commute from home arbitrage?

There is usually a daily limit to your Uber expenses.

OHHHH! Marone, the commute on this fella'. It's cream deluxe under the tunnel on weeknights, you're in for a couple of 'tree hours in the car. Bring some gabagool and gargonzol for the ride, kid. I'm just bustin ya balls!

I could’ve done the same with a little longer commute, but find it’s better to move out and mature as soon as possible. Understand saving that much money is hard to pass up, but thing the trade off of living and enjoying the full city life outweighs living at home

The way I see this isn’t as arbitrage but as an opportunity cost against time.

Let’s say your total commute in is 75 minutes (15 minute to the train, 45 minutes on the train, 15 minutes from GC to work) and your total commute home is 50 minutes (uber from office to home).

Now lets say that if you did live in the city, your total commute to the office and back to your apt is 30 minutes (15 minutes each way).

Based on those numbers over the course of 5 day weeks and 50 weeks, your losing 396 hours of your life (16.5 days; 4.5% of your year) to car and train rides.

How much money is 4.5% of your life worth to you?

We are probably neighbors.

I live at home and take Metro North Harlem line to GCT.  Work near GCT, so no additional subway.

Easy train commute, even if I stay late at the office.

Uber home only if working very late--like past 1:00 a.m., which is not that often.

You might get teased a bit in the bullpen about living at home, but you know the trade-offs.

Under no circumstances would I recommend this. You make a compelling argument about savings, but what you're giving up for it is immense: living at home with your parents, not being out on your own, longer commute, couch surfing on the weekends. But maybe all of that is ok with you. However, there's one thing irrefutable: you simply aren't an adult living at home. When you're on your own in the city with no family, that is when you become your own person/ You're creating a life for yourself and possibly adding a significant other to that. From someone who commuted from home during the college years and saved my folks more than you are sketching out, it's not worth it man. Yes, the compounded savings might add up to a significant amount someday later on. But when you're 73 you will be begging to trade money for time. Level up and get a place in the city. Best of luck

You should try it out at first and see how it goes.

If it’s not working, pivot and find an apartment in Manhattan

Could work, but you're not gonna smash any chicks most likely without your own place. And I don't mean you need your own apartment but even living with roommates would be better than living with your parents. If that's not important to you though, commuting from home should be fine. Just make sure you'll still be able to get enough sleep

“Crashing at your friend’s place” will only work one or two days max. After that they’ll be annoyed you don’t have your own place.

Would’ve thought other people would mention this: your friends are not going to appreciate you crashing at their apartment every Friday. I have a specific “friend” in mind that I could see pulling a similar move, that would piss me right off. 

I'll be doing this when I start work in a couple of weeks but my train ride will be closer to an hour each way. Saving money for a few months will be nice but I feel like with the commute I'm just gonna end up grinding 24/7. I'm hoping I can usually go home in the early evenings and WFH after dinner as needed. Current plan is to move into the city this summer if not sooner for many of the aforementioned reasons. Happy to follow up here in a few months and let you know how it's going for me. 

Yea the savings are nice but are you gonna have a good social life? It's easy to plan on just crashing at your bros place on nights you go out, but this really just a band aid. Where are you going to bring chicks? I also feel like you're just way more likely to meet people and make friends if you live amongst other young professionals. I'm kinda just echoing what's already been said by others.

the main drawback is that you can't bring chicks in. you will have to keep quietly jerking off on the other side of the wall from parents for a year. aren't you tired of it from all the time at school when you didn't have time for chicks cause you had to study and do extra to make it to banking. now you finally made it and will have money to start living the life. of course you can push it back by another year or two for extra 52k pre-tax, but it might really be not worth it cause you're gonna make 200-500k pretty soon. up to you. I like to save money more than anybody else (my gf would agree 200%), but renting my own apartment without parents and roommates is a must for me. but I save money on literally everything else.

