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Comment by rokhayakebe | Hacker News Reader

Keep this up as long as you can if it does not affect your social life (girlfriend/boyfriend). There is nothing like money in the bank.

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3 hours a day is a huge amount of time and commute time is one of the biggest, easily changeable factors of happiness.

Nobody in a software engineering job should have to live with parents for financial reasons. I appreciate OP's dedication, but they should be able to save up an emergency fund pretty quickly and move into their own (small) apartment.

3 hours per day is going to kill me. I did it over the summer for an internship, and just plan to save for 3 months until I have a solid base to add to my savings account. I'm targeting a solid 9-10 months of emergency fund. If I moved out right now, I could afford the first and last month of rent, but would not have that much left in my bank account. And for the record, a reason I want to move out is so I can start to build my own life with a woman in my life. I can't do this at my parents place. I love my parents, but at 26 it is time for me to be on my own.

It's a great plan and good luck.

If you're interested in saving for the longer term, I recommend checking out r/financialindependence.

+1 if you move in with this woman and keep saving.

Don't worry. I commute 4 hours a day. You get used to it. You have to live where you can afford, man.

At 4 hours a day it's time to look at what else you can cut, like house/apartment size.

I feel like it's maybe doable if you use that 4 hours for your "entertainment" time-budget for the day. Listen to audiobooks or podcasts. Then don't watch TV or Netflix or whatever when you actually are home.

That said, this is purely speculation. I have a 10 minute commute by subway+walking.

Can people listen to audio books while driving? I find if I'm doing anything more complicated than washing the dishes I lose track of the book.

It's a tradeoff I gladly make in order to not have to live in a shoebox.

Fair enough, we're very different people. The only down side to the shoe box for me is that I can't have a real sized dog.

Depends on the mode of transport too. At my last job I had a 1 hour commute but it was via public transport. I sat down and worked on my personal projects during that time, now my commute is a lot shorter and I'm getting a lot less done.

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