Living in a big city comes with a hefty price tag, which is why city workers often choose to live in the suburbs at a fraction of the price and put up with a grueling commute instead. But one commuter is going to extreme lengths to get to her New York office: When Sophia Celentano was an intern, she took a plane ride to work.
The former corporate marketing intern explained in a viral TikTok video, as a hybrid worker, she only needs to get into the office once a week, so living and flying from South Carolina is cheaper than renting in the Big Apple—a city recently ranked as the world’s most expensive for expats.
“Honestly, it’s cheaper for me to stay at home in Charleston,” she said while recording her 3 a.m. morning routine to get into the Newark, New Jersey office for 9 a.m. “I still live with my parents and just pay for plane tickets one day a week.”
Fortune put Celentano’s cost-cutting weekly routine—which includes flying out specifically on Wednesdays, her in-office day—to the test.
The average rent in New York ranges from $3,575 for a studio rental to $9,000 for a 4-bedroom, according to Renthop. Meanwhile, Fortune found numerous return flights from Charleston to Newark for around the $200 mark.
So flying to the office once a month would cost a hybrid worker less than $1,000 a month—significantly less than the sky-high rent of a New York studio apartment before even taking into account the general increased cost of living in a popular city.
Plus, unlike your standard train commuter who is often hit with disruptions on their way into the office, Celentano boasted her radical commute means she’s actually often in the office before her start time.
“Early morning flights are very rarely delayed,” she said, in reaction to viewers’ concerns catching the plane to work would result in regularly arriving late for work.
While viewers were shocked by her working arrangement, with one commenting, “Not a single job in the world is worth this,” Celentano had no problem with her lengthy commute.
“I understand this is a very untraditional thing, but it works for me,” she doubled down in a video she made in response to the negative reaction her commuting video received.
Moreover, her situation wasn’t even a rare one-off occurrence in her workplace.
While many in her team travel in from Boston and Philadelphia, one peer in her internship program even commuted from Atlanta.
Plus, as she noted, due to the sheer size of New York and the office’s specific location, even locals tend to spend around an hour and a half to get to the office.
So clearly, in the eyes of Celentano (and the intern from Atlanta) killing a couple of extra hours on commuting is worth the thousands of dollars in savings.
A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on June 8, 2023.
