12 ms·

Be happier: Rent Everything

127 points by gsaines 16y ago

erikstarck 16y ago
I agree with Bruce Sterling. Buy an expensive bed and office chair (you spend most of your time in those and you only have one body). Then only keep stuff that's - Extremely beautiful. - Have an extraordinary emotional value to you. We're talking the watch in Pulp Fiction type of items. - Highly practical. Throw away everything else.
- qjz 16y ago
  I'm sure you'll find many hoarders who can justify their entire collections with those three rules.
  - creynolds 16y ago
    Hoarders can justify anything, what matters is what can you justify with those rules?
  - erikstarck 16y ago
    Bruce Sterling talks about that here: http://boingboing.net/2009/07/09/bruce-sterlings-clos.html http://boingboing.net/2009/07/09/bruce-sterlings-clos.html It's a great speech filled with nuggets about life in the coming decade but the parts related to this starts at about 36 minutes in.
    - jazzdev 16y ago
      Great stuff in that video about knowing if something's beautiful or meaningful. And some great stuff at the beginning about not wasting your time doing something you can do better when you're dead, like conserving water or electricity or reducing your carbon footprint. Flawed logic, but an interesting way to think about things.
  - Unseelie 16y ago
    But for people without that specific psychosis, they're pretty good rules.
plesn 16y ago
Be happier, find or borrow everything.
mkelly 16y ago
I agree wholeheartedly with this article, and the PG article that preceded it. I try very hard to avoiding owning more than I must. Big moves and traveling help tremendously with this. When I moved to New York city from southern California, I got rid of everything but a box (shipped), and what I could bring on the plane. I'd been traveling with much less than that for a few months before, and that helped me realize how little I really needed. Tools and electronics are my weak points. Home laptop, work laptop, workstation+monitor (high power), bastion machine (low power). Power drill, a bunch of screwdriver extensions, multimeter, connectors for god-knows-what, etc. NYC is very amenable to this philosophy: owning my apartment is out of the question. I have no need for a car (and my commute has become much less stressful). Apartments are small and don't give you much space to accumulate needless stuff. I haven't considered the idea of renting furniture, but perhaps it's reasonable. I know services like that exist.
hristov 16y ago
Yeah it sounds great but have you ever been to one of those places that rent out furniture and TVs? They are great if you want to make your room look and smell like a seedy motel room that rents by the hour. You are better off financially and aesthetically getting a bunch of cheap stuff from IKEA and assembling it yourself. As far as renting housing, as a proud home-owner I would say definitely rent.
- noonespecial 16y ago
  This has become my philosophy. You can buy the Ikea stuff almost as cheap as renting that crummy rent-a-center junk for a few months. When we move, we just make sure we find a rental close to an Ikea, Craigs List all of the Ikea stuff before we go and then buy it again when we get there, saving thousands on moving expenses. I'm wicked good at assembling the entire "Lack" series... I'm about to try this with our biggest jump ever. From the USA to Australia. Selling everything and starting over is hard but has been strangely refreshing.
  - wyclif 16y ago
    What have you found to be the biggest cultural hurdles in moving to Oz?
    - noonespecial 16y ago
      Compared to my other overseas adventures, Downunder is a much easier adjustment. I have a family now and we're all going so I'm happy about this. Good to ease them into the whole expat thing. We'll be starting down south, in Adelaide, coming from DC. What struck me most about the difference in these two places is just how laid back and casual everything is down there. Right-hand drive is stressful for me though! I'll be back down there in a weeks time looking for a place to live and finishing immigration paperwork. Any HN folks in SA who might want to meet up for a quick pint some idle evening, drop me a line.
      - wyclif 16y ago
whatusername 16y ago
Just remember that renting is like SAAS.. you don't really own your stuff and don't have control over it. For 90% of use cases - that's fine. But remember the 10%.
- frio 16y ago
  This is important; to me at least. I'm a tinkerer, and I like to mess around with things I own. While it might be worth avoiding ownership for the decrease in stress, the fear of damaging someone else's equipment by toying with it would be nightmarish. My old earphones started dying the other day; they'd cut out whenever the moulded 3.5mm jack moved. So I cut it off and resoldered a new one, and now they work just fine. If I'd rented (a bad example, I know), they'd probably be sitting in a dump right now because no doubt the economies of scale dictate it's cheaper to simply manufacture a new pair. Similarly, I live in a rented house with flatmates at the moment, and the things I'd like to do - install a couple of solar panels, run Cat5e through the house (instead of running it down the halls), rig up some neat project ideas I have with an Arduino - I can't, because it's not mine. I guess my point is that we shape the world we live in, and we can't do that to other people's stuff (at least, not within social norms anyway).
  - harry 16y ago
    Yes! Glad someone echoed my sentiment. A parallel from my own world. I bought a new truck - only if I buy something that I truly invest in will I care enough about it to care FOR it for the 20 years I expect it to last. I do all the maintenance myself more out of a love-hate relationship with that type of work. But damn it is nice to drop in a new set of speakers or a beefier tow hitch when I get a wild hair up my ass.
rubashov 16y ago
I dunno. Craigslist has made the market for "stuff" pretty liquid. I can get rid of most of my crap for a healthy fraction of what I paid with way less than an hour of effort per item. Hell, a whole lot of my stuff came from craigslist. Just deliberately live in a small place, don't buy a lot of crap, and regularly cull. Buy only high quality and durable items and do it after a couple day's deliberation. I'm pretty sure I could be liquidated and out of here in under a week. This seems to be the goal he's shooting for. I guess that's a good thing if you're rootless. But it makes one wonder about the days when people bought or inherited heirloom furniture, made to last over 100 years. The culture of disposable and cheaply made crap, and rootless people, is ... questionable.
- pkulak 16y ago
  Exactly. And if you buy it on Craigslist, you can usually sell it again for almost no loss.
- CamperBob 16y ago
  Exactly. Don't think of eBay and Craigslist as being in the buying and selling business -- think of them as being in the storage business. Store your unused stuff there and buy it back if/when you need it again. And the best part is, you don't even have to pay rent to the storage company!
moby_duck 16y ago
My ideal living space would be a medium-sized house almost entirely devoid of any "stuff". No art hanging on the walls. No stack of crappy DVDs I never watch. Just a bed, a computer desk, a nice TV, and some kitchen-ware. But I have a wife, and she stuffs our house full of all kinds of stuff. BTW, I'm not trying to start a gender flame-war; I'm sure plenty of guys annoy their wives with stupid toys.
- trafficlight 16y ago
  I don't think I could do without some kind of art on the walls. Bare walls make a house feel cold and sterile. That's not some place I would want to spend a lot of time.
  - bruceboughton 16y ago
    The grandparent should remember you don't have to hang any old art on the walls. It's really cheap to get your holidays photos blown up on to canvas these days, and the cheap-ish cameras are certainly up to it.
