29 ms·

Don’t pay for 95% (2016)

• duxup 6y ago
  Is measuring optimum utility for say a car or guest bedroom really about total usage time 24/7 ? I'm not likely at all to reach anywhere near 50% even... I wish I lived / worked places that were more walking friendly and etc but that's just not the case.
• coolsunglasses 6y ago
  We use our car almost every day (groceries, errands), it would cost dramatically more and take more time to rent vehicles. These sorts of posts always seem over-fitted to highly walkable areas. And maybe that's the intended audience but they rarely qualify the advice.
  • enriquto 6y ago
    Considering that most of the human population lives in highly walkable areas, I find this "over-fitting" perfectly appropriate.
    • pier25 6y ago
      Most people do live in cities but not all areas of all cities are highly walkable. In many suburbs for example it's common to need the car to do basically anything.
      • Ma8ee 6y ago
        In America.
        • davidw 6y ago
          I'd refine that some to "places where most development occurred post WWII, and they didn't maintain a tradition of mixed use development", so a lot of the US, especially in the west, Australia and Canada too, most likely, although I'm less familiar with them. The US used to have corner stores and fairly walkable places, but it's something you find in the older parts of towns and cities, and it may have decayed since it wasn't prioritized much for many years.
        • bluGill 6y ago
          When I went to a business trip to Germany my German coworkers told me to rent a car. The city I was going to didn't have good public transport. Sure if you go to one of the cities in Europe (or Asia) at anyone can name there is good transport. However even in Europe (or Asia) there are a lot of tiny cities and towns either without good transport, or limited transport. (There are of course some tiny towns with good transport) Notice above I qualified it with Europe or Asia. If you go to South America, or Africa odds are even the city you are going to doesn't have good transit for most people. (A handful are building, but there are lot of cities that could have good transit that don't have it)
        • pier25 6y ago
          In Europe too. I was born in a small city in Spain where most people still need a car to go to work, do groceries, go to a restaurant, etc.
        • rootusrootus 6y ago
          And in Europe, too. Sure, America is huge and there are a lot of cars, but in Germany (as an example) there are still over 500 cars for every 1000 people.
    • dcolkitt 6y ago
      I don't think this is true at all. Most of the world population lives in third world conditions. They may not have a car, because they can't afford it, but that doesn't mean their neighborhoods are "walkable". Visit the slums of Mumbai, or the shanty towns of Lagos, or the favelas of Lima. These may be high density, but they're certainly not "walkable". Either in the sense of being pedestrian friendly or having many services easily accessible by walking/public transport. There's a reason that the motorbike is one of the most popular consumer products for middle income countries. In the vast majority of the third world, the populace is desperate for any sort of personal motor transportation.
      • ghaff 6y ago
        A lot of people seem to think that the choice is between modern US cities (where indeed it's often hard to get around by foot or decent public transit) or the core of Amsterdam (or a number of at least parts of European cities). And that all of Asia in like Tokyo. I assure them that Jakarta and KL are not Tokyo.
  • CamelCaseName 6y ago
    The domain name, 5kids1condo, basically qualifies the advice on its own!
    • asdff 6y ago
      Tangential, but my god why'd they have to name it that. All I can think of is that dirty viral video from a decade and a half ago. Damn my millennial early internet upbringing.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    Yeah. To his condo point, fine. But if you choose to live downtown in an expensive city, who expects you to necessarily have a guest bedroom? (And if you own a house, you may well have a spare room that can be used as a guest bedroom but you also use for other things.) As for vehicles, I have a mid-sized or so SUV and sometimes I transport people but I often transport stuff from the home improvement store, etc. I have no interest in owning a small vehicle and then have to rent on a semi-regular basis. And, yes, I own tons of stuff that doesn't get used much. But most of that stuff can't be easily rented or borrowed for the times I need it. Should I rent an electric drill or a weed whacker every time I need one? There have been whole business models based on this idea but they ignore the transaction costs.
    • theandrewbailey 6y ago
      > There have been whole business models based on this idea but they ignore the transaction costs. There's monetary and temporal costs. Instead of having to spend minutes to an hour to arrange and get a rental, you could have the item waiting in another room, ready to be used.
    • leetcrew 6y ago
      > But if you choose to live downtown in an expensive city, who expects you to necessarily have a guest bedroom? I think this one is not quite like the others. if you only need a car for one week each year, you don't lose much by renting. but putting your friends in a hotel is not really a substitute for having them stay at your place imo. if I only get to see a close friend once a year, I want to make the most of the time that they're in town, cooking breakfast together, staying up talking until we can't keep our eyes open, etc. it's really not the same if a day of hanging out starts and ends with transit to/from a hotel.
      • ghaff 6y ago
        Honestly, if they're a close friend, buy an air mattress or let them crash on the couch. I've done it plenty of times when visiting someone who didn't have a guest bedroom or there were a bunch of us. I agree on the car if you're really only using it for a trip or two a year. (Indeed, I wouldn't even consider owning a car in that case. I probably would if I were going away a couple weekends a month though.)
  • rzwitserloot 6y ago
    You're over-fitting to a specific example in this post. It's not about that; it's about the principle. If you either determine that you use that car a ton, or you do the math, work out exactly how often you'd need that car, and what the costs are for the nearest viable alternative solution, and the car's TCO is cheaper - great. You did what this post is trying to tell you to do: Stop thinking about an unattainable hypothetical 'I shall be using this at maximum usage all the time', and start thinking about what you actually need, and how often you'd need it.
    • smilekzs 6y ago
      On a higher order, not everyone can predict their future usage patterns to a confidence interval unambigious for a clear-cut rent-or-buy decision.
      • asdff 6y ago
        At which point in the would be future you could peform the calculation again based on present use cases and weigh whether or not you should buy the car. "Don't throw away that extra axe, you might be a lumberjack one day" isn't great advice.
    • NoOneNew 6y ago
      Aren't both arguments just overfitting then? The article is an overfit of a situation unique to them (great walkability and on-time, frequent public transit is not commonplace) and the OP you're replying to sees a high need of independent travel on their own unique schedule outside of their local public transit time frames and rideshare availabilities. Perhaps the lesson to learn is simply judge and balance your own unique situation to your needs, and drink a large cup of stfu when it comes to judging others for what their needs are rather than push your own choices/agenda upon others?
  • whoisburbansky 6y ago
    Perhaps the 95% in your situation would be more like getting a smaller car instead of, e.g. a minivan? I'm not saying you own a minivan, just that his general advice is not "don't get a car," it's don't get a car that based on some vision of what you want to do with it that only ends up actually happening 5% of the time. The insight is that it's usually cheaper to rent for the long tail use cases than to buy outright and leave idle for the vast majority of the time.
    • stickfigure 6y ago
      Many minivans are less expensive than many small cars. I do think there's a good life hack here of "don't spend a lot of money on a car" but I'm not sure it says much about the type of car.
      • whoisburbansky 6y ago
        Right, you have to pick the dimension of comparison to matter to you. Maybe the extreme case is getting a sports car that you only get to drive on the track once every couple months instead of a cheaper workhorse vehicle you'd use every day.
  • madsbuch 6y ago
    I am quite sure he is not talking about your situation. If you saturate the capacity of that car, then it seems warranted to buy it. It could also be buying that DSLR camera for going photographing twice a year instead of renting for these occasions, or buying that 3000$ workstation to play games that require that power once a month instead of going to a net cafe (or using Stadia or whatever).
  • phoe-krk 6y ago
    Your car doesn't stay idle 95% of the time, then. While the general principle might still apply in your case, the original examples don't, because your situation is different.
    • closeparen 6y ago
      There are 168 hours in a week, 5% is 8.4 hours/week. You could drive somewhere 15 minutes away and back, twice per day, and still be under 5%.
      • whoisburbansky 6y ago
        Agreed, but maybe it's best to think of the 95% as a convenient placeholder to remind you to account for extreme cases rather than a hard and fast rule.
        • drdec 6y ago
          I think it might be even more useful to think about the time you saved - i.e. without a car, will you be spending more than 5% of your time on transportation?
