A software engineer at Google is living out of his truck — no, really! Surprisingly, it is not because he is getting paid unfairly. Brandon, who prefers to not release his last name, was living in a two-bedroom apartment with three roommates. Even with three others to cover the rent, his portion of the monthly payment was roughly $2,000, which left him pretty pressed for cash — as a software engineer at Google. So, with little else to do about the rent costs in his area, Brandon used his head and came up with an odd solution: he bought a truck to bunk in.
Brandon bought a used Ford E350 for $10,000. While he does pay $121 a month for insurance, he doesn’t have to pay for the other amenities of an apartment. You might be asking: Where does he bathe or go to the bathroom? Brandon does have 24-hour key card access to any building on the campus he works at, which offer showers and bathrooms to its employees. He states that he tries not to eat or drink anything after about 7:30 p.m., washes up and uses the bathroom right before he heads to the truck to sleep at night.
Brandon via frominsidethebox.com
Inside the truck, Brandon only has the bare necessities. There is a bed, dresser and a makeshift closet. Brandon says that the bed is the only part of a house that he really needs, and if he spent all of his time in there, he’d be doing it wrong. This hasn’t stopped him from throwing a few “truck warming” parties with a few close friends, though.
Brandon estimates that he would be spending about $2,180 a month to live in a studio apartment in the area. He even created a formula to figure out his net savings since he moved in the truck back in May. After the initial cost of the truck, it took him six months to start seeing some real savings.
Do you think you could give up the luxury of having an apartment/place to yourself if it saved you quite a bit of dough? Let us know what you think!