- patrickk 16y ago
  "No stack of crappy DVDs I never watch." I'm starting to rip all my DVDs to a portable hard drive with the eventual aim of selling off my entire DVD collection. I smile to myself when I think of the CD collections of some people older than me have (MP3 players started to become affordable in my mid-teens). Now I have a sizable collection of music, but it's simply rearranged bits on a hard disc rather than a ton of CDs. No clutter. I'm toying with the idea of selling of my large book collection and getting an iPad, but books have a high sentimental value for me plus I value the notes I've scribbled in the margins. Even the idea of having a portable hard drive will go away soon with cloud computing and the ever expanding services like Spotify and Netflix. It's amazing the amount of media you can accumulate without ever having to really "see" it (DVD cases etc).
  - prs 16y ago
    Although not applicable to DVD collections, I realized the following: When I started using Dropbox, I uploaded some media files onto my account and realized that even for the most obscure items, someone out there has already done so before me. As a result, backing up those files was merely an exercise of data deduplication in most cases.
johnkary 16y ago
You don't even need to pay Rent. There are a few resources out there to lead you to living rent-free: http://www.caretaker.org/ http://www.caretaker.org/ - House sitting and property caretaking newsletter. Basically live in someones house in exchange for taking care of it. http://www.couchsurfing.org/ http://www.couchsurfing.org/ - Find reliable people willing to let you sleep on their couch for free. I always look here when needing a place to stay and don't want to pay for a hotel. Search in advance if you know your travel dates and length of stay.
- philwelch 16y ago
  Evidently, the market value of awkward social obligations to strangers combined with having to move around a lot is several hundred dollars a month, because I can't imagine doing either of those for free rent unless I was desperately broke.
pkulak 16y ago
How is leasing a car less stressful than owning? I own my car, and at least I can put it on Craigslist whenever I like. If I was leasing it, who knows what I'd have to go through to get rid of it. I guess you could actually _rent_ a car... for $70 a day. And if I was renting all my furniture and appliances, God, I'd be broke right now from the payments. If I had enough money to rent everything, I'd just buy it and save the rest. Or buy better stuff. Or go on vacation. If I want to move and not take stuff with me, I'll sell it.
- johnkary 16y ago
  Article argued for using public transportation instead of an owned vehicle. I think you missed the point of the article, which was you can focus more on your passion (work, family, hobbies, start up) if you don't bind yourself to ownership. If you own a house, sure, you have an appreciating (???) asset, but you also are responsible for fixing every little thing that goes wrong. The "extra" you pay in rent vs owning is for having a landlord to worry about investing time and your extra money to fix things.
  - lsc 16y ago
    yeah, but the problem is that you have to worry about shit you rent. Really, you have to worry about it more than shit you own. My stuff is, well, mine, and nobody else will give me trouble if I destroy it. Rented stuff belongs to someone else. I need to take due care, and if I do happen to break it, I usually have to pay more than what getting the equivalent thing off craigslist would cost me. Also, when you rent, you usually commit to renting for a certain number of months (or sometimes years) - in many ways a lease is much less flexible than owning, because I can't sublet, and I can't force the landlord to lower the price, so if I want to leave, and the market prices of the rental is lower than what I paid for it, I'm potentially on the hook to pay off not only the difference between market value then and market value now, but instead the entire value of the lease.
    - rue 16y ago
      That is what insurance is for.
nicpottier 16y ago
Renting isn't the real goal here, only one of many possible solutions to being nailed down to one place. For example, I own a duplex, and furnished the top unit rather nicely and lived in it for a few years. But I decided to move abroad for a while and rented it furnished and got a property manager to take care of the duplex. The key is just to plan for not needing income. I knew that I'd reach the break even point on my duplex pretty quickly vis-a-vis rent and mortgage, so although I own property, it isn't really an anchor, instead an investment. I agree with some of the other posters, seems like if you are frugal and buy off of CL you are probably going to do just as well. You can also rent entire houses or apartments furnished for less than the cost of renting stuff separately, so that's another option. Keep your options open, that's the real goal.
AlexRodriguez 16y ago
Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney in 'Up in the Air' lives out of his suitcase and thinks he loves it. This sounds like something Bingham would say in one of his motivational speeches.
derwiki 16y ago
Good timing on the article -- I actually ran the numbers early this evening to see if (financially) ZipCar + public transit was cheaper than TCO for the car I sold 6 months ago. I looked at 6 month of each, living in Nob Hill. Owning a car ended up being $2700 and ZipCar about $1600. The cost savings, while validating, is not the biggest gain. Not worrying about parking tickets (or towing!), finding a parking spot (always the worst part of my day), getting broken into (happened once already), mechanical problems -- it's hard to put a price on that burden being lifted. Outside of that, since I moved to SF a little over a year ago (to a smaller place) it made me realize how much junk I have that I don't need and have been actively trying to minimize my possessions. So far, I've shed a lot of extra weight and my entire life feels a little less cluttered. It's very re-assuring that articles like this keep coming up on HN.
- asnyder 16y ago
  While Zipcar is nice, that $1600 will realistically buy you 10 trips, in NYC anyway. Due to the high price of Zipcar I usually find myself avoiding any trips that would require one. Fortunately in NYC there aren't much of those, thus making Zipcar or similar a good option.
- rubashov 16y ago
  Motorcycle is an under-considered car alternative. Fuel is peanuts and total annual costs only a few hundred; a small fraction of car ownership. Only a few grand of capital is tied up in the bike. It's great if you only need to drive a couple times a week and can resort to other means if necessary.
  - mitjak 16y ago
    I'd love to explore this option at one point (Vespa drooling time). In the meantime there is the ebike and ordinary bike options too. Until you need to grocery shop for a week or two ahead that is.
    - rubashov 16y ago
      I don't know what the heck the point of these scooters and vespas are. They're the same price as 250cc proper motorcycles. Seems like a tax on hipsterdom.
mitjak 16y ago
I'm sure the practice won't be greeted here with open arms, but I often 'rent' items from big chain stores with long return policies when I need to and just return the items before the time goes up. 90% of the time I don't keep the purchases, but the 10% of items I do keep I use very often and am very happy with. Call it using the system.
- derwiki 16y ago
  Are these items that couldn't be legitimately rented from somewhere else? I'm personally very opposed to the practice, but am curious why people feel OK doing it.
  - mitjak 16y ago