      • phoe-krk 6y ago
        Data point: as someone who grew up in villages and small cities in eastern Europe, I've seen cars being used for whole hours a day in total. Driving somewhere for thirty minutes a day is still a short total commute time relative to what I have experienced in rural and little-urbanized regions.
  • eikenberry 6y ago
    The author doesn't even say not to get a car. He says don't optimize your car purchase for something ("schlep a bunch of kids far away") you almost never need it for. Optimize for the common use case. So buy a small car for day to day and rent the mini-van for those occasions.
    • echelon 6y ago
      This doesn't work for rural and suburban America. What are you going to do, drive half an hour to pick up your other car? And spend another half hour waiting? That's incredibly inconvenient and costly. The car-agnostic ideal won't work outside of major cities. The backbone of America is car travel. People outside cities have more space and more stuff. They expect hauling and utility function in their vehicles. This isn't changing. Maybe if you can convince suburbanites to downsize, you might have a point. But that's also a city-centric viewpoint imposed by limited space and desire to move easily. Neither of those things are desired in the suburbs. City dwellers don't get it because they don't live that life.
      • shard 6y ago
        Just so I can get an idea of the magnitude of the number, I am making an estimation. Please point out any egregiously incorrect numbers. Price difference between smaller car and larger car: $15000 Lifetime of car: 8 years Frequency the larger car is needed: once per month Additional time to pick up and drop off rental: 3 hours Money saved per hour: $52 So it seems that if someone values their time more than ~$50/hour, they should buy the larger vehicle. Edit: Forgot to take into account the rental fee: $150 Money saved per hour: $2 It looks like it doesn't make sense to rent, as buying would allow the convenience of using the larger vehicle any time, especially if it is more than once a month.
        • mikelward 6y ago
          Assuming all else is equal. But what if you need to move further from work to get a house with parking space for your extra vehicle? Then you should also account for your extra commute time.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • acolumb 6y ago
    I also think that leasing or buying used negates the car-rental argument. The costs of owning a used sedan are very low, and the on-demand convenience imho beats renting a car for $8/hr. Leasing enables one to have a new car without taking the depreciation hit. Own what appreciates, rent what depreciates.
    • rootusrootus 6y ago
      > Leasing enables one to have a new car without taking the depreciation hit. That's not accurate. With a lease you're just paying for the depreciation directly, at a predetermined rate. It can definitely make sense, though. I leased a Bolt for my wife for $6K for three years. Even if she only drove it once every week or so it would be hard to do on-demand rental for less.
• paultopia 6y ago
  This argument ignores tail risks. Sometimes that 5% max capacity usage is something that turns out to be incredibly important and not substitutable short term. I'll be a lot of people are regretting not building some slack capacity into their housing and transportation right now, when public transit is potentially dangerous and the whole family might be working from home thanks to COVID.
  • whoisburbansky 6y ago
    This is a really good point; the cost of excess capacity is effectively just an insurance policy that you buy ahead of time, lump sum, one time payment. I'm not sure you could replicate this with an actual insurance policy to collectivize the risk and reduce costs, at least not with the example of housing in a pandemic in mind.
  • quicklime 6y ago
    How much slack capacity is reasonable though? Sure, it's good to have a non-zero amount. But that doesn't mean that the opposite extreme - having 20x the capacity that you actually use - is the right way to go. If the best place is anywhere in the middle of those two extremes (e.g. to have 5x the capacity), it won't be possible to achieve while everything is based on individual private ownership. We'd have to share, and build the slack capacity into the shared pool of vehicles.
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • gpm 6y ago
      This depends on the cost of the item, the risk associated with not having it, the cost associated with renting it, how wealthy you are, and so on and so forth. No single number makes any sense. A plunger can probably expect <0.1% use of it's capacity. But being stuck without one really sucks, the cost to rent is... once you account for the spent traveling back and forth would be higher than the cost of buying, and as a result literally everyone just buys them. On the flip side a 20 year old fast food worker with $0 in their bank account probably just plain can't afford to have 5x the housing capacity they actually use. That would bankrupt them. So they just don't do it.
• deleted 6y ago
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• alex_young 6y ago
  Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20200225174202/http://5kids1condo.com/dont-pay-for-95/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200225174202/http://5kids1cond...
  • WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
    Thank you, it's dead now.
  • shoo 6y ago
    your blog server sits idle 95% of the time. don't pay for capacity to handle hypothetical peak load if you were to go viral by hitting the frontpage of HN. if that were to happen, just fail and let the punters read the blog from archive.org / google search cache
    • romwell 6y ago
      This situation and this comment sum up the article neatly. Thanks for the laugh!
• beervirus 6y ago
  We didn't use our guest room much last year (although we did still use it for storage), but it sure is nice to have it now that we need two home offices.
• Aaargh20318 6y ago
  It's not just the 5% of the time you need it, it's also the immediate and guaranteed availability. I rarely use my car, I'm the exact kind of person this is aimed at. I haven't used it in *monthts. But when I need it, it's there. There's car rental place about 500 meters walking distance from my home, but they aren't open 24/7. There is also a ride share car parked at about 1km from my home, but it's only one car and if someone else took it I can't use it. These things only work when you know well in advance you're going to use it and even then, they might not be available at peak times. There's only so many ride share cars available, and if everyone wants to visit their parents on Christmas, there's not enough of them. Car rental companies aren't going to buy enough cars to cover their 5% peak use either.
  • kaesar14 6y ago
    Sounds like you think its worth it but I would never spend hundreds of dollars a month in payments and insurance on something I don't use for months.
    • nwienert 6y ago
      So you don’t have health insurance?
      • kaesar14 6y ago
        I'm American so any questions about health insurance automatically are predisposed towards absurdity. But yeah, I do. I don't want to be stuck in a hospital with a multi thousand dollar medical bill for an emergency. The worst that would happen without me owning a car is needing to rent one on a moment's notice. Maybe there's the odd moment when I would need a car for a city-wide evacuation? Seems like that's such an exceptional case that I would not spend my money maintaining a car just to be prepared for it.
        • nwienert 6y ago
          Like another poster said it’s about 65/mo all in for a cheaper car, and personal preference is all that really matters.
• kayson 6y ago
  Does the cost/benefit really work out, though? Suppose I buy a $50,000 minivan which I expect to keep/last 10 years. At $8/hr for a rental, the breakeven is 50000/8/10/365=1.7hrs/day. When I was growing up in a family of 4, my parents easily spent more time than that in our van, shuffling us between school and other activities. And of course this doesn't count the depreciated value of the car after 10 years. I can imagine the hotel argument working out better mathematically, but it's definitely very much dependent on where you live. In a rural area you'd probably be crazy not to get a bigger home. In an urban area, a hotel could make sense.
  • Notorious_BLT 6y ago
    The author has other articles about how he's taught his children how to use the bus on their own to get around, and how they ride it to school daily. The "take the kids to school" use case isn't true for everyone, and I feel like people are also missing the point of the article. You're supposed to analyze for yourself if you need to own a car full-time, and if the answer is yes, perhaps a smaller one might do? If you're constantly shuttling large groups around, then the answer to both might be yes, and that's fine too.
  • koyote 6y ago
    Your calculation doesn't count for insurance, tax, maintenance and fuel. That being said, I consider nearly 2 hours a day spent in a car to be a massive amount of time and would definitely want to have my own car if that was the case. Then again I used to walk to school and today I walk or cycle to most places. I wouldn't be able to do that if I was living in one of those US suburbs.
• hirundo 6y ago
  He argues as if living on the outskirts is mostly about affording a yard that you don't really need, but there's so much more benefit than that for kids living in a rural area. When I was a preteen in the late 60s and early 70s I got to explore and be independent in a way that is rare today, though I lived in a vast densely populated suburb. At age ten I would hop on my little stingray bike and explore for a dozen miles in any direction. Today that would be an invitation to have your children seized by child protective services. It's still like that in rural areas. A kid can explore the wilderness with her dog on a Saturday and not be expected until dinner. Crime is much less of a concern where there are far fewer people. The air is cleaner, the night sky is darker, wildlife is all around. If she skins her knee or gets lost, she gets to deal with it herself rather than having an adult on tap. This breeds more independent people with hard earned self confidence. She can watch and help her parents do a bazillion things around the house that they'd dial up a contractor for in the city. Yeah, it's harder to get a ride share, and you can't work in an office in the city without a very long commute. But there are higher priorities than those, like growing better humans.
