really, really awesome.