    I'm a student so the return policy way is really the cheapest out there. As to why people feel OK doing it, why shouldn't we? Costco, in particular, offers an unusually long return policy. I don't exactly return underwear or dirty plates, but electronic devices I don't see a problem with. A good example would be needing a good laptop for about a week or two when the university Debian based towers just don't cut it anymore. I mean, anyone who's used an IDE written in Java will agree.
    - derwiki 16y ago
      It feels to me like living outside of one's means.
      - mitjak 16y ago
        If there is an opportunity to have something you temporarily need and likely wont need beyond the given project, then how is that not simply utilizing the system in place? It's a life hack.
        bruceboughton 16y ago
        >> It's a life hack. No, it's unethical and cheap.
yason 16y ago
I've also grown pro-renting and pro-disowning. I bought an apartment a few years ago, then relocated and rented a new apartment for myself, leased my own apartment to an acquaintance of mine, never went back myself, and finally had an enormous relief when I finally sold it. I don't think I'm owning again any time soon, if ever. Even if I lived there myself all the time this time. I think that it's sensible to own small stuff, like your pots and pans, furniture, clothes, and you know, personal stuff. You're probably not going to Europe on a whim all the time and there's always some place you can stash a few boxes while you're away. It's just that I've also learned to own very little, to minimize the burden of owning stuff. So far I've recycled more stuff out of my home than hauled new stuff in. I'm quite ruthless in choosing what to give out: if I haven't used or needed something for some time, it's out. It always feels good. Books are a notable exception, though. Then, personally, car is a bit of a borderline case for me. I'd definitely lease if I had to drive a new car. On the other hand, I drive little and only leisure-like trips that I could simply choose not to drive. So it makes sense for me to own an old car which is what I've done for the past decade. While I actually enjoy taking care of the car maintenance, should it happen to break down it would just remain broken until I would get to fixing it (or have it fixed). So I don't stress about its ownership either: my car is a convenience but not at all a necessity.
barmstrong 16y ago
I did something similar and took off to Argentina for a year. Took with me only one backpack and and my laptop. Got rid of all my other stuff. Now that I'm back state side I'm trying to maintain minimal amount of stuff because it was fairly nice. Two words: furnished apartment.
- bruceboughton 16y ago
  >> Two words: furnished apartment. Speaking as someone who went the other route (unfurnished, buy stuff), I wish I'd tried this. If you're going to be paying the money for a nice place anyway, it's probably worth going furnished.
noonespecial 16y ago
The real trick in life is finding the balance between what one can acquire and what one can use.
oinopion 16y ago
What sense does it make? If you rent apartment(s) for 10 years, you give money out and you have nothing afterwards. Mortgage, on other hand, is more investment: you will have something valuable after paying it back. Is renting everything a new way to be cool?
- mtr 16y ago
  Buying isn't always better than renting especially when you take into account interest payments, maintenance, closing and selling costs, taxes etc. So basically if the house doesn't increase in value enough to cover these costs than you are better off renting. Check out this cool calculator for some more details: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calculator.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calcula...
  - dedward 16y ago
    This depends on whether you are buying for investment reasons or other reasons. We buy plenty of things for non-ivestnemtn reasons - a house COULD be one of those things, depending on your situation.
  - dedward 16y ago
    This depends on whether you are buying for investment reasons or other reasons. We buy plenty of things for non-ivestnemtn reasons - a house COULD be one of those things, depending on your situation.
- binarymax 16y ago
  Not always! I live in a space that is far more economical to rent. If I were to buy the space I am living in now, it would cost an extra X per month - and there is no guarantee the house I rent increasing in value. I take that extra X and invest it every month and get some decent compound interest off it and I am much better off in the long term.
  - oinopion 16y ago
    What magnitude of X are we talking about? Where I live (Central Europe), the difference is really small.
arethuza 16y ago
Best case where owning is way better than renting for me: ski boots. Rental ski boots are instruments of torture as far as I am concerned.
- sledmonkey 16y ago
  Absolutely. I've got custom foam injected liners and footbeds and will never ski without them again. Changed my (ski) life.
araneae 16y ago
Owning a pet can be a delight, but it is also a burden. When my girlfriend visits she has to get a cat sitter and she worries when she can’t get a hold of them. If I were going to buy his thesis, I'd want it to be a little better researched. One of the few things that is pretty well proven to make you happier is a pet, pet sitting annoyances aside.
- jcl 16y ago
  Obviously, the author is advocating pet rental. OK, maybe not. But perhaps this represents an unfulfilled need in the marketplace? You can certainly get some benefits of having a pet without having it live with you long-term (or hospitals wouldn't bother with pet therapy). And you only need to look to Japan to see the urban future: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1570493/Japanese-prices-for-pet-rental.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1570493/Japanese-p... Edit, after more reading on this fascinating topic: Apparently there was a pet rental business in the US, but it folded under pressure from animal rights groups. Pet rental is now illegal in Massachusetts, and maybe the UK and elsewhere: http://www.newsweek.com/2008/07/28/a-dog-for-a-day.html http://www.newsweek.com/2008/07/28/a-dog-for-a-day.html Oh well... Perhaps there is still hope for cat cafes: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090406/tokyos-cat-cafes http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090406/tokyos-cat-c...
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    I've got to agree with the animal rights groups. Maybe not for the same reasons though. An animal can be damaged by an irresponsible renter- killed, traumatized, injured, de-socialized. Unlike a rental car or TV, we cannot simply throw out the broken ones (I should hope you agree with me there) Complicating things even more, the odds that you're not going to know how to interact with a pet go way up if you don't HAVE a pet! While animals are not people, they are similar enough to people as to be completely different from 'stuff', and if you cannot deal with the responsibility of caring for a pet I do not think you should have one at all. (In a controlled environment that can include supervision and a responsible figure who knows what they are doing, perhaps it could work, but not if you're taking them home for a week or such)
atomical 16y ago
Owning a car makes me happy. There's a pride in ownership and in the feeling of independence. I cannot stand public transit.
sjunkin 16y ago
This seems like massive fluff - the "stuff" part I agree with garages full of random products is wasteful. Pets and houses as being burdens sounds a lot like "I just got out of college and am afraid of responsibility"
- jimbokun 16y ago
  "I just got out of college and am afraid of responsibility" For such a person, his advice is very sound.
bconway 16y ago