  • kgermino 6y ago
    > But it's still like that in rural areas. A kid can explore the wilderness with her dog on a Saturday and not be expected until dinner. Crime is much less of a concern where there are far fewer people. The air is cleaner, the sky is darker, wildlife is all around. If she skins her knee or gets lost, she gets to deal with it herself rather than having an adult on tap. This breeds more independent people with hard earned self confidence. She can watch and help her parents do a bazillion things around the house that they'd dial up a contractor for in the city. In my experience this is very common in cities too. It's the suburbs that prevent it. I don't have kids yet, but in my (very urban) neighborhood it's extremely common to have kids out and about on their own. It's generally seen as being very safe. When I talk to coworkers with kids in the suburbs they're much more worried about letting their kids run around without adults. To be fair, it makes some sense: cars are one of the biggest killers of kids, and they're a much bigger risk in the suburbs (where most streets are wide and fast) than the city.
    • 6y ago
• klodolph 6y ago
  Your computer is probably 95% idle. Just saying. It’s generally true that you have two options—you pay a big capital cost for a chunk of capacity which is available to you whenever you need it, or you pay operational costs for renting as you go. This applies to guest rooms, cars, and computers. The maxims aren’t very good. “Don’t pay for something you don’t use” is weak advice, because sometimes it’s cheaper long-term to pay for unused capacity than it is to pay for usage when you need it. And this all gets muddled to hell as soon as you factor in the opportunity costs. Each option has a different amount of risk. “You’re paying for 5% usage, 100% of the time” is just not a solid foundation for making these decisions.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    There are situations where it makes sense. If you don't particularly want a pickup truck for other reasons, don't buy one because you might want to pickup a load of mulch or a tree in the spring. Rent a truck at the home improvement store for an hour or pay for delivery. But the vast bulk of the things I own and don't use on a daily or even weekly basis are things that would either be a hassle to rent or pay for as a service, would end up costing more using them that way, or simply aren't practically available at all as a rental item.
    • Polylactic_acid 6y ago
      I think convenience is the hidden cost here. No one is going to bother renting a car to move some dirt. They would pay for it to be delivered however because thats even easier than picking it up yourself and the savings from having a smaller car make it cheaper too.
  • tome 6y ago
    > Your computer is probably 95% idle. Just saying. On that point, my next machine will be in the cloud. 32 GB laptops cost around $1,500. For the same cost I can buy 6,250 hours on a VPS ($.24 / hr) which is three years' working-hours use. It's even cheaper if I only need all 32 GB for a fraction of the time. In return I get zero risk of theft, zero risk of hardware faults, zero capital outlay. The best part is that I can try it for a month for $10[1] and if I don't like it I can revert to the status quo! [1] I'll probably start with an 8 GB machine
• hansvm 6y ago
  The principle seems fine (if you don't use something much then the overhead of renting when you do need it is probably worthwhile), but it feels a bit odd applying it to cars in particular unless you live extremely close to work -- a bit of a moot point with wfh right now -- since you'll be using the car enough that your dominant costs are variable rather than fixed. If 50% of your yearly car ownership costs stem from gas and other variable costs then "paying for the 95%" is a strawman since the variable costs won't decrease by renting a car (and in fact are often many times higher), so you can only reduce your total costs by at most a 2x factor.
• yardie 6y ago
  After 4 years of city living we recently bought a SUV. It was purely emotional and just like the author mentioned the numbers don't work out. But I wanted to treat myself after years car-free living. Since COVID lockdown has started I would say public transportation in my city has become more reliable, and free. Given this change and more time working from home I have even less need of a car. All this free time at home had me thinking of roadtrips, boon docking, overlanding, and camping. So I bought a European 4WD SUV. Basically a money pit in fuel, maintenance, parts and reliability. Financially, it doesn't make sense. But all the money I didn't pay in car loans, maintenance, fuel, and tolls went to saving for a car I truly wanted. For me, buying a car makes as much sense as buying a gaming PC. It should be something you really want and willing to spend money on. If you need a car for work, get the cheapest one you can and factor the mileage into your salary. I've turned down many offers with small pay bumps simply because the expense of the commute made the salary bump a net negative.
  • leetcrew 6y ago
    kind of a tangent, but I'd argue gaming PCs aren't uneconomic unless you also need a laptop. a decent laptop with a 1TB ssd is already around $1500. with that kind of money you can buy or build a desktop that thoroughly outclasses even the newest generation of consoles. obviously that doesn't work if you really need a personal laptop, but how many people fit this criteria? I only use my laptop a week or two out of the year when I go on vacation. I'd probably get more out of vacation if I left the thing at home anyway.
• deleted 6y ago
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• jaaron 6y ago
  I lived like this for a while, both in Hong Kong and in Los Angeles, with two kids. There's a sense to it. But what's not discussed in this article is the friction of this sort of lifestyle. The time when you couldn't get the rideshare when you needed it. The time lost using less efficient public transport. The hassle you go through every time you need to do... anything. And as the children get older? Well, the lifestyle gets old too. Don't pay for what you don't need and won't use. I agree. Just keep in mind you're paying for more than just the few minutes you're actually in a car.
  • babesh 6y ago
    Yup. I rented a mini van once for a road trip over a national holiday. I got to the rental office, was in line for an hour, and then they told me it was no longer available. Not even a sorry. Drove our two cars instead. It takes 15 minutes each way to the nearest Home Depot to rent gardening tools and another 20 minutes in line. Then factor the drive back, and the return trip and it adds up to to 100 minutes of my time. Also, if you are using the tool more than a couple of times, it’s probably cheaper to buy. The only things that make sense to rent are specialized, expensive tools. Guest bedrooms can be used for many things. If you are sick, you can isolate yourself to prevent other people in the household from getting sick. You can have actual guests over and you don’t have to drive them to/from and get to spend more time with them. Whenever CalTrain breaks down, Uber prices surge. You either wait 30 minutes or pay quadruple prices. SamTrans will make you wait for the bus that comes every half an hour. So the pluses are availability, reliability, optionality, and lowered transactional cost.
  • munificent 6y ago
    "Friction" is a great word. The author is essentially advocating a low-margin lifestyle. There is little spare capacity or other tolerances engineered into their choices. They may have cash in the bank, but they don't have any reserves of interior space, exterior space, or transit capacity. Instead, they rely entirely on being able to acquire that on-demand. That works out most of the time, but it's a risk. And, like any other risk, it needs to be planned for, and it carries its own emotional and experiential weight.
• pgt 6y ago
  Maybe pay for 95% uptime? :) Here is a cached text-only version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:81YCedwlNgUJ:https://5kids1condo.com/dont-pay-for-95/&hl=en&gl=is&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:81YCedw...
• beck5 6y ago
  This isn't life optimisation, it's putting cost optimisation over happiness. Having a yard/garden with kids is wounderful, open the back door and shove them outside without shoes to play for accessible easy outdoor time. Half the fun of Friends staying over in the guest room is when you can have a few drinks and everyone relaxes knowing no one is traveling. The next morning you can all have breakfast together. Car shares are great for going to the shops on Tuesday, getting a car for Christmas when you want to see family is a different ballgame.
  • atourgates 6y ago
    This is also a perspective I could have much more easily bought into pre-COVID. We have kids, and live in a rural area, and honestly, many summers, don't get a ton of use out of our property and home because we spend most our free time and income on travel. Generally, we're gone at least 2-weekends a month on car trips, fly away for a few weekends a year, and try to fit in 1-2 international trips as well. Obviously, all that's changed in the last year. With COVID, we've felt incredibly lucky to live in a rural area where our kids were able to spend basically all summer just "playing outside." No need to interact with other people on mass-transit. No shared elevators or public spaces. When we did start socializing a bit, it was very nice to have a nice private, outdoor space to (more) safely entertain our guests in. COVID is hopefully a very temporary, one-time event. But it has changed my perspective. Still, while I agree that the article takes optimization to sort of silly lengths, I do see a solid point behind it. I apply the same philosophy to boats, RVs, vacation-homes and the like. (Though, I admit that COVID has tested my resolve there a bit). Expensive investments that aren't really going to make sense unless you're using them far more than our family would. Plus, with any major purchase like that, you're "locked-in" to doing that one thing if you're trying to maximize the value of your investment. Buy a vacation home, and you're going to have a mental barrier going on vacation somewhere else. Buy a boat, and you're going to feel like you're wasting money when you spend a week of vacation somewhere besides a lake. TL;DR: Like most things in life, it's a balance.
