Commuting from Barcelona: a London worker who makes it pay

It began as a joke. “I was renting at the time, getting very frustrated with London prices – the usual scenario,” explains Sam Cookney. “I said to a friend that I bet it would be cheaper if I actually lived in Barcelona and commuted every day.”

He did the maths and the figures seemed to agree. In a 2013 blog post, he laid out the cost of the 930-mile commute, concluding that he would save €387 a month.

So, earlier this year when Cookney found himself looking for a new flat, he decided to heed his own advice and head south. “It seemed at the time to be the most sane, logical and best decision,” said Cookney, who is originally from Lancashire and had lived in London for nine years.

In June, Cookney – a 32-year-old who works in social media – packed his bags and headed to Barcelona.

In London, he had lived in a shared flat in zone 2, paying £700 a month in rent. In Barcelona he found a newly renovated two-bedroom flat with a roof terrace in the city’s Gothic quarter. “I can walk everywhere and I’m paying €800 a month, or £570. It’s not even comparable,” he said. His bills each month come to another €80.

On his blog, he had calculated his costs based on a commute back and forth to London four times a week. But Cookney only commutes three or four times a month. “I was never going to do four days a week,” he said. “That would be excessive.” The rest of the time he works from home or in a rented co-working space, at a cost of €90 a month.

When he does head to his office in Farringdon, the commute each way takes about five and a half hours. “I get up at about 4.30am and I’m usually in the office by 9.30am UK time with the one-hour time difference,” he said. He usually leaves the office around 5.30pm to head back to Barcelona.

The idea of commuting by plane was initially the most daunting part of the arrangement for him. “I thought the commute was going to be horrific. But it’s so seamless,” he said, pointing to the tube strike that left Londoners struggling to get to work last week. “Getting to the airport at 5am is so easy, straight through security, hang around for half an hour, have some breakfast and I’m on the plane and straight in my office.”

He estimates that when all is said and done, he’s saving a few hundred pounds each month. More importantly, he said, his quality of life has increased. “It’s probably been the best decision I’ve ever made,” he added. “The quality of life is just so much better in every respect – housing, transport, food. It’s just not really comparable to my previous London lifestyle.”

He is hard pressed for an answer when asked about the downside of the commute, pointing out that he packs in visits with friends and family and stocks up on his favourite foods when he’s in London. “There’s nothing that’s been difficult or anything that I’m regretting so far,” said Cookney.

The one element of unpredictability in his budget has come from the cost of flights, which can vary from €150 return in the summer to €70 return off-season.

Still, he has noticed some familiar faces on the flights to London. “There’s about three or four men I seem to see on every flight,” he said. “I think there’s a few people doing it.” Others have reached out to him, sharing their tales of commuting to London from Ibiza, parts of France and the Netherlands. “I really think with the changing nature of work, office, life, we’re going to see more of this,” he added.

The key might lie in the handful of times he makes the commute each month rather than the four times a week he had originally mapped out in his blog. “Let’s be honest. It was never a sensible life suggestion – it was more to highlight the excesses of London rent,” he said. “But I think the lifestyle I do have now though is very sustainable.”