The author makes a lot of claims about renting, but then backs them up with points that aren't specific to renting at all. For example: Speaking of which, having a car is convenient (and sometimes necessary), but is a monetary black hole and a source of stress if it’s having problems. My old Subaru got me from A to B but probably raised my blood pressure by more than the mileage as I worried about what would go wrong next. And? How is that any different than leasing a car for X years? The bigger issue is that the author goes on to talk about the stress of owning things vs the happiness of not doing so. But at the end of the day, knowing that a.) you don't owe money on an item (it really belongs to you) and b.) you are the only one that needs to be answered to for the status/condition/usefulness of an item brings a helluva lot more piece of mind than holding other people's property. That being said, don't waste your time collecting junk, either.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  > And? How is that any different than leasing a car for X years? It's not, but it's certainly different than using public transportation or biking.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    Bikes are awesome. For a month or two worth of gas, or probably less than a month of expenses (amortized, all-things-considered) you can buy a used bike. It's not as convenient, and is harder work, and it sucks going uphill unless you're in great shape, but on the other hand you can completely total your bike twice a year and still come out hundreds of dollars ahead compared to driving. (What sucks about bikes is the infrastructure, at least in the US. "Bike friendly" means the city gives you a lane right next to the parking lane, and expects you to run headfirst into opening car doors and cars turning across your lane.)
duck 16y ago
Probably the better general advice would be not to own or rent, but rather just do without.
- khafra 16y ago
  The problem for me with wearing a hair shirt all the time is not that it itches, but that it's boring. Asceticism advocacy is a nice applause light, but not very good as practical advice.
  - duck 16y ago
    I wasn't refering to that extreme, but rather as in do I really need an (iPad|second car|fancy tv|another video game|nicer house|newest laptop|etc.)? I've lived in some different places to see both sides of this and found if you can answer no more than yes you'll be happier.
    - khafra 16y ago
      Heh, I wouldn't know what to do with another car or a TV, but I can measure the ways in which my shiny new iPhone 4 has made my life better; and I'd love to have a house with a project room and a garage and a yard large enough to grow all the herbs and vegetables I'd like.
jerf 16y ago
Even better, if you're going to go to that extreme to restructure your life, is to simply attack the problem directly. If you're concerned about your possessions owning you, just fix that. Watch a few episodes of "Clean Sweep" to get in the mindset, then clean your place out, and make sure you do this periodically. Ownership has benefits too. In my opinion when you rent everything you are simply trading a situation in which your possessions metaphorically own you for a situation in which your possessions more literally own you, or rather, the person who actually owns them owns you. Everything you rent has a contract attached to it; what's the fun in that? My house is full of things repurposed; an entertainment center with the top cut off, chairs with customizations induced by pets, a couple of doors I've added internal cat doors to. Chunks of the "house" I've sold, chunks I've added. And I'm not even "handy". Don't treat the symptoms, treat the problem!
- dkarl 16y ago
  Excellent point; once you're good at "ruining" or getting rid of stuff, the stuff you have doesn't bother you. The more you get rid of, the easier it gets, because you realize you don't regret any of it. Once you've got over the horror of throwing away valuable things yourself, you can exploit it in other people. "Hey, do you want...? If you don't, I'm just going to throw it away." Your stuff ends up in their closet instead of yours. You can also donate stuff to friends who enjoy having garage sales or selling at flea markets. Bottom line, as with alcohol, there's no need to avoid it unless you know you can't handle it.
- theBobMcCormick 16y ago
  It sounds like both approaches are ways of dealing with the same root problem: attachment and the illusion of control. IMHO, renting vs owning isn't the real issue. They're both just different ways of financing. The issue is the overdeveloped attachment people get to the "stuff" in their lives.
- lotusleaf1987 16y ago
  Best possible response. When you rent you are constantly and painfully aware that this stuff (whatever it is) is owned by someone other than yourself and that you are paying them for the 'privilege' to use it.
seanc 16y ago
This only makes sense if you place a high value on mobility. Many people value putting down roots and committing to a city or neighborhood. This often comes from having many tangled connections to other people. My life isn't just about me anymore. It's about my wife, kids, and our extended family. If we were to move around a lot, each move would require the whole family to change their lifestyles, as opposed to just one person. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of nomadic families, but they are more rare than nomadic individuals because of the increased complexity. For those of us who aren't as passionate about the nomadic lifestyle, settling down makes sense. And, if you're going to settle down, ownership is the way to go, especially of your house. A great neighborhood is worth a lot of money. Good neighbors, good schools, good transit to work, and so on. If you're renting a house which provides those things, the idea that a landlord can take it all away isn't pleasant.
- philwelch 16y ago
  Nomadic implies you barely spend a couple years in one place at a time. Homeownership to stay put implies that you stay put for decades, because mortgages are usually 30 years. Isn't there anything in between?
  - Confusion 16y ago
    Sure, buy a house when you get somewhere, sell it when you are finished there and accept the losses due to that suboptimal process as costs of the lifestyle. You can't be picky when you buy it, you'll have to sell in a hurry, you may have to pay fines for paying of mortgages at an increased rate, etc. However, it can be done.
    - philwelch 16y ago
      But it can be done just as well, or in some cases even better, by renting. No fines, no selling (worst case scenario you have to rush to sublet, which is a lot less paperwork and hassle), and depending on the area you even get to be picky. You can move every 5 to 10 years buying and selling property, but it sounds like you have to throw away a lot of money to do so, and I thought the point of homeownership was to avoid throwing away money.
coliveira 16y ago
The author is advocating renting stuff instead of buying it. This suggestion doesn't help much in the long run, because you become addicted in the same way. A better suggestion would be using less stuff, period.
chopsueyar 16y ago
This would be a non-issue if he owned a badass diesel truck.
Avshalom 16y ago
>>Finally, owning very nice things makes using them less pleasurable because you have to be extra careful not to damage them (as Paul Graham says in his essay “Nothing owns you like fragile stuff”). clearly we have different ideas of what constitutes "very nice" cause in my world very nice implies dependable and nigh invincible.
sliverstorm 16y ago
Disclaimer: Renting everything doesn't work if you're broke.
Shorel 16y ago
I would change it to: Rent/Lease in markets where prices are probably going down, buy in markets where prices are probably going up. Of course, this rule has lots of exceptions, like computers.
zalew 16y ago
Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner

127 points by gsaines 16y ago

I agree with Bruce Sterling. Buy an expensive bed and office chair (you spend most of your time in those and you only have one body). Then only keep stuff that's - Extremely beautiful. - Have an extraordinary emotional value to you. We're talking the watch in Pulp Fiction type of items. - Highly practical. Throw away everything else.

qjz 16y ago
I'm sure you'll find many hoarders who can justify their entire collections with those three rules.
- creynolds 16y ago
  Hoarders can justify anything, what matters is what can you justify with those rules?
- erikstarck 16y ago
  Bruce Sterling talks about that here: http://boingboing.net/2009/07/09/bruce-sterlings-clos.html http://boingboing.net/2009/07/09/bruce-sterlings-clos.html It's a great speech filled with nuggets about life in the coming decade but the parts related to this starts at about 36 minutes in.
  - jazzdev 16y ago
    Great stuff in that video about knowing if something's beautiful or meaningful. And some great stuff at the beginning about not wasting your time doing something you can do better when you're dead, like conserving water or electricity or reducing your carbon footprint. Flawed logic, but an interesting way to think about things.
- Unseelie 16y ago
  But for people without that specific psychosis, they're pretty good rules.

plesn 16y ago

Be happier, find or borrow everything.

mkelly 16y ago

I agree wholeheartedly with this article, and the PG article that preceded it. I try very hard to avoiding owning more than I must. Big moves and traveling help tremendously with this. When I moved to New York city from southern California, I got rid of everything but a box (shipped), and what I could bring on the plane. I'd been traveling with much less than that for a few months before, and that helped me realize how little I really needed. Tools and electronics are my weak points. Home laptop, work laptop, workstation+monitor (high power), bastion machine (low power). Power drill, a bunch of screwdriver extensions, multimeter, connectors for god-knows-what, etc. NYC is very amenable to this philosophy: owning my apartment is out of the question. I have no need for a car (and my commute has become much less stressful). Apartments are small and don't give you much space to accumulate needless stuff. I haven't considered the idea of renting furniture, but perhaps it's reasonable. I know services like that exist.

hristov 16y ago

Yeah it sounds great but have you ever been to one of those places that rent out furniture and TVs? They are great if you want to make your room look and smell like a seedy motel room that rents by the hour. You are better off financially and aesthetically getting a bunch of cheap stuff from IKEA and assembling it yourself. As far as renting housing, as a proud home-owner I would say definitely rent.

noonespecial 16y ago
This has become my philosophy. You can buy the Ikea stuff almost as cheap as renting that crummy rent-a-center junk for a few months. When we move, we just make sure we find a rental close to an Ikea, Craigs List all of the Ikea stuff before we go and then buy it again when we get there, saving thousands on moving expenses. I'm wicked good at assembling the entire "Lack" series... I'm about to try this with our biggest jump ever. From the USA to Australia. Selling everything and starting over is hard but has been strangely refreshing.
- wyclif 16y ago
  What have you found to be the biggest cultural hurdles in moving to Oz?
  - noonespecial 16y ago
    Compared to my other overseas adventures, Downunder is a much easier adjustment. I have a family now and we're all going so I'm happy about this. Good to ease them into the whole expat thing. We'll be starting down south, in Adelaide, coming from DC. What struck me most about the difference in these two places is just how laid back and casual everything is down there. Right-hand drive is stressful for me though! I'll be back down there in a weeks time looking for a place to live and finishing immigration paperwork. Any HN folks in SA who might want to meet up for a quick pint some idle evening, drop me a line.
    - wyclif 16y ago

whatusername 16y ago

Just remember that renting is like SAAS.. you don't really own your stuff and don't have control over it. For 90% of use cases - that's fine. But remember the 10%.

frio 16y ago
This is important; to me at least. I'm a tinkerer, and I like to mess around with things I own. While it might be worth avoiding ownership for the decrease in stress, the fear of damaging someone else's equipment by toying with it would be nightmarish. My old earphones started dying the other day; they'd cut out whenever the moulded 3.5mm jack moved. So I cut it off and resoldered a new one, and now they work just fine. If I'd rented (a bad example, I know), they'd probably be sitting in a dump right now because no doubt the economies of scale dictate it's cheaper to simply manufacture a new pair. Similarly, I live in a rented house with flatmates at the moment, and the things I'd like to do - install a couple of solar panels, run Cat5e through the house (instead of running it down the halls), rig up some neat project ideas I have with an Arduino - I can't, because it's not mine. I guess my point is that we shape the world we live in, and we can't do that to other people's stuff (at least, not within social norms anyway).
- harry 16y ago
  Yes! Glad someone echoed my sentiment. A parallel from my own world. I bought a new truck - only if I buy something that I truly invest in will I care enough about it to care FOR it for the 20 years I expect it to last. I do all the maintenance myself more out of a love-hate relationship with that type of work. But damn it is nice to drop in a new set of speakers or a beefier tow hitch when I get a wild hair up my ass.

rubashov 16y ago

I dunno. Craigslist has made the market for "stuff" pretty liquid. I can get rid of most of my crap for a healthy fraction of what I paid with way less than an hour of effort per item. Hell, a whole lot of my stuff came from craigslist. Just deliberately live in a small place, don't buy a lot of crap, and regularly cull. Buy only high quality and durable items and do it after a couple day's deliberation. I'm pretty sure I could be liquidated and out of here in under a week. This seems to be the goal he's shooting for. I guess that's a good thing if you're rootless. But it makes one wonder about the days when people bought or inherited heirloom furniture, made to last over 100 years. The culture of disposable and cheaply made crap, and rootless people, is ... questionable.

pkulak 16y ago
Exactly. And if you buy it on Craigslist, you can usually sell it again for almost no loss.
CamperBob 16y ago
Exactly. Don't think of eBay and Craigslist as being in the buying and selling business -- think of them as being in the storage business. Store your unused stuff there and buy it back if/when you need it again. And the best part is, you don't even have to pay rent to the storage company!

moby_duck 16y ago

My ideal living space would be a medium-sized house almost entirely devoid of any "stuff". No art hanging on the walls. No stack of crappy DVDs I never watch. Just a bed, a computer desk, a nice TV, and some kitchen-ware. But I have a wife, and she stuffs our house full of all kinds of stuff. BTW, I'm not trying to start a gender flame-war; I'm sure plenty of guys annoy their wives with stupid toys.