    • ghaff 6y ago
      >Buy a vacation home, and you're going to have a mental barrier going on vacation somewhere else. I would probably agree with OPs sentiment in the context of vacation homes. They're not necessarily a great investment. They sort of lock you into a location. They're another thing you have to manage. And so forth. I'd much rather just get a hotel room, a B&B, etc. I've even thought of buying a small place in the city. First of all, I'm really glad I didn't do that in the last year or two. But, really, while I wish I had done it 10 years ago knowing what I know now about property values, I also don't miss having another property to manage and I can always get a hotel if I want to spend a weekend in town every now and then.
• nostromo 6y ago
  This is a fine argument for simplifying your life, but it is not a good economic argument. Hotels are expensive. Rental cars and Uber are expensive. If you even take a few Uber trips a month, you're probably better off owning an affordable car. If you have visitors regularly, you should probably buy a house with that extra bedroom. It's an asset that you can sell and recoup virtually 100% of your investment later on. You can't sell all the hotel rooms you've previously rented. Having a yard turned out to be a fantastic thing to own this year since parks were all forced closed. Trust that you will always have access to that local green space (and that it will be safe and accessible) turned out to be misplaced.
  • boojing 6y ago
    Parking can be expensive
  • leetcrew 6y ago
    > If you have visitors regularly, you should probably buy a house with that extra bedroom. It's an asset that you can sell and recoup virtually 100% of your investment later on. You can't sell all the hotel rooms you've previously rented. if you're buying a house, it probably makes sense to get one more room than you typically need. like you say, it's likely that you recoup the cost at the end anyway. if you're renting, it's a little different. a decent hotel room is $100-200 a night in most cities. that's not cheap, but having one extra bedroom probably adds at least that much to your monthly rent. I argued in a different post that a hotel room isn't necessarily a substitute for a spare room. it's a much less intimate way to entertain visitors. depending on the guest, that could be a pro or a con.
    • topkai22 6y ago
      A hotel room also isn’t a substitute because it can’t be used as flex space. The pandemic has many of us wishing for dedicated home office space, an extra room serves that purpose. It can also serve as a home gym and hobby project space, sometimes all at once.
  • albedoa 6y ago
• nunez 6y ago
  Elastically scaling your transport and housing needs works great when you live in a city but fails hard when you live in rural or suburban neighborhoods. Since the author is a strong advocate for public transit, I'll preempt the "this would be more viable if public transit were widely available" with "yes, but that's a massive inconvenience and additional time you have to account for". Of course, if the author is subtly implying that everyone should live in a city, then, well, not everyone wants to live in a city nor should they have to.
• tqi 6y ago
  Articles about how most people are doing it wrong or optimizing for the wrong thing always leave me wondering who they are trying to convince, me or themselves.
• tomrod 6y ago
  The exact opposite opinion dominates utility planning. I consider that an interesting contrast to the point the article raises.
• egypturnash 6y ago
  The big question this doesn't get into is: what do you want to have available instantly, with no acquisition cost beyond "remembering where you keep it"? What do you want to be able to customize perfectly to your needs? As an example of the latter: I've tried bikeshares but they just made me long for my own bike: they're all too low for me, they usually have three gears at best, they have hard-to-move solid tires, the cargo area is usually in the front instead of my preference of the back. The cheap, beat-up seven-speed I own is a lot more fun to ride on.
  • asdff 6y ago
    I love my roadbike, but it's not always convenient to deal with the shackles of ownership of said bike. It's like having a car in the sense that you need to think about where you can put it and take it with you when you leave. If you go out drinking, the bike has to stay home. If you go to the airport, the bike has to stay home. If you take it on the train, you are 'that guy' taking up three grandmothers worth of standing space with your bike and causing a disruption as people give you zero time of day to deal with maneuvering your bike up and down escalators. If you take it on the bus, everyone on the bus gets pissed that you are making them late for work securing the bike to the front of the bus, and in my city sometimes busses are ambushed at red lights for the bikes mounted in the front so it's not a great spot security wise. On the other side, with the bike share, I don't care about what happens to the bike after I'm done with it. Someone could rip it apart for scrap money or throw it into a river for all I care. Me finding another one in working order is trivial, compared to replacing my stolen bicycle. Plus many of them are electric so I can do it in a full suit.
• comeonseriously 6y ago
  I WFH so I only use my car once per two weeks (to get groceries). My SO doesn't WFH, and hers is more comfortable so we use that when we go most places. My car is 17 years old, but only has 100K on it. Runs great. Low maintenance, so I keep it knowing that if I need it it is there. But, I can afford that luxury partly because there's no care payment and the insurance isn't tremendous.
• vikramkr 6y ago
  Buy a cheaper used minivan The guest bedroom makes for a decent storage space A yard has aesthetic value and you might be living in an area like greater NY metro area where land is worth more than the house built on it, so it's going to make financial sense down the line. The perspective of the author doesn't seem to come from the same background and experiences as many of the people reading the article, especially since the comparisons of the decisions they made to the "normal" are based on a very strange normal. That's fine, but it might be nice to get a sense of where they come from and what type of lifestyle their social group is living. Looks like "modo" is a canadian service - maybe canada is wildly different from the US but at least from my brief visits to metro areas in that country a significant portion of the lifestyle for the people I met in the toronto area seemed to be a lot like your typical american urban/suburban lifestyle in the US. I guess I just don't recognize the people "paying for the other 95" since I can't imagine anyone buying housing in an urban area with condos and public transit and parks that also sees property land area as purely recreational space instead of a financial investment, or people with young children that can't afford a 50k car that would think it makes more sense to rent out a minivan everytime they need to take the kids anywhere rather than get a 10 year old odyssey that'll keep running for 10 more. And I certainly can't imagine anyone that would decide to get a smaller house without a guest bedroom for financial reasons and then be so magnanimous that they're willing to pay for their friends hotel's when they visit! If they're not visiting to hang out with me at my place, why am I paying for their vacation? I wouldn't expect them to pay for mine!
  • ghaff 6y ago
    >I wouldn't expect them to pay for mine! That was a sort of odd touch for me. Mind you, I obviously don't know the details--maybe an old friend that he knew didn't have much money. But, yeah, I'd consider an offered guest room a nice offer but I'd never expect someone to offer to pay for a hotel if they didn't have the room.
    • vikramkr 6y ago
      The other people's reactions were also odd - the first reaction to hearing someone say they'll pay for a hotel instead of buy a house with a guest room is discuss the cost of the hotel? Is that just a Canadian thing I don't know about? It sounds like the friend group also all share the same idea that you are expected to provide for lodging when a friend visits. The only context where that sort of obligation even slightly makes sense to me is if your parents are visiting.
• bluedino 6y ago
  This makes me think of RV's or campers. A fifth wheel costs about $35,000. Many of my neighbors have models that cost $50,000+. You need to factor in renting out the campsite for a week, fuel to tow your camper there (it might be 100-200 miles away), and the fact that you need a large pickup truck to do the towing. You could rent a lot of hotels for that kind of money, or rent a cabin to stay in, and drive there in your car. "Roughing it" seems expensive.
