A Google employee in San Francisco has decided to forgot the luxuries that come with renting a property - such as heating, air conditioning and a bathroom - to live in a truck in the company’s car park, a move that saves him nearly 90 per cent of his income by not paying rent.
The employee, known only as Brandon, has been blogging about his experience, describing how he eats all of his meals at Google, showers every day at the company's gym, and charges up a battery in the office that helps to power his laptop and other items when he uses them inside the truck.
Brandon has been living in the 16ft truck for around five months and details in his blog how he came up with the idea. During an internship at Google last summer, Brandon spent nearly $100 (£65) a night in corporate housing, which he barely spent any time in.
“The summer starts, and I'm having an amazing time, but as I start to settle into a routine, I notice something fairly tragic: for all the money I'm spending on this apartment, I'm hardly ever there! I wake up, catch the first GBus to Google, work out, eat breakfast, work, eat lunch, work, eat dinner, hang out at Google, and eventually take a bus home, pack my gym bag for the next day, and go to sleep,” he writes.
After graduating with nearly $22,500 (£14,560) in student debt and knowing he would return to the company as a software engineer, he discovered the average cost of rent where he had wanted to live – the Mountain View area – was around $2,100. He instead decided to pay $10,000 for the truck instead.
Speaking to Business Insider, Brandon said he has already paid off a large chunk of his student loans with the money he saved on rent, and expects to be debt free within six months.
“I’m going for a target of saving about 90 per cent of my after-tax income, and throwing that in student loans and investments,” he said.
Brandon’s only financial responsibility is his monthly insurance payments for the truck, costing around $121 (£78), but he barely has any possessions – the sparsely decorated truck contains a bed, a dresser, and a self-fashioned clothes rack.
He has had one run in with the security outfit on the company’s property after parking up late one night on his return home from the cinema. But when the guards discovered Brandon was an employee, they let him go back to bed and complimented him on his “sweet set-up,” he said.