trafficlight 16y ago
I don't think I could do without some kind of art on the walls. Bare walls make a house feel cold and sterile. That's not some place I would want to spend a lot of time.
- bruceboughton 16y ago
  The grandparent should remember you don't have to hang any old art on the walls. It's really cheap to get your holidays photos blown up on to canvas these days, and the cheap-ish cameras are certainly up to it.
patrickk 16y ago
"No stack of crappy DVDs I never watch." I'm starting to rip all my DVDs to a portable hard drive with the eventual aim of selling off my entire DVD collection. I smile to myself when I think of the CD collections of some people older than me have (MP3 players started to become affordable in my mid-teens). Now I have a sizable collection of music, but it's simply rearranged bits on a hard disc rather than a ton of CDs. No clutter. I'm toying with the idea of selling of my large book collection and getting an iPad, but books have a high sentimental value for me plus I value the notes I've scribbled in the margins. Even the idea of having a portable hard drive will go away soon with cloud computing and the ever expanding services like Spotify and Netflix. It's amazing the amount of media you can accumulate without ever having to really "see" it (DVD cases etc).
- prs 16y ago
  Although not applicable to DVD collections, I realized the following: When I started using Dropbox, I uploaded some media files onto my account and realized that even for the most obscure items, someone out there has already done so before me. As a result, backing up those files was merely an exercise of data deduplication in most cases.

johnkary 16y ago

You don't even need to pay Rent. There are a few resources out there to lead you to living rent-free: http://www.caretaker.org/ http://www.caretaker.org/ - House sitting and property caretaking newsletter. Basically live in someones house in exchange for taking care of it. http://www.couchsurfing.org/ http://www.couchsurfing.org/ - Find reliable people willing to let you sleep on their couch for free. I always look here when needing a place to stay and don't want to pay for a hotel. Search in advance if you know your travel dates and length of stay.

philwelch 16y ago
Evidently, the market value of awkward social obligations to strangers combined with having to move around a lot is several hundred dollars a month, because I can't imagine doing either of those for free rent unless I was desperately broke.

pkulak 16y ago

How is leasing a car less stressful than owning? I own my car, and at least I can put it on Craigslist whenever I like. If I was leasing it, who knows what I'd have to go through to get rid of it. I guess you could actually _rent_ a car... for $70 a day. And if I was renting all my furniture and appliances, God, I'd be broke right now from the payments. If I had enough money to rent everything, I'd just buy it and save the rest. Or buy better stuff. Or go on vacation. If I want to move and not take stuff with me, I'll sell it.

johnkary 16y ago
Article argued for using public transportation instead of an owned vehicle. I think you missed the point of the article, which was you can focus more on your passion (work, family, hobbies, start up) if you don't bind yourself to ownership. If you own a house, sure, you have an appreciating (???) asset, but you also are responsible for fixing every little thing that goes wrong. The "extra" you pay in rent vs owning is for having a landlord to worry about investing time and your extra money to fix things.
- lsc 16y ago
  yeah, but the problem is that you have to worry about shit you rent. Really, you have to worry about it more than shit you own. My stuff is, well, mine, and nobody else will give me trouble if I destroy it. Rented stuff belongs to someone else. I need to take due care, and if I do happen to break it, I usually have to pay more than what getting the equivalent thing off craigslist would cost me. Also, when you rent, you usually commit to renting for a certain number of months (or sometimes years) - in many ways a lease is much less flexible than owning, because I can't sublet, and I can't force the landlord to lower the price, so if I want to leave, and the market prices of the rental is lower than what I paid for it, I'm potentially on the hook to pay off not only the difference between market value then and market value now, but instead the entire value of the lease.
  - rue 16y ago
    That is what insurance is for.

nicpottier 16y ago

Renting isn't the real goal here, only one of many possible solutions to being nailed down to one place. For example, I own a duplex, and furnished the top unit rather nicely and lived in it for a few years. But I decided to move abroad for a while and rented it furnished and got a property manager to take care of the duplex. The key is just to plan for not needing income. I knew that I'd reach the break even point on my duplex pretty quickly vis-a-vis rent and mortgage, so although I own property, it isn't really an anchor, instead an investment. I agree with some of the other posters, seems like if you are frugal and buy off of CL you are probably going to do just as well. You can also rent entire houses or apartments furnished for less than the cost of renting stuff separately, so that's another option. Keep your options open, that's the real goal.

AlexRodriguez 16y ago

Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney in 'Up in the Air' lives out of his suitcase and thinks he loves it. This sounds like something Bingham would say in one of his motivational speeches.

derwiki 16y ago

Good timing on the article -- I actually ran the numbers early this evening to see if (financially) ZipCar + public transit was cheaper than TCO for the car I sold 6 months ago. I looked at 6 month of each, living in Nob Hill. Owning a car ended up being $2700 and ZipCar about $1600. The cost savings, while validating, is not the biggest gain. Not worrying about parking tickets (or towing!), finding a parking spot (always the worst part of my day), getting broken into (happened once already), mechanical problems -- it's hard to put a price on that burden being lifted. Outside of that, since I moved to SF a little over a year ago (to a smaller place) it made me realize how much junk I have that I don't need and have been actively trying to minimize my possessions. So far, I've shed a lot of extra weight and my entire life feels a little less cluttered. It's very re-assuring that articles like this keep coming up on HN.

asnyder 16y ago
While Zipcar is nice, that $1600 will realistically buy you 10 trips, in NYC anyway. Due to the high price of Zipcar I usually find myself avoiding any trips that would require one. Fortunately in NYC there aren't much of those, thus making Zipcar or similar a good option.
rubashov 16y ago
Motorcycle is an under-considered car alternative. Fuel is peanuts and total annual costs only a few hundred; a small fraction of car ownership. Only a few grand of capital is tied up in the bike. It's great if you only need to drive a couple times a week and can resort to other means if necessary.
- mitjak 16y ago
  I'd love to explore this option at one point (Vespa drooling time). In the meantime there is the ebike and ordinary bike options too. Until you need to grocery shop for a week or two ahead that is.
  - rubashov 16y ago
    I don't know what the heck the point of these scooters and vespas are. They're the same price as 250cc proper motorcycles. Seems like a tax on hipsterdom.

mitjak 16y ago

I'm sure the practice won't be greeted here with open arms, but I often 'rent' items from big chain stores with long return policies when I need to and just return the items before the time goes up. 90% of the time I don't keep the purchases, but the 10% of items I do keep I use very often and am very happy with. Call it using the system.

