TikTok’er Goes Viral For Insane Weekly Work Commute

So I feel like I'm probably one of the few people left in the world that still hasn't fallen down the rabbit hole that is TikTok but one particular individual recently caught my attention as well as thousands of other people with a recent video that has since gone viral.

The Viral Once a Week Commute from South Carolina

The person's name is Sophia Celentano and the video she posted was of her commute to work. Ms. Celentano is a South Carolina resident and recently started an internship for a company based out of New Jersey. The internship program allows for its participants to work from home, however, one day a week, the interns must be at the office. Notice how I said that she is a resident of South Carolina because she is still a South Carolina resident. So one day a week, Ms. Celentano makes her commute to work from South Carolina to New Jersey.

One would probably ask 'why in the hell would you make that kind of commute'? It is most definitely a reasonable question, even if it is just one day a week but the answer comes down to one thing; money. Ms. Celentano did some research and crunched the numbers and based on her research she estimated that she would be saving herself an estimated $2000 to make the once-a-week commute over 10 weeks instead of renting an apartment in the NY/NJ area for those same 10 weeks.

It's no secret that living in New York or New Jersey, really the whole Tri-State area is expensive, but this video raised the question of just how expensive is it really. Not to mention, how expensive is it to live in the Hudson Valley?

Average Rent in New York City

An article from Newsweek answered some of those questions in their own coverage of Ms. Celentano's viral video. In it they cited data gathered by Numbeo which showed that the estimated average price for a 'single person to live in NYC is $1506.80'. That doesn't sound bad at all until you see that this is a price tag without rent included. When factoring in rent the prices balloon to anywhere between $1800 to $5000 and that's for a one bedroom.

Average Rent in the Hudson Valley

In comparison to the city and surrounding areas, apartment prices in the Hudson Valley are cheaper but they are still expensive. According to Rentcafe the average price of rent for an apartment in the Hudson Valley is $2215 per month. In addition, they state that the average size of an apartment in the Hudson Valley is 866 sq. ft. The price also obviously varies depending on factors like unit type, number of bedrooms, so on and so forth. The area with the highest average rent was Crestwood at $4428 while the cheapest was Greater Hamptonburgh at $1460 per month.

I have heard of 'cost cutting' measures before but this entire ordeal may just be the craziest one I've ever heard about. That being said, saving to 2K is saving 2K. I think it would be fair to assume that this type of travel probably isn't for everybody but keeping that in mind, taking a plane to work does sound kind of cool.

@sophiacelentano48 super commuting slay #corporateintern #marketingintern #nycintern #summerinternship #supercommuter #fyp #foryou ♬ original sound - Sophia Celentano