A compromise between city and rural life?

A few days ago (actually, a few weeks ago; holy crap!) I wrote about my wondering if I should move back to the city. Well, I still haven't made up my mind. I have, however (thanks to inspiration from this comment), come up with some alternate solutions.

One option I came up with was to use something like AirBNB to rent a cheap room for the two nights that I'm in Cambridge. I would drive (or take the train) to Cambridge on Wednesday morning, stay overnight somewhere local until Friday, and then drive back to NH Friday evening. This would save me about six hours of commuting and would be a good balance between the advantages and disadvantages I outlined in the earlier post.

However, renting a room twice a week would also mean an additional $320 a month spent on rooming (assuming a $40/night room, which seems to be the cheapest in the area). Even with the $115 I would be saving on gas from not commuting as much, that's still an extra $205 every month. For quite some time now, I've been doing everything I can to save money and cut down on expenses, so spending money on something that really just solves a big inconvenience doesn't seem to make sense.

So I continued thinking of other ways that might be cheaper and still offer the same result. That's when I remembered reading about couch surfing. What is couch surfing? It's exactly what it sounds like (well maybe not exactly): someone offers to let you sleep on their couch (or floor) at no cost! People do it out of the goodness of their hearts (and/or the desire to meet people and/or socialize). The CouchSurfing.org website is the primary resource for couch surfers around the world (including those hosting a couch) and there are over a million registered users, including me!

While I'm couch surfing, I can continue to make up my mind about whether or not to move back to the city and at the same time work on adapting more of a mobile lifestyle. There are no long term (monthly) commitments and I will be saving money (on gas) instead of spending it. Also, one of my 2009 New Years Resolutions was to "improve my social skills", so at the very least couch surfing will help with that!

I'm sure couch surfing will prove to be an interesting experience -- I'll be sure to take notes and write about it. 🙂