derwiki 16y ago
Are these items that couldn't be legitimately rented from somewhere else? I'm personally very opposed to the practice, but am curious why people feel OK doing it.
- mitjak 16y ago
  I'm a student so the return policy way is really the cheapest out there. As to why people feel OK doing it, why shouldn't we? Costco, in particular, offers an unusually long return policy. I don't exactly return underwear or dirty plates, but electronic devices I don't see a problem with. A good example would be needing a good laptop for about a week or two when the university Debian based towers just don't cut it anymore. I mean, anyone who's used an IDE written in Java will agree.
  - derwiki 16y ago
    It feels to me like living outside of one's means.
    - mitjak 16y ago
      If there is an opportunity to have something you temporarily need and likely wont need beyond the given project, then how is that not simply utilizing the system in place? It's a life hack.
      - bruceboughton 16y ago
        >> It's a life hack. No, it's unethical and cheap.

yason 16y ago

I've also grown pro-renting and pro-disowning. I bought an apartment a few years ago, then relocated and rented a new apartment for myself, leased my own apartment to an acquaintance of mine, never went back myself, and finally had an enormous relief when I finally sold it. I don't think I'm owning again any time soon, if ever. Even if I lived there myself all the time this time. I think that it's sensible to own small stuff, like your pots and pans, furniture, clothes, and you know, personal stuff. You're probably not going to Europe on a whim all the time and there's always some place you can stash a few boxes while you're away. It's just that I've also learned to own very little, to minimize the burden of owning stuff. So far I've recycled more stuff out of my home than hauled new stuff in. I'm quite ruthless in choosing what to give out: if I haven't used or needed something for some time, it's out. It always feels good. Books are a notable exception, though. Then, personally, car is a bit of a borderline case for me. I'd definitely lease if I had to drive a new car. On the other hand, I drive little and only leisure-like trips that I could simply choose not to drive. So it makes sense for me to own an old car which is what I've done for the past decade. While I actually enjoy taking care of the car maintenance, should it happen to break down it would just remain broken until I would get to fixing it (or have it fixed). So I don't stress about its ownership either: my car is a convenience but not at all a necessity.

barmstrong 16y ago

I did something similar and took off to Argentina for a year. Took with me only one backpack and and my laptop. Got rid of all my other stuff. Now that I'm back state side I'm trying to maintain minimal amount of stuff because it was fairly nice. Two words: furnished apartment.

bruceboughton 16y ago
>> Two words: furnished apartment. Speaking as someone who went the other route (unfurnished, buy stuff), I wish I'd tried this. If you're going to be paying the money for a nice place anyway, it's probably worth going furnished.

noonespecial 16y ago

The real trick in life is finding the balance between what one can acquire and what one can use.

oinopion 16y ago

What sense does it make? If you rent apartment(s) for 10 years, you give money out and you have nothing afterwards. Mortgage, on other hand, is more investment: you will have something valuable after paying it back. Is renting everything a new way to be cool?

mtr 16y ago
Buying isn't always better than renting especially when you take into account interest payments, maintenance, closing and selling costs, taxes etc. So basically if the house doesn't increase in value enough to cover these costs than you are better off renting. Check out this cool calculator for some more details: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calculator.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calcula...
- dedward 16y ago
  This depends on whether you are buying for investment reasons or other reasons. We buy plenty of things for non-ivestnemtn reasons - a house COULD be one of those things, depending on your situation.
- dedward 16y ago
  This depends on whether you are buying for investment reasons or other reasons. We buy plenty of things for non-ivestnemtn reasons - a house COULD be one of those things, depending on your situation.
binarymax 16y ago
Not always! I live in a space that is far more economical to rent. If I were to buy the space I am living in now, it would cost an extra X per month - and there is no guarantee the house I rent increasing in value. I take that extra X and invest it every month and get some decent compound interest off it and I am much better off in the long term.
- oinopion 16y ago
  What magnitude of X are we talking about? Where I live (Central Europe), the difference is really small.

arethuza 16y ago

Best case where owning is way better than renting for me: ski boots. Rental ski boots are instruments of torture as far as I am concerned.

sledmonkey 16y ago
Absolutely. I've got custom foam injected liners and footbeds and will never ski without them again. Changed my (ski) life.

araneae 16y ago

Owning a pet can be a delight, but it is also a burden. When my girlfriend visits she has to get a cat sitter and she worries when she can’t get a hold of them. If I were going to buy his thesis, I'd want it to be a little better researched. One of the few things that is pretty well proven to make you happier is a pet, pet sitting annoyances aside.

jcl 16y ago
Obviously, the author is advocating pet rental. OK, maybe not. But perhaps this represents an unfulfilled need in the marketplace? You can certainly get some benefits of having a pet without having it live with you long-term (or hospitals wouldn't bother with pet therapy). And you only need to look to Japan to see the urban future: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1570493/Japanese-prices-for-pet-rental.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1570493/Japanese-p... Edit, after more reading on this fascinating topic: Apparently there was a pet rental business in the US, but it folded under pressure from animal rights groups. Pet rental is now illegal in Massachusetts, and maybe the UK and elsewhere: http://www.newsweek.com/2008/07/28/a-dog-for-a-day.html http://www.newsweek.com/2008/07/28/a-dog-for-a-day.html Oh well... Perhaps there is still hope for cat cafes: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090406/tokyos-cat-cafes http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090406/tokyos-cat-c...
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  I've got to agree with the animal rights groups. Maybe not for the same reasons though. An animal can be damaged by an irresponsible renter- killed, traumatized, injured, de-socialized. Unlike a rental car or TV, we cannot simply throw out the broken ones (I should hope you agree with me there) Complicating things even more, the odds that you're not going to know how to interact with a pet go way up if you don't HAVE a pet! While animals are not people, they are similar enough to people as to be completely different from 'stuff', and if you cannot deal with the responsibility of caring for a pet I do not think you should have one at all. (In a controlled environment that can include supervision and a responsible figure who knows what they are doing, perhaps it could work, but not if you're taking them home for a week or such)

atomical 16y ago

Owning a car makes me happy. There's a pride in ownership and in the feeling of independence. I cannot stand public transit.

sjunkin 16y ago

This seems like massive fluff - the "stuff" part I agree with garages full of random products is wasteful. Pets and houses as being burdens sounds a lot like "I just got out of college and am afraid of responsibility"

jimbokun 16y ago
"I just got out of college and am afraid of responsibility" For such a person, his advice is very sound.