  • bluGill 6y ago
    Note that you said 100-200 miles away. If you are driving much longer than that the cost of gas to pull it vs a mini-van is probably more than a hotel + restaurant meals. (depending on how expensive your tastes are). Maybe it works out if you have a luxury camper (read would splurge on the expensive hotel rooms), like to cook your own meals, don't drive too far every day. There is a reason most campers don't got very far from home: they need a lot of fuel. Having had a RV (which I lived in all summer - I didn't move it), and done real tent camping I object to calling any form of RV roughing it. I've been 10 hours be canoe from the nearest car before (it took us a full week - I've talked to some who did the same trip in a long day which is where the time estimate comes from), I know what roughing it means, and a RV isn't it.
  • sethammons 6y ago
    my sister and her husband lived out of an over an over cab camper for, literally, years. From San Diego to Montana to Alaska. She was working medical jobs in San Diego and parking in the RV parks. Saved a ton of money.
  • sokoloff 6y ago
    Imagine what bass boat fisherman pay per pound of bass caught when it's under $15/lb at the market. At some point, you should probably think of hobbies as hobbies and not demand that they be the most efficient means of producing an outcome.
  • topkai22 6y ago
    You are paying for opportunity cost- there are many places that people take RVs where there are no equivalent options or only sketchy ones. I agree the way most people go about buying RVs seems sub-optimal, but hotels or even cabins are not necessarily equivalent goods.
• alexggordon 6y ago
  While I do agree somewhat with this article, keep in mind that ownership of things results in different realized costs. Owning a house is a very different cost than owning a car, not only in terms of longevity but usage and storage. The fact I don't have a place to "store" my house does not affect the resale value, compared to that of a car that was only stored in a garage. If you want to maximize value of something, finding alternative uses for that item usually results in lower cost of ownership. My yard currently has about 200 square feet of garden in it, which provides a substantial amount of food to eat, at no additional cost than the water and minimal gardening supplies to keep it going. My kids can also use the yard, along side my garden, maximizing value. Once my house is paid off, my yard has a realized cost of close to zero. Friends can setup a tent in the yard with an air mattress instead of needing a guest room. That fancy mini-van? I can also be the person that rents that out as a potential income source. Suddenly, something that was a liability is now a revenue stream, and I still have the convenience of using it basically whenever I want. Most things you'll find you use only 5% of the time you own them, but their cost is low so they get no mention or attention. Other things are stupid to justify in terms of financial costs. Kids are expensive, and looking at them as an asset or a liability is laughable. Instead of figuring out the percentage of time the item will be used, try and instead maximize value from it. Split the cost of a lawn mower with your neighbor. Rent out your car on a car-share app. Car pool to school and work. When trying to purchase a big item, try and figure out what you really need, and fight your ego. Can you buy it used? Is a specific color really worth thousands of dollars? Life isn't something that can be explained through an algorithm, don't try and run every decision through it.
• bgribble 6y ago
  Not noted in the article that usage of car share, hotel rooms, and parks are all already highly correlated with local conventions for work holidays. Sure, you can get an easy car share 95% of the time, but the 5% of the time that you actually need one is also the same 5% of the time that everyone else in the city needs one -- the long weekend when everybody wants to head out to the countryside. Likewise hotel rooms and the facilities in parks. So you may need to plan waaaaaaaaay ahead if you depend on access to these shared resources.
• jancsika 6y ago
  > So what motivates people to plan for occasional peaks and idealized usage, rather than actual daily utilization? The question presupposes the answer. I fondly remember being a kid and riding around in the van-with-a-tv owned by the family who for whatever reason enjoyed being the family who drove the van-with-a-tv filled with their kids with all their kids' screaming friends. You don't want to be that family, and that's fine. But you should be explicit in stating you don't want to be and are not that family. Don't convince yourself you could rent that minivan in the case that it becomes socially necessary at some unspecified time in the future. Everyone in your life has almost certainly already heard you quote your statistics from the article, and they have adjusted accordingly so as to route around you-- for example, when they decide how to vectorize transport of their offspring.
• tuna-piano 6y ago
  The author is missing one big thing: The main point of life is not optimizing for optimal spending, its optimizing for enjoyment. Of course the rational break-even level math for some of these purchases can be analyzed, including taking into account tail risks and hassle costs. But I think the point the author is missing is that some things are affordable luxuries that people enjoy. For a long time I didn't have a car in the downtown part of a city I live in. Public transit+rideshare+zipcar was a totally fine substitute (like the author). But owning a car is better/easier/more enjoyable/more freeing! We didn't do a fine-grained analysis on how much using zipcar+hertz would cost vs buying a car. The car isn't costing a significant percent of our income, we were annoyed with alternative and wanted it, so we bought it. If you used a blender 2x a year and it cost $1 to rent vs $30 to buy, would you really consider going through the hassle of saving money to deal with renting a blender? I'm not suggesting a car is the same significance for all, but certainly it can be rational to own one even for people in the same position as the author.
  • lotsofpulp 6y ago
    >The main point of life is not optimizing for optimal spending, its optimizing for enjoyment. The trouble comes when optimizing for enjoyment today causes pain tomorrow.
    • Jarwain 6y ago
      Well then your just not optimizing for enjoyment across a long enough time scale
  • PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    > The main point of life is not optimizing for optimal spending, its optimizing for enjoyment I'm pretty much there. And having got there, I'm not convinced (yet) that it's the right goal at all. Hard to divest from it, however, since enjoyment is hard to walk away from.
    • Balgair 6y ago
      Yeah, there are thousands of years of philosophy that still haven't come up with the answer here, so you're not alone by a long shot.
• pgt 6y ago
  The author does not account for the tail risks of driving an unfamiliar rental car long distances, especially in a dangerous country like South Africa where hijackings are super-common, especially in Johanneburg. How certain are you that the brakes won't fail and the CV joints won't go in the middle of a hijacking or a blockade of burning tyres in the middle of the national highway (a weekly occurrence in ZA)? Or that you'll be pelted with rocks by a mob of protesters on your way back from work (common)? Or that an unroadworthy minibus taxi will swerve in front of you without signalling (a daily driving experiience in ZA)? My Subaru Forester is costlier to maintain than a rental, but I know all its faults and limits. I know fast I can corner without sliding and I know I can get out of a sticky situation with all-wheel drive and a 2.5L turbo. I hope I don't need to, but I can outrun most hijackers and drunk drivers (there are many). Taleb says only insure against risk of ruin. I regard my SUV as tail-risk insurance in case shit hits the fan.
  • selimthegrim 6y ago
    What is going on with the commuter rail system in Gauteng? Wouldn’t it be safer than driving?
    • pgt 6y ago
      The Gautrain is fine, though pricey. The issue though is with the last-mile travel. How do you get from the train station to your house? Walk and you'll get mugged, esp. if you walk a regular route with expensive equipment on you, otherwise you take an Uber. The minibus taxes aren't roadworthy and drive like demons. So most people in Gauteng own a car with anti-hijack coatings on the window, or they Uber. In Cape Town there is no longer a working rail system because the trains were burned by the protesting populace. Even when the trains were running (with huge delays), you'd get pickpocketed on the train. You could never risk travelling at night if you had anything valuable on you.
  • asdff 6y ago
    How often have you had to outrun a hijacker?
• achou 6y ago
  In the last 18 months I've lived with 2 kids in a condo in SF with a car, a downtown condo in an Asian megacity without a car, and in suburban silicon valley with a car and large yard. For us, by FAR the best quality of life has been in the suburbs. Having a yard is exceptionally valuable with kids. They can be free to run around, play yard games, explore - all without draining the emotional reserves of parents. You can do this while you make dinner, work, or do other things that are unrealistic at an urban park. And you can play with them too. It is not that expensive to get someone to care for your yard if you have some financial flexibility. In a family there are many kind of resources - time, money, energy, emotional reserves. Scarcity in the first two are easy to focus on because they're quantitative. But scarcity in the latter two - especially emotional reserves - is actually the limited resource in many families. Having to deal with the stresses of children (even if they are mostly well behaved!) puts a real strain on relationships. And the friction from an urban environment, especially one like SF which is not child-friendly, or a giant megacity that has very high density, just drains away the scarcest resources that a family like mine actually has. If you have some financial flexibility and need serenity and quiet to be your best, combining kids with an urban environment in exchange for spending less is a very poor allocation of resources. It's an example of optimizing for the thing you can easily measure, instead of what's truly important.
