--- title: This Teen Flew to Another Country to Save $12 on His Commute Home description: Instead of taking a train within England home, Jordan Cox, an 18-year-old money-saving expert, boarded a flight with a stopover in Germany. authors: - name: Brad Tuttle role: Senior Editor url: https://money.com/author/brad-tuttle/ bio: Brad Tuttle is a former senior editor at Money with over 10 years’ experience covering a vast number of personal finance topics, including careers, cars, travel, budgeting, investing, insurance, credit cards, consumer psychology, real estate, banking, and shopping and deals. education: Columbia University School of Journalism, MS at_money_since: 2014 articles: 366 covers: - Lifestyle - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Economy and Politics - Education - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Pets - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes - Technology social: - https://twitter.com/bradrtuttle - https://linkedin.com/in/brad-tuttle-834b225 former_staff: true published: '2016-01-28T16:20:56.000Z' modified: '2016-01-28T16:20:56.000Z' section: Lifestyle tags: - Airlines - deals - Travel word_count: 469 canonical: https://money.com/save-money-flights-europe-train-jordan-cox/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Berlin, Germany skyline over the Spree River](https://img.money.com/2016/01/160128_em_berlinlondon1.jpg?crop=0px%2C221px%2C2100px%2C1182px&quality=85) *Berlin, Germany* Jordan Cox may only be 18, but he can probably teach you a thing or two about saving money—and about travel, for that matter. Cox is a skinny, bespectacled Brit who teaches classes on couponing and is known as the "Coupon Kid." He blogs about saving strategies at [MoneySavingExpert.com](http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/deals-hunter/2016/01/26/flew-home-via-berlin-cheaper-than-train/), and this week he posted a story about his very unusual experience getting home after hosting a coupon class in Sheffield. Rather than simply buying a train ticket home, which would have cost £47, Cox booked an ultra-cheap flight home. Most interestingly, the flight wasn't direct. Instead, Cox boarded a Ryanair flight to Berlin, hung out in Germany's capital for the day, and then boarded another Ryanair flight to London—and wound up saving money in the grand scheme, even after factoring in food and local transportation. All told, Cox spent £44 (about $63) on his whirlwind visit to Berlin, including lunch, flights, and various train and bus rides to and from airports. By comparison, he estimates he would have dropped a total of slightly under £52 ($75) taking the more direct route, with trains, buses, and lunch entirely in his home country. Granted, the latter would have saved some time. Then again, he wouldn't have gotten to see Berlin. "This was the cheapest way for me to get home and I got to enjoy a ‘free’ mini holiday to a city I’ve always always wanted to visit," Cox wrote. While Cox admitted the journey was "a rather extreme way of saving money," he said that many travelers should consider using his strategies, albeit perhaps in a more practical, less harried way: > On certain trains and routes, you might find it cheaper to fly via a short stop-over in Ireland, or even mainland Europe, to get to your destination. It will take a bit of trial and error and you’ll have to book two separate flights, so take into consideration any extra booking fees. Here's Cox in action, walking us through his wild money-saving visit to Germany. To some degree, a similarly creative approach to travel can save money in the U.S. The website [Skiplagged.com](https://skiplagged.com/), for instance, promises flights that save up to 80% by finding cheap "hidden city" routes. Essentially, instead of searching only for regular flights, it scours the web for lower-cost routes with stopovers in the traveler's true destination. Often, the airfare is cheaper this way compared to booking a basic flight. When the plane arrives at the "stopover," the passenger simply gets off and doesn't board the connecting flight. Obviously, the strategy only works if you're not checking bags—because they'd be transported to the final destination booked on the ticket. Buy hey, checking bags almost always costs money, so we're assuming if you are going to such lengths to pinch pennies you wouldn't be checking luggage anyway. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/save-money-flights-europe-train-jordan-cox/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Lifestyle", "item": "https://money.com/lifestyle/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Travel", "item": "https://money.com/travel/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "This Teen Flew to Another Country to Save $12 on His Commute Home" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/save-money-flights-europe-train-jordan-cox/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/save-money-flights-europe-train-jordan-cox/", "name": "This Teen Flew to Another Country to Save $12 on His Commute Home", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2016-01-28T16:20:56.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/save-money-flights-europe-train-jordan-cox/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/save-money-flights-europe-train-jordan-cox/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2016-01-28T16:20:56.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "This Teen Flew to Another Country to Save $12 on His Commute Home", "articleSection": "Lifestyle", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2016/01/160128_em_berlinlondon1.jpg?crop=0px%2C221px%2C2100px%2C1182px&quality=85", "width": 1012, "height": 569, "caption": "160128_EM_BerlinLondon" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Brad Tuttle", "url": "https://money.com/author/brad-tuttle/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/brad-tuttle/#author", "description": "Brad Tuttle is a former senior editor at Money with over 10 years’ experience covering a vast number of personal finance topics, including careers, cars, travel, budgeting, investing, insurance, credit cards, consumer psychology, real estate, banking, and shopping and deals.\r\n\r\n", "image": "https://img.money.com/2014/01/Brad-Tuttle.png?w=226&h=247&crop=1", "alumniOf": "Columbia University School of Journalism, MS", "sameAs": [ "https://twitter.com/bradrtuttle", "https://linkedin.com/in/brad-tuttle-834b225" ] } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2016-01-28T16:20:56.000Z", "description": "Instead of taking a train within England home, Jordan Cox, an 18-year-old money-saving expert, boarded a flight with a stopover in Germany.", "abstract": "Instead of taking a train within England home, Jordan Cox, an 18-year-old money-saving expert, boarded a flight with a stopover in Germany.", "@id": "https://money.com/save-money-flights-europe-train-jordan-cox/", "inLanguage": "en-US", "dateModified": "2016-01-28T16:20:56.000Z", "wordCount": 469, "keywords": [ "Airlines", "deals", "Travel" ], "about": [ { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Lifestyle", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle" ] }, { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Travel", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel" ] } ] } ] } ```