bconway 16y ago

The author makes a lot of claims about renting, but then backs them up with points that aren't specific to renting at all. For example: Speaking of which, having a car is convenient (and sometimes necessary), but is a monetary black hole and a source of stress if it’s having problems. My old Subaru got me from A to B but probably raised my blood pressure by more than the mileage as I worried about what would go wrong next. And? How is that any different than leasing a car for X years? The bigger issue is that the author goes on to talk about the stress of owning things vs the happiness of not doing so. But at the end of the day, knowing that a.) you don't owe money on an item (it really belongs to you) and b.) you are the only one that needs to be answered to for the status/condition/usefulness of an item brings a helluva lot more piece of mind than holding other people's property. That being said, don't waste your time collecting junk, either.

steveklabnik 16y ago
> And? How is that any different than leasing a car for X years? It's not, but it's certainly different than using public transportation or biking.
- philwelch 16y ago
  Bikes are awesome. For a month or two worth of gas, or probably less than a month of expenses (amortized, all-things-considered) you can buy a used bike. It's not as convenient, and is harder work, and it sucks going uphill unless you're in great shape, but on the other hand you can completely total your bike twice a year and still come out hundreds of dollars ahead compared to driving. (What sucks about bikes is the infrastructure, at least in the US. "Bike friendly" means the city gives you a lane right next to the parking lane, and expects you to run headfirst into opening car doors and cars turning across your lane.)

duck 16y ago

Probably the better general advice would be not to own or rent, but rather just do without.

khafra 16y ago
The problem for me with wearing a hair shirt all the time is not that it itches, but that it's boring. Asceticism advocacy is a nice applause light, but not very good as practical advice.
- duck 16y ago
  I wasn't refering to that extreme, but rather as in do I really need an (iPad|second car|fancy tv|another video game|nicer house|newest laptop|etc.)? I've lived in some different places to see both sides of this and found if you can answer no more than yes you'll be happier.
  - khafra 16y ago
    Heh, I wouldn't know what to do with another car or a TV, but I can measure the ways in which my shiny new iPhone 4 has made my life better; and I'd love to have a house with a project room and a garage and a yard large enough to grow all the herbs and vegetables I'd like.

jerf 16y ago

Even better, if you're going to go to that extreme to restructure your life, is to simply attack the problem directly. If you're concerned about your possessions owning you, just fix that. Watch a few episodes of "Clean Sweep" to get in the mindset, then clean your place out, and make sure you do this periodically. Ownership has benefits too. In my opinion when you rent everything you are simply trading a situation in which your possessions metaphorically own you for a situation in which your possessions more literally own you, or rather, the person who actually owns them owns you. Everything you rent has a contract attached to it; what's the fun in that? My house is full of things repurposed; an entertainment center with the top cut off, chairs with customizations induced by pets, a couple of doors I've added internal cat doors to. Chunks of the "house" I've sold, chunks I've added. And I'm not even "handy". Don't treat the symptoms, treat the problem!

dkarl 16y ago
Excellent point; once you're good at "ruining" or getting rid of stuff, the stuff you have doesn't bother you. The more you get rid of, the easier it gets, because you realize you don't regret any of it. Once you've got over the horror of throwing away valuable things yourself, you can exploit it in other people. "Hey, do you want...? If you don't, I'm just going to throw it away." Your stuff ends up in their closet instead of yours. You can also donate stuff to friends who enjoy having garage sales or selling at flea markets. Bottom line, as with alcohol, there's no need to avoid it unless you know you can't handle it.
theBobMcCormick 16y ago
It sounds like both approaches are ways of dealing with the same root problem: attachment and the illusion of control. IMHO, renting vs owning isn't the real issue. They're both just different ways of financing. The issue is the overdeveloped attachment people get to the "stuff" in their lives.
lotusleaf1987 16y ago
Best possible response. When you rent you are constantly and painfully aware that this stuff (whatever it is) is owned by someone other than yourself and that you are paying them for the 'privilege' to use it.

seanc 16y ago

This only makes sense if you place a high value on mobility. Many people value putting down roots and committing to a city or neighborhood. This often comes from having many tangled connections to other people. My life isn't just about me anymore. It's about my wife, kids, and our extended family. If we were to move around a lot, each move would require the whole family to change their lifestyles, as opposed to just one person. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of nomadic families, but they are more rare than nomadic individuals because of the increased complexity. For those of us who aren't as passionate about the nomadic lifestyle, settling down makes sense. And, if you're going to settle down, ownership is the way to go, especially of your house. A great neighborhood is worth a lot of money. Good neighbors, good schools, good transit to work, and so on. If you're renting a house which provides those things, the idea that a landlord can take it all away isn't pleasant.

philwelch 16y ago
Nomadic implies you barely spend a couple years in one place at a time. Homeownership to stay put implies that you stay put for decades, because mortgages are usually 30 years. Isn't there anything in between?
- Confusion 16y ago
  Sure, buy a house when you get somewhere, sell it when you are finished there and accept the losses due to that suboptimal process as costs of the lifestyle. You can't be picky when you buy it, you'll have to sell in a hurry, you may have to pay fines for paying of mortgages at an increased rate, etc. However, it can be done.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    But it can be done just as well, or in some cases even better, by renting. No fines, no selling (worst case scenario you have to rush to sublet, which is a lot less paperwork and hassle), and depending on the area you even get to be picky. You can move every 5 to 10 years buying and selling property, but it sounds like you have to throw away a lot of money to do so, and I thought the point of homeownership was to avoid throwing away money.

coliveira 16y ago

The author is advocating renting stuff instead of buying it. This suggestion doesn't help much in the long run, because you become addicted in the same way. A better suggestion would be using less stuff, period.

chopsueyar 16y ago

This would be a non-issue if he owned a badass diesel truck.

Avshalom 16y ago

>>Finally, owning very nice things makes using them less pleasurable because you have to be extra careful not to damage them (as Paul Graham says in his essay “Nothing owns you like fragile stuff”). clearly we have different ideas of what constitutes "very nice" cause in my world very nice implies dependable and nigh invincible.

sliverstorm 16y ago

Disclaimer: Renting everything doesn't work if you're broke.

Shorel 16y ago

I would change it to: Rent/Lease in markets where prices are probably going down, buy in markets where prices are probably going up. Of course, this rule has lots of exceptions, like computers.

zalew 16y ago

Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner