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He's counting depreciation of an M3 in there, too... why not buy a fighter jet and make the savings look even better? He didn't give up his cars until uber poo
by Cacti 8y ago
He's counting depreciation of an M3 in there, too... why not buy a fighter jet and make the savings look even better?
He didn't give up his cars until uber pool, so for a great deal of the data he is using uber in addition to his regular car, which limits his uber expenses.
Because the largest portion of his savings comes from the shift to uber pool, this is completely invalid for anyone except a single adult. Anyone with a spouse or children, or anyone doing even average shopping, anyone not in a major downtown, will not be seeing these savings.
He's only traveling around town, and seemingly only using Uber less than once per day, even during his peak usage. Is he using public transportation? Google transportation? Friends? I don't see how one can get to and from work, and run errands, and go out in the evenings or on weekends, and average 200 rides per year (again, during his optimum savings period). Is he working from home most of the time?
He mentions renting cars for longer trips, but this is not included in his costs. In addition, his uber trips are all in SF... like, yeah, if you only travel within a major US city, transportation costs can be pretty low (and why not just use public transportation?).
All of this implies to me that, not only are his calculations wildly off, not only are his uber costs under-reported, but even with all that, the entire, incredibly ideal, situation is reproducible only by a very small minority of the population. Alternatively, the other interpretation is that he was wildly overpaying and under-utilizing his cars before.
Here is a more realistic calculation for a US resident:
30k car, 10 years
10k gas,
5k insurance,
7k repairs
= ~5k per year.
vs.
4 trips per day, on average, for 1-2 persons @ $20 per trip
= $29k per year. And that's being generous--I'm pretty sure my spouse and child and I would blow through at least $50k a year if we switched entirely to Uber, and we have a very typical travel pattern for the US.
- VintageCool 8y agoHe does use public transportation, but only makes a one word mention of it: "My rides increased a lot in June 2016, when I sold both my cars. I’m solely reliant on Uber (and buses) to get around town in San Francisco."
- Cacti 8y agoAh. So basically he is not saving money now, he was just wasting it before.