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I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

metro.co.uk

461–470 of 526 posts

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#461
post #47

I love trains as much as the next nerd but that's a heck of a commitment haha I think if I wanted to do the digital nomad thing I'd have to cheat on the nomad bit a little and have an anchor flat somewhere.. where else would I keep the NAS?! As it stands my lil studio flat is 300/yr cheaper with all bills inc and has a coffee machine built into the (admittedly communal, but massive) kitchen. Plenty of caffeine, plent…

Well, if you have parents (he definitely has them at 17) or other relatives, you can ask them to host your hardware for some thank you payment (can be just the benefit of having PiHole for free). Or that could be some friend as well.

Behind everyone with an alternative lifestyle is someone with a traditional one. Guess I'm the sucker who hosts Thanksgiving.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#462
post #144

I wonder how does he actually work as a digital nomad. Internet on DB trains is massively unreliable, there are entire patches of country that are not covered by mobile signal.

Coding works okay. Git works offline, and for the occasional pull/push even a slow connection is good enough

What about meetings?

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lowest I'm seeing in Blanchardstown for a room is €160 (the lower amounts are twin shares) Lowest I'm seeing in all of Dublin is €140 once you exclude twin rooms, monday-to-friday terms and whatever "Dublin Host Families" is

I have sneaking suspicion those are per week prices

yep sorry I meant the polar opposite of how that post read! There's hardly anything remotely near Dublin that's in the sub 600 range was my point.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#465
post #428

I always enjoyed Deutsche Bahn whenever I traveled to Germany. Such a user-friendly experience for an international tourist. Even before the smartphone era it was easy to book tickets at the machine. Just hop and go to another city and return with the night train! Saw so many places without the stress of driving.

Here in Finland, I've only ever purchased tickets from the machines on stations. I suppose they are not used in most countries?

The UK has both, you can buy digital tickets, you can buy tickets online and pick them up at the station, you can buy them on the digital machines at the station or at larger stations you can buy them at the service desk at the station.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#466

IMHO, more young people should do this kind of thing (within reason of course). Now that I'm older I realize I didn't appreciate how opportunities to do stuff like this often diminish in later phases of life. Personally, I did have some adventures kind of like this, but in retrospect, I should have done a bit more as I look back very fondly on those times.

Just make sure that in the future you don’t look back on the time you have now with the same regrets.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#467
post #62

Brave move, but I wonder how he keeps or makes new friendships and deeper relationships. Maybe this is fine for a while, but people need people (not just text in a chatroom), and I hope he has an exit strategy from this lifestyle, for this reason.

> people need people While this lifestyle is not for me, i tend to concur on the statement. I personally pick my houses as distant from people as possible. People don’t need people. Sure it gets lonely sometimes but let me ask you if you enjoying the company you have all the time. People don’t need people. It’s rather personality related

> People don’t need people. It’s rather personality related

You are on a social networking site right now. People always need people, even if they don't think they do.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#468
post #99
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder more how he keeps his clothes and underwear clean :)

Probably the same way most people living in city apartments do it. Laundromats.

Damn, what kind of apartment doesn't come with laundry? Only time I didn't have an in-unit washer was student accomodation. If I viewed a place without one now I'd laugh the estate agent out country.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people need people While this lifestyle is not for me, i tend to concur on the statement. I personally pick my houses as distant from people as possible. People don’t need people. Sure it gets lonely sometimes but let me ask you if you enjoying the company you have all the time. People don’t need people. It’s rather personality related

> People don’t need people. It’s rather personality related You are on a social networking site right now. People always need people, even if they don't think they do.

To be fair, this "social networking site" is specifically designed to be hostile towards most forms of social networking, and it's full of misanthropes who probably have the Unabomber manifesto right next to the Dragon Book on their bookshelf.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#470
post #112

There are so many possible perspectives for such story but in this day and age the focus is on how much this cost. So let's talk about cost: I don't know how often he sleeps in this way[0] but clearly at £8500/year no one is discussing the externalized cost of taking up (arguably empty) seats he didn't pay for and setting the stage for future "nomads" to do the same and turning first class night trains into a substan…

> no one is discussing the externalized cost of taking up (arguably empty) seats he didn't pay for and setting the stage for future "nomads" to do the same and turning first class night trains into a substandard hostel

It is not an externalized cost. DB would even make more money if more people did it, up until the point it started costing them more profitable sales (at which point they will change the rules). It is like any mass transport, where it is better to carry a passenger at zero or even negative profit than it is to have a half empty bus/plane/train. A full plane, even if half are traveling at cost, is more profitable than a half full plane, because the fixed costs of the journey is amortized over more passengers. Rather than 50% of the full fare being lost to the fixed journey costs, only 25% of the full fare gets lost. This is how economy class works, where little profit is made, but covers the fixed cost of a flight allowing more profit to be extracted from business, first and extras.

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