‘I travelled home from Sheffield via Berlin to save eight pounds’

Popping home on the train is a sure-fire way to eat up your student loan, but an 18-year-old from Essex has found a novel solution.

Jordon Cox saved himself £7.72 on the train fare home from Sheffield — by going via Berlin on a plane. The self-styled Coupon Kid was giving a talk on money-saving in Sheffield, and decided to practice what he preached on the journey back. He found it was cheaper to get Ryanair flights out to Germany and back than to get a £47 train from Sheffield to Shenfield.

He took a seven hour detour

Amazingly, despite adding a hefty seven hours onto the journey time, after airport transfers and a short pit-stop in Berlin, where he had time to get himself a currywurst lunch, Jordan’s detour still works out marginally cheaper.

At £21.37, his return air travel was less than half the price of a single train journey from Sheffield to Essex. In total, his Deutschland detour cost him £44.07, compared to the £51.79 it would have cost to get home by train: a saving of £7.72. That’s roughly a saving of £1.10 per extra hour.

Speaking to The Tab about his money saving venture, Jordan said: “I wasn’t paying that much for the train. It’s outrageous. I’d never looked into it before, but when I saw the prices I had to take action.”

In his post on Moneysavingexpert.com, he elaborated: “I always go the extra mile to save money, but last week I went the extra 1,017 miles. Even by my usual standards, I’ll admit this is a rather extreme way of saving money. If you’re not in a rush, your focus is saving money, and you fancy a little walk around a European city, it’s worth a look”.

Why bother why you can fly home?

Tori Fitch, a first-year who is also from Essex, said the idea didn’t appeal to her: “Why would you do that? He sounds like a moron. For all the extra aggravation of getting a plane, it’s just not worth it. I’ve been home three times since starting at Sheffield. Even with a Railcard, it’s cost me more than £150 altogether — about a third of the money I have left from my loan, after I’ve paid my accommodation rent. I just wish that getting the train wasn’t so expensive.”