• johnnyb9 6y ago
  I live in NYC and renting a car, either with a car rental agency or via ZipCar is an utter shitshow. With ZipCar, the cars are usually either (1) changed last minute to a different garage, (2) have mechanical issues (I showed up once and the battery was dead), or (3) strong smell of smoking. A few times I have had multiple of them occur in the same reservation (the third garage we were sent to had a functioning car with check engine alerts). I have tried rental cars, but then what if you want to go away for a week at a time? What if the car doesn't have an EZ-Pass? How do you get to your final destination from the car rental place? A few months ago I waited one hour for a Lyft driver to pick me up (in a jalopy van on a toll-less route with no AC) to take me to the car rental place. There is something to be said of having a functioning car waiting for you near your place of residence, even if it is only for 5% of the time. I imagine the same applies to other things in life.
• paulus_magnus2 6y ago
  TL;DR. Ride sharing / taxi vs car ownership breakeven is at €10 per short trip (5km or less), but only worthwhile if I could totally get rid of the car: only 25% of car ownership cost is fuel, 75% or €5000 is maintenance + depreciation. my calculations (sorry if formatting is off) depreciation: 13000 purchase (5y old ex-lease car) 1000 after purchase: change of timing belt + water pump etc resale: 5y after 6000 ?? residual value 1800/y depreciation annual maintenance: 250 (1000 for 2 sets of seasonal tires every 4 years) 1000 (insurance + road tax) 40 official checkup 200 basic service (oil, filters) 1000 ?? fixing things + parking + road tolls + tickets 2490/y maintenance fuel (europe) 6.5l/100km diesel 20.000km annual mieage 1.3 €/l diesel (don't buy at highways) 1690/y fuel garage 75/m (comes with my apartment) 900/y garage total cost: 6680 €/y total cost: 0.334 €/km I also figured I do 500 trips during school year (40 weeks, 12.5 trips per weak) total cost: 13.36 €/trip This is surprisingly high. I need to find a way to make more trips :) OK, that includes holidays in which I do half of my annual mileage (10.000km) but in the end most of the cost is fixed: depreciation + maintenance. Sadly, even at free electricity EV is not going to be much better. Only 100% ride sharing will bring a cost reduction that will influence decisions.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    Car maintenance is pretty heavily influenced by mileage. (Albeit less so in areas with snow/salt.) Though some of the things you include as maintenance are mostly annual costs.
• choeger 6y ago
  The guestroom/hotel thing misses one important point: The hotel is far away. Your guests have to leave you and get back to you at some point. Especially the leaving part might make it difficult to enjoy a shared dinner (when the guests have small kids).
• federiconafria 6y ago
  I guess what most comments here are missing is the analysis behind certain purchases that come almost as a default in certain people's life like a bigger home, better car, etc. Not everything has to be cost-optimized some things can be just for pleasure or for the peace of having something available when needed. What I do think is that for a lot of people many of these purchases are just a default path to follow.
• lhorie 6y ago
  This feels a bit like a strawman. Does he have experience living the lifestyle of suburb house + car or is he just trying to justify his own choice of living downtown? Having done both, I can tell you they are very different lifestyles. There are certainly perks to the downtown lifestyle, but it isn't all peaches and roses. Taking the bus is a huge mixed bag and depends a lot on the transit system layout. Taking a newborn on the subway and transferring to a bus to see a pediatrician sucks. Hyperactive kids fighting all day when you're trying to work from home from a shoebox apartment sucks. You don't get as much leeway in your choice of schools (and btw, the highest ranking ones often aren't downtown). Etc. By contrast, the north american suburb lifestyle generally involves driving kids around pretty much all the time: they might go to a nicer school that is a bit farther out (did I mention good school areas have expensive real estate?) One might drive out virtually every weekend because getting ice cream at ikea takes as long as it does to walk/bus to the nearby supermarket. When one drives, they can also pack more activities in one day: Going for groceries then checking out a dozen books from the library in a single outing isn't a recipe for back pain. And you can actually get home before lunch time. Etc. With a bigger house, your parents can come stay for a few months (this is very common in many cultures). Yes, you can save money by living the downtown lifestyle, but there's certainly a hit in various aspects of quality of life.
  • pnw_hazor 6y ago
    The article author is having fun. Kinda of like how hyper-milers were working so hard to minimize their gas use when Toyota Prius were all the rage. I could not imagine raising my kids in an apartment, it sounds like a nightmare to me. We lived the American suburb lifestyle you described. I loved every minute of it while it lasted.
• brentjanderson 6y ago
  His point is definitely worth considering. I'd argue, though, that part of the 95% is about putting slack in the system. I don't want to have to wait for an Uber to show up when an emergency arises. The tail case is often the only case that matters.
• Glyptodon 6y ago
  While conceptually I agree with the idea, I'm not sold that the identified things the writer labels 95% idle are correct. For example my brother and I easily averaged more than an hour a day outside on a half acre lot growing up. And it's very nice to be able to sit on a patio and not worry that the neighbors can hear everything. I also find that in the modern world it's often cheaper to buy low quality stuff and treat it as disposable ish. For example I bought a very cheap electric chainsaw with the intention of destroying it (very sandy environment) because it was less expensive than renting the right tool for a job, and now I still have it if I need to cut a small branch or something.
• kpennell 6y ago
  I'm very into mountain biking + backpacking and I've realized that it's totally worth it for me to own a car. I've gone years without owning one and I've regretted it later. Yes, it sits there 98% of the time, but that 2% of the time it connects me to absolutely magical moments.
  • Dylan16807 6y ago
    If you only need a car 2% of the time, what stops taxis and rentals from filling that need for you? Is your car cheaper, even if you only use it once a month or less?
    • kpennell 6y ago
      yeah, it's cheaper.
      • quickthrower2 6y ago
        especially if you crash!
    • ptmcc 6y ago
      It's not parked in my garage, equipped with racks set up exactly as I need, next to all my outdoor equipment ready to go. I drive a 16 year old car that has been paid off for many years. Insurance is <$1k/yr. Average maintenance & repair is pretty low since I don't drive a heck of a lot (1-2x trips/week typically). Is it strictly cheaper than rentals? Maybe, maybe not. But it's cheap enough to not matter, and instead optimize on convenience rather than cost. I'm even considering buying a new or very lightly used car in the nearish future, which would cost considerably more in the short term, but I would hang on to it for a long time barring unexpected circumstances. Cost (within reason) is not even a top 3 factor compared to convenience, comfort, and safety.
• 1970-01-01 6y ago
  Isn't this just a personal cost benefit analysis?
• shocks 6y ago
  I wonder how this guy feels about his no-car-small-apartment in 2020? :) My second bedroom has become an office. I bought my first car a few months ago (after 8 years of living on the outskirts of London) and it has dramatically improved my pandemic life.
• bori 6y ago
  I think it is useful to not over-optimize your life. You want to be prepared for the 5%. That's why I bought a car recently, even though I advocated for the OP's philosophy before and rented where I could. "Don't cross a river because it is 4 feet deep on average."
• allenu 6y ago
  I like the overall concept and have used similar sorts of thinking in my life. I think it's useful to have a raw numbers audit of the costs in your life and to figure out if they're worth it or they're things you could eliminate. However, I think at some point you're going to have to be okay with some "inefficiency" in your life, assuming you are doing okay financially, of course. Stressing about efficiency can take its toll on you mentally if you're the kind of person who likes to maximize every little thing.
• fossuser 6y ago
  This largely misses a big point, lowering the threshold of access to do something. > Friends visiting from out of town? I’ll pay for their hotel, so I can live in a smaller, cheaper, better located condo for the rest of the year. Then friends won't visit, it's more of a hassle to schedule - however infrequent these visits are they'll be even less frequent. > I have to schlep a bunch of kids far away? I’ll get a Modo minivan, a local car share, for a few hours. Let someone else maintain that gorgeous van. You'll go fewer places and do fewer things if everytime you want to go somewhere you have to deal with getting a rideshare van. > Need some outdoors time? Walk a couple blocks to a park. I’m not interested in mowing something I only use a couple hours a week. No backyard cookouts, no sitting on the deck, you'll go to the park less frequently. It's the same for the rest of it, there are good reasons to reduce some of these things but the reasons he gives dismiss the true value. Even owning a car vs. rideshare, sure rideshare can work out to be cheaper (sometimes) but having every travel decision be a purchase decision is a lot of overhead and is a constant pressure not to go somewhere.
  • thatfrenchguy 6y ago
    Every travel decision is a purchase decision, you're paying for that gas or electricity no matter what.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    I think you make fine points, but they're not universal. I disagree with pretty much all of them: > Then friends won't visit, it's more of a hassle to schedule - however infrequent these visits are they'll be even less frequent. I would MUCH rather stay in a nearby hotel (and have my guests stay in a hotel). I would feel less like I was imposing. > You'll go fewer places and do fewer things if everytime you want to go somewhere you have to deal with getting a rideshare van. I think there's likely some truth to that, but it also means I rearrange my life to plan for this better and also to make those outings more meaningful. > No backyard cookouts, no sitting on the deck, you'll go to the park less frequently The analogy I use is the gym: I can do workouts at home, but the mental routine I have for getting up and going to the gym means I actually go much more often. Similarly, if there was a nearby park I liked I'd use it much more frequently. I know I felt that way when I lived in the city vs. where I do now in the burbs (note - the burbs weren't my choice ;)
• secondbreakfast 6y ago
  I find a lot of joy in the 5% that I can host friends, though.
• draw_down 6y ago
  Well, I think it is ok to want a porch and a yard even if I am not using them constantly. I don't want everything in my life to be perfectly economically efficient. That is not a goal for me.
• theonlybutlet 6y ago
  This guy it seems skimped on his server too, website won't load for me. Should've outsourced it to Google or someone lol.
• wonnage 6y ago
  This is kind of related to the lean supply concept that's been waylaid by COVID-19. You think you can just pay for capacity when you need it, until it turns out everyone needs it at the same time. I can't imagine anyone who lives near wildfires in California not owning a car. Lots of people don't live near parks, or the parks are poorly maintained. A friend might lose their job and need a place to stay for a few months. There are lots of what-if scenarios which are individually unlikely but cumulatively probable. If you have the resources, why not prepare for them?
• surprisetalk 6y ago
  cached: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:81YCedwlNgUJ:https://5kids1condo.com/dont-pay-for-95/&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0 https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:81YCed...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• flattone 6y ago
  Living in the city is awesome because of the awesome things about living in the city. Living in the country is awesome because of the awesome things about living in the country. Some people prefer one or the other, even to the point of thinking their way is superior. Welcome to humans.
• forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Site is unreachable for me. Anyone have text?
• elchief 6y ago
  A good idea pre-COVID perhaps But I sure am glad I have my own treadmill, power cage, and car right now
• brailsafe 6y ago
  Living in the same city as Adrian, I very much agree with all of his points. Cars are expensive to operate, park, and maintain here, meanwhile we have 3 carshare options that are way more pleasant than owning a car. For excursions outside the city, I've decided to rent a car for every situation that I need to, and then consider a car purchase if the math works out better. So far, even after having rented a car 5 times this year, I haven't surpassed just the cost of insurance for the year, or the tax, or the annual maintenance cost, and I've increased my time spent at parks, in the mountains, and elsewhere. So far there's been one exception to this, which is super early morning and multi-day hikes that I can't get to without a rented car. That's it. Likewise, I'm visiting the prairies where I'm from, and spent an hour today raking away all that leaf falling and dog poop action the yards have been getting. I do enjoy long distance drives, so my partner and I rented a car for a month and split the cost. At about $400 each not including gas, it's in the range of the same car plus insurance monthly, but we don't pay for what we're not using.
• einpoklum 6y ago
  It must first be said - western economies are based, to a great extent, on excessive consumption, through planned obsolescence, cultural enforcement of fashion, socialization and hiding of the mounting costs of resource disposal, de-legitimization of reuse and recycling through fixing, etc. GDP must grow grow grow! ... or there are crashes. And there are crashes. In this context, I commend the author. At the same time, it seems that in addition to frugality or "non-spluring" he is advocating a life of precarity, and strong dependence on each of a bunch of commercial corporations, and this I don't like as much.
• leifg 6y ago
  As so many people mentioned here this article seems to put cost benefit over personal comfort. Having a car/garden/guest bedroom adds to your quality of life. I had these conversations before when I was in my twenties and almost owned nothing (no car, tiny apartment without a garden). Now that I'm married and more settled I moved my preference a little bit more towards the "paying for things I don't use that much". My wife and I share a car and I have an electric bike (during the week my wife takes the car to work, I work from home). We have a guest bedroom which also acts as my office (when guests are here I work from the kitchen table). We don't have a yard but will definitely make this a priority in our next home. So the question really becomes: "What percentage of idle time are you OK to have". You will always have >0% idle time on anything on you own. And if it's truly about cost effectiveness: What's stopping you from renting out your car/room and to an extend even your yard (saw an app today where you can rent private pools)?
• glangdale 6y ago
  It's weird to imagine that you'd have a guest bedroom that you keep immaculately clean and empty, like a vacant hotel room, for 51 weeks of the year. We have a guest room. It's also my wife's home office and creative space and gets used every day. When we have guests, she's happy to relinquish the space to welcome a guest into the house (it's not an imposition). Then the guests have a nice, relatively private room in a nice part of town and can hang out with us easily - a lot easier than negotiating the rather weird idea of paying for their hotel or airbnb-type rooms (which would, IMO, be a strange negotiation to have with most grown-up people we know).
• binarysneaker 6y ago
  Didn't pay for hosting either, his site is down.
• ezekiel68 6y ago
  Many of the comments here orbit around an idea that's been percolating in my mind for many years: We overpay, sure, for extra "capacity" which seems wasteful. But when the burst demand arrives and you're not caught flat-footed (need a car now, need our online game/app to handle surge now, etc etc), the peace of mind makes it seem worth it. The entire wage economy exists to scratch this itch. Various auto-scaling strategies may creep in. But as soon as you lose business or lose an opportunity due to its lag time or "sensible" upper bound (or whatever), it is very tempting (and often makes sense) to abandon them. Another way of saying it: "The point of life is not to min/max everything."
• alliao 6y ago
  hmm by this account I really should throw away all my tools. Robustness/availability is in direct competition with efficiency/cost I feel when you measure them in shorter time line. With high availability/robustness you'd need to invest up front, having things ready to go. But that increases your initial investment.
• rubidium 6y ago
  "Your car sits idle over 95% of the time." Ok, but hailing a cab-van with 3 carseats 5-6 days a week is a headache. Plus a good used minivan costs just $15-23K. "Your guest bedroom is occupied one week out of every 52." Mine is 4 weeks a year, and we have a murphy bed in it so we use it for other things the rest of the time. "Your kids use the yard less than 40 minutes a week." WHAT?! They're out there 24/7. I have to drag them in kicking and screaming! Silly article. Stop pretending you know how to grown-up.
• kelnos 6y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly with this, but I think this probably only applies to people with particular mindsets, and depends on what people value. If it'd be financially difficult for you to live in a city center with enough room for a guest bedroom and a garage for your car, and you really really really value living in the city center, then you'll probably sacrifice that car and guest room. But nothing beats the convenience of walking out/down to your garage, hopping in the car, and driving off. Being able to host friends in your home is arguably more hospitable than putting them up in a hotel (though the hotel is an awesome gesture if you don't have the space). Having a (fenced, perhaps) backyard means allowing appropriately-aged kids to play outside mostly unsupervised. If you can afford the extra expense without reducing your quality of life in other ways, then I think it's absolutely worth it, but... it is expensive, though, in money and time. I have a car, but I could probably make more than $4k/year renting out my garage space, and the cost of insurance, registration, maintenance, and depreciation adds at least another thousand or two to that. Given how little I drove pre-pandemic, I'm pretty sure a ZipCar membership, or using something like Turo, would be more cost-effective. But I know people who drive a lot more than I do, and I'm not convinced they'd save all that much (if anything) ditching the car and switching to rentals. There's also the right-tool-for-the-job argument. My car is fine for the city and nearby. When I want to go to Tahoe in the winter, I rent a car with 4WD/AWD and snow tires. So it's not like owning a car eliminates the need for rentals, and frankly I just don't want a big bulky snow-weather car for city/local driving. From an environmental and community perspective, yeah, using shared things is way better. Fewer cars produced and shared among more people is a good thing. Higher housing density (within limits) is a good thing, and having a guest room that sits unused 95% of the time probably isn't a great use of space. Going to a park and interacting with your neighbors is great. Riding public transit and reducing traffic and emissions is great. Those things do have a cost, though, and I think Americans especially are raised to be more individually-minded than community-minded.
