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I lived in LA and commuted to Berkeley by plane to save on rent
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Re: I lived in LA and commuted to Berkeley by plane to save on rent
#72[deleted]
Re: I lived in LA and commuted to Berkeley by plane to save on rent
#73Key quotes: > I was living in LA, rent free. > I love flying and I have a lot of frequent flyer miles/points from credit card sign up bonus/flying over the past few years. > I booked all my tickets for Fall 2022 back in April and May 2022. Then I booked all my tickets for Spring 2023 back in Nov 2022. Most tickets were booked using Alaska miles or Southwest points > I have elite status with Alaska and Southwest, both…
I guess it's not necessarily a poor use of time if you can study in the airport and/or on the plane. Or if you just enjoy flying.
Oh yea those TSA lines and cramped boarding gates and the endless cramped narrowbody planes that take forever to board and deboard. Doing the same route over and over and over again.
Must be joyful!
Re: I lived in LA and commuted to Berkeley by plane to save on rent
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. I would routinely fly weekend trips from the Midwest to Jakarta on my weekends in college just to get AA miles. The views of FT posters should be taken with a massive grain of salt - we’re not normal.
> routinely fly weekend trips from the Midwest to Jakarta on my weekends in college ,,just to get AA mile,, I'm sorry, can you clarify? Is there some secret cheap flights from the midwest to Jakarta or were you spending a grand+ every weekend?
At this time (late 2000s, early 2010s) you could purchase open jaw fares (say ORD-NRT-CGK/CGK-NRT-STL) and between the open jaw/double open jaw and sometimes a fuel dump, get an economy ticket for less than $400. I would generate typically 40k-50k+ miles at a time, meaning I was getting essentially a free economy round trip between US and Europe for every flight.
So basically I was pocketing a minimum of a few hundred bucks in profit per flight and visiting quite a few SE Asian locations, even if it was 8/10/14 hours at a time. I’d work on the flights and I saved up enough miles to have visited over 100 countries by the time I finished university at 23.
EDIT: This is still possible to do but much more difficult now that most US carriers only give mileage based earnings for their partner flights. The golden days of this arbitrage are long gone.
Re: I lived in LA and commuted to Berkeley by plane to save on rent
#75> Total Cost: $5592.66 For 10 months. Even if true story, only make sense if you can find rent $559 cheaper in LA (and don't value your time & the environment of course). It was extra special for the OP as he'd live rent free in LA. > Typically, the door-to-door commute time between my home in LA and my classroom in Berkeley is 4-5hrs EACH WAY Waking up at 3:30am and wasting 9h every day doesn't seem worth the $ savi…
They were living rent free. So they'd have had to find a room for $559 near Cal. That was hard in 2005.
Otoh, they have missed out on the chance to build connections with their classmates, which is one of the main benefits of even a year at a good school.
Re: I lived in LA and commuted to Berkeley by plane to save on rent
#76My takeaway from reading about the person's experience is that we need better high speed public transportation in California. It would unlock a lot of economic and non-economic opportunities if people can move across the state within an hour. Imagine if Berkeley was a commuter school for people in Los Angeles, or UCLA was a commuter school for people in Bay Area.
A high speed rail enabling people to commute to SF/LA from 100+ miles away in under an hour would immediately relieve a huge amount of housing issues while creating tons of jobs in low income areas. The whole central valley would become a valid place for people to commute from. Too bad we are incapable of building one.
yup it would be logical thing to build so no way California will do that.
Re: I lived in LA and commuted to Berkeley by plane to save on rent
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> routinely fly weekend trips from the Midwest to Jakarta on my weekends in college ,,just to get AA mile,, I'm sorry, can you clarify? Is there some secret cheap flights from the midwest to Jakarta or were you spending a grand+ every weekend?
At this time (late 2000s, early 2010s) you could purchase open jaw fares (say ORD-NRT-CGK/CGK-NRT-STL) and between the open jaw/double open jaw and sometimes a fuel dump, get an economy ticket for less than $400. I would generate typically 40k-50k+ miles at a time, meaning I was getting essentially a free economy round trip between US and Europe for every flight. So basically I was pocketing a minimum of a few hundre…
> and visiting quite a few SE Asian locations, even if it was 8/10/14 hours
Visiting the airport.
Re: I lived in LA and commuted to Berkeley by plane to save on rent
#78My takeaway from reading about the person's experience is that we need better high speed public transportation in California. It would unlock a lot of economic and non-economic opportunities if people can move across the state within an hour. Imagine if Berkeley was a commuter school for people in Los Angeles, or UCLA was a commuter school for people in Bay Area.
A high speed rail enabling people to commute to SF/LA from 100+ miles away in under an hour would immediately relieve a huge amount of housing issues while creating tons of jobs in low income areas. The whole central valley would become a valid place for people to commute from. Too bad we are incapable of building one.
https://buildhsr.com/ is tracking the progress (ie, we are capable, if slow). First up, Bakersfield to Fresno.
Re: I lived in LA and commuted to Berkeley by plane to save on rent
#79Key quotes: > I was living in LA, rent free. > I love flying and I have a lot of frequent flyer miles/points from credit card sign up bonus/flying over the past few years. > I booked all my tickets for Fall 2022 back in April and May 2022. Then I booked all my tickets for Spring 2023 back in Nov 2022. Most tickets were booked using Alaska miles or Southwest points > I have elite status with Alaska and Southwest, both…
I guess it's not necessarily a poor use of time if you can study in the airport and/or on the plane. Or if you just enjoy flying.
Reminds me of hearing one of my classmates in college complain about how their boyfriend (at the same college, but a junior or senior) was having to fly back to Hong Kong every weekend to help run the family business. I can only hope that they were able to spend those hours sleeping or studying.
Re: I lived in LA and commuted to Berkeley by plane to save on rent
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess it's not necessarily a poor use of time if you can study in the airport and/or on the plane. Or if you just enjoy flying.
Oh yea those TSA lines and cramped boarding gates and the endless cramped narrowbody planes that take forever to board and deboard. Doing the same route over and over and over again. Must be joyful!
Didn't say I would enjoy it, but I'm sure there are some out there who would. I can more easily imagine it being productive though.