I wouldn't recommend it. You should live in the city and party with friends any chance you get. Next thing you know all of your friends will have kids and you'll be wishing you were 22 living in NYC.

don't recommend this at all. should be focusing on being a reliable and hard working 1st year especially in this recession. as people said above, its not worth adding commute in the morning and after work when it'll be hard to get work done. itll be miserable more than you think. you have to factor in waking up, maybe eating breakfast, and showering (~1 hr) on top of getting to the train, walking. not even accounting for delays. what happens if there are train delays once or twice a month all year? then your team will know you as that guy who just always has "excuses" even though they aren't. this will build up a bad rep over time tbh. on the weekends, you want to decompress, not crash on some couch after a long week. i mean hey if you want to go for this you should but 30k is not much at the expense of building your experience/resume for first 5 years or so which will pay multiples down the line 

It's good logic but I'd lean against because these are some pretty formative years in your life both professionally and personally.  Consider:

1. Probably some compounding effect to any incremental career success you have in your analyst years.  i.e. if you perform a little better and that has some career impact (exit result etc) then that advantage could snowball from there.  

2. Added networking benefit to living in the city, going to more happy hours and get-togethers and meetups that you might otherwise miss.  Is this advantage small . . maybe but see point #1 again, everything at this stage of life can compound.

3. Softer point but these years are a "chapter" somewhat akin to college.  A lot of people think of their analyst class similarly to their pledge class.  And not just your bank classmates but all the other friends who are your age going through the similar experience in the city.  To the extent that's a valuable experience, you want all of it . . not a watered down version of it.  The benefits of this are hard to quantify but I don't think a lot of older folks would want to trade that experience.

Just things to consider.  Money matters too, wouldn't blame you for choosing that route.   But I would definitely not think of it as arbitrage.  It's actually more like being short an option.  You're collecting a certain amount, and what you lose could be big depending on the circumstances.

One year makes sense. That 40k of cash will be very investable into better experiences or actual investments/securities during the second year.

Most people just get fucked up and do coke on the weekend, from a finance perspective. Remove the substances and most relationships wouldn't sustain themselves - it's ok to miss that for one year. Plus, you can crash at friends places (ideally girls), every few weekends.

Would do it if I were you. 40k is worth it. Worst case do it for 6 months. 

Absolutely do it….but don’t do it to save money, do it so that you can go out more and party harder and enjoy these years.

Even if you can’t crash at a friend’s place like everyone said, you can easily book a night at a dingy hotel every Friday and still come out on top. This covers off the bringing girls home checkbox as well.

No shot. Growing up my dad did long hours in the city. Lived in a suburb of central NJ about 40 mins from the city. Sometimes he would get back at 12am from taking the bus from the port authority home or the company getting a car to drive him. Then he would leave at 6 in the morning to do it again.  
 

He was miserable during this time and you probably will be too 

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Hey Man, I work in Consulting, and have recent immigrant parents who encourage the whole 'live at home' a little too much, so I kind of get where you are coming from.  

For Manhattan, I don't recommend it.  As a Banker, you're going to hate needing to commute late at night, and NYC is also the one city where it really makes a difference how close to the core you end up living.  Had you stated that you were working in Houston, Charlotte, or hell, even DC where I'm at now, I actually would encourage you to consider it and save the money.  NYC is too cumbersome to get into though, and it really is worth a premium to live there as opposed to living outside.

This is also less of a financial question, than it is a life question.  I'm in my late 20s now, but I lived alone for a few years before moving in with the parents for the 18 months COVID was around.  I don't know your exact cultural background, but living at home and enjoying Manhattan is not easily achievable. Also things like going out and dating, they will be difficult if you're at home.  Not a problem if you're not into that, but most people on this site are so they're going to be arguing against your plan from that angle.  

I really do believe all this american nonsense about 'finding yourself' and the 'college experience' and all the other stupid platitudes, is absolutely asinine, but is does have a grain of truth to it.  Living alone in a professional (non uni) manner is a great stepping stone from undergrad> real adult, and I'd encourage it for everyone.  

Arbitrage is defined as risk less profit. There is risk in many forms of this scenario from reputational, lack of personal growth risk, etc.