  • quickthrower2 6y ago
    If you are in your 20's friends can sleep on any hallway/floor surface.
• analog31 6y ago
  >>> So what motivates people to plan for occasional peaks and idealized usage, rather than actual daily utilization? >>> Ego is part of it. The article held together well enough without the ad hominem. Logistics is part of it. Renting a minivan in my locale takes a couple of hours, and must be planned in advance. The minivan that my family owned for 16 years wasn't exactly a status symbol, even when new.
• anonytrary 6y ago
  I agree and disagree. I think it is indeed incredibly wasteful to buy something you will only use rarely. I myself am a minimalist; everything I own fits in my car, and if it doesn't, then I start throwing things away. I think this lifestyle is motivated by the fact that I'm young, single. That said, I think people who have money have the right to spend it on whatever they want. It is totally valid to purchase something for the option to use it on-demand, regardless of the cadence of that demand. Why should I be discouraged from purchasing a cottage that I'll only use for one week a year to give my family a great vacation experience? I think there's an idea here, though -- we should encourage re-use and renting things we own, but not force it. If sharing was as easy as possible wouldn't people... share more? Think about that.
  • asdff 6y ago
    I think in the case of the cottage example you'd have to consider what your ownership of that cottage means in practice. Is the area with your vacation home experiencing a housing shortage and therefore high housing prices? Is there a family of 4 living in a van on the curb outside of your empty cottage? In many high cost of living cities, this is indeed the case.
• burlesona 6y ago
  I was living this life, with the kids, and enjoying it... until COVID. With the schools, playgrounds, libraries, and museums closed, the city life lost a lot of its appeal. And with my office closed, WFH with kids was... difficult. We’ve moved to a bigger house in a small town. It’s better for now. As far as when the world eventually settles into the new normal? I guess we’ll see!
• new_realist 6y ago
  Often, when you want to use something, many other people will too. Over-provisioning guarantees you won't be starved out of access to what you need even in the face of high demand.
• asdff 6y ago
  Not just the time, the fuel. Say you weigh 150lbs, and your car weighs 3000lbs. 95% of the fuel you burn or electricity you spend is used to simply move the hunk of metal that is the vehicle, and 5% is used to move yourself. Not great efficiency by any means.
• einsof 6y ago
  This is quite an impressive approach for having FIVE kids. I have just two (young kids) and doing anything together is a huge collective action problem. Not having a car readily available would put the kaibosh on basically any out of town plan. Not to mention car seats.
• caymanjim 6y ago
  The author likes living in a city. The people the author is comparing themself to prefer the suburbs. The usage argument is a secondary rationalization. I never use my spare bedroom. I barely drive my car. I don't make much use of my yard (or do much maintenance on it). The thing I value most is not living in a city. The car is a necessity (and cost me a whopping $1500), the house is cheap ($900/mo) and comes with more rooms than I need. The yard doesn't actually require any maintenance. At least I don't have to live in a city.
• hirako2000 6y ago
  With that kind of reasoning I should get rid of my screw drivers, sell my watch, throw away the oven, and take my showers at a spa. It's with thoughts like that I think that we destroy our lifestyles. For many, it's too costly to own a car these day, leasing the couch on airbnb may become an obligation more than a choice. While ordering from door dash since fast food is cheaper than cooking at home. We already let the plumber, electrician and whatnot take our cash for things we could easily do with a bit of learning.
• selfhoster11 6y ago
  Here's a point that I don't see raised anywhere in the comments: short-term rented items are stateless. Wear, tear and failure is undone by the rental company, but so are any customisation, decoration, or adjustments to make them better If you need a car adjusted for the needs of disabled persons (whether it's yourself or a member of your family), or if you want to put up a picture frame or a poster in a short-term rented room/office, then those adjustments will be treated as deviations from the norm, and "corrected" at the end of your rental term if you leave them in place. Part of human condition is the need to self-express, and you cannot really do that with short-term rented items (and to some extent, even long-term rented items). This can discourage personalisation and customising your environment altogether, which may feel like being in a prison.
• Markoff 6y ago
  must be odd kids who use own yard only 40 minutes a week, even 40 minutes a day sound like way underestimated
• j7ake 6y ago
  It’s not about the frequency of events that happen in “typical cases” (guest bedroom used a week per year) but rather it’s paying for an insurance and peace of mind that if things get real serious (companies go out of business, pandemics, family situations) you’ll be covered. Take the example that there was a situation with your parents or grandparents that need care for several years, the guest bedroom scenario would beat the overoptimized condo scenario. You would just need to think about one outlier event to justify the purchase. One way to think about not overoptimizing life is that you want to be able to accommodate events you did not expect to happen (which will happen).
• cafard 6y ago
  Your kids use the yard 40 minutes/week? It has been a long time since I counted as a kid, but my recollection is that it was more like half an hour per day, at least. This was also the baby boom, so there was apt to be not just my brother and me but eight or more other kids there, playing kickball, tag, touch football, etc.
• rmk 6y ago
  The main motivating example given is rent vs. buy scenarios for a family minivan. I feel that the author may be biased by the last 7-8 months, during which, the rationale behind having two cars has largely vanished. Another example given is the yard. Interestingly, usage of the yard would have shot up for a family with young children during this period. Here, again, I assume the author knows that a yard is a multipurpose area: playing, lounging, working during parts of the day (laptops make it easy to camp out in the yard for part of the day), swimming (assuming a permanent pool or an above-ground pool). If you use the yard for some combination of the activities above, then you would almost certainly not be able to substitute the neighborhood park for it. On the whole, I do not see how the 'You are not using 95%' premise itself holds here.
• ganafagol 6y ago
  The sad part is the black-and-white thinking. In his blog post as well as in the comments here. He has a point. In big cities the carsharing model is very meaningful. Or the park-instead-of-backyard. It is insane to try to own all this in a big city. It's never gonna work for _everybody_. At the same time the argument only stretches this long. You own a stove? A musical instrument? A toothbrush? Insane! You use them less than 5% of the time!! For his blog post that's totally fine, he is trying to make a reasonable point and naturally pushes its boundaries. And look at his profile, that's basically his job. But in the comments here which just go 180 degrees against, it's less forgivable. Of course there are examples where this does not work, like those that I mention above. But they are ridiculous. His point is valid nevertheless. He makes you think, that's great. But many comments here don't do that. They just want to ramble. And that's sad.
• PovilasID 6y ago
  Most people already called out most of the problems but number one for me is time to access. Paying to have it ready now/on your schedule and not having to spend time scheduling or getting. Is it less financially efficient? No. Is it worth reconsidering depending on your financial health? Yes. Is it universal? No. Does the article can be interpreted in way it suggest it's universal? Yes.
• rapht 6y ago
  Even setting aside the fact that the article is only really applicable if you live in a metropolitan environment where any asset-as-a-service is available on short notice, there's still this one problem: what price do you put on convenience? If you don't own that 95%-unused asset, then either you'll always end up paying the highest price for the equivalent service because you need it now, and this quickly becomes un-economical, or you have to plan everything ahead, at all times. The difference is just the convenience of a readily available asset.
• vonwoodson 6y ago
  Sitting smugly about having a car and a yard and an extra bedroom during the COVID pandemic. I don’t want to crap of the author, though: 2016 was a different world than we have today. I hope that we can all reflect on how this mess we are in today is, at least in part, due to efficiency and optimizations in all aspects of humanity. And, I really hope that we can cut it out before we all kill ourselves.