Originally Posted by BPrentice

I never said it was cheaper in terms of gas OR insurance. LIVING expenses only. They could live in either city only one person would have to commute.

Then you need a vocabulary lesson, living expenses incorporate all expenses that accumulate from living in a certain area. If i were to live an hour from work, then the cost of gas to get me to and from work, and the insurance on the vehicle would be incorporated into my total cost of LIVING. Your focusing on only rent or leasing costs, which is narrow minded and gives the OP a false sense of believing that they would be breaking even either way, when really living away from campus is much more expensive when you are still living on your own and commuting. Thats like Hitler saying, "Well i captured Poland, so that means I won the war". when really, thats just a small part of the war, and in the end, he got his ass kicked
is it a bad analogy, maybe, but its about as bad as your arguement saying that it costs the same regardless of their decision

Hey I read everything you guys had to say and I'm not phased by the generally negative responses I'm getting on here; I'm open to everyone's opinion and I have absolutely no experience living away from home, which is why I decided to come on here. I am aware of the cost of insurance, though; I pay for it with my own money and will be paying for it throughout university (even though I'm leaving my car in Markham) because I want my premium to drop. I'm also aware of the cost of gas - this summer alone (late May until now) I blew around $1000 on gas because I drive half an hour to Mississauga for work every day.

I guess I should've given a little more background on the situation in my original post to avoid the assumptions many of you are making. My girlfriend and I have had a period of time where we were in a long distance relationship - she actually lived in Europe for a few months last year - and we got through it really well, thanks to Skype and e-mails. I agree that generally, 18 is a relatively young age to "settle down" and my girlfriend knows that too; we give each other enough space and neither of us are overly possessive of one another.

Something else that made Oakville a little more appealing was the fact that I have family there, in addition to the city being in between both universities. However, after reading what a lot of you have to say, I can see that living together halfway isn't really the best option. The thing is, though, that due to some issues that I'd rather not talk about publicly on here, the commute would be from Hamilton to Markham and not from Hamilton to Mississauga; if she goes to UTM, she'll probably be living at home and commuting every day for half an hour. This would mean a one hour commute OR 3 hours on a bus... which is the issue I was trying to avoid in the first place with this little plan. Like I said above, we're perfectly capable of functioning in a long distance relationship; we're just trying to find a way of minimizing this distance.

Anyways, thanks for all the input everyone! I really appreciate it.