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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

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
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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 ;)
- romwell 6y ago
  >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 must be well-off with well-off friends. My friends would feel pretty bad if I were to pay for their hotel, and it is not an insignificant cost to many (especially since I'm living in the Bay Area). Crashing on a spare couch? No problemo. (Even if the economics of the spare couch work out in the favor of the hotel room. There is a utility in the spare couch beyond letting guests sleep on it, and that understanding takes away all the feelings of imposing, at least financially.) However, all of that ignores the fundamental difference. You're not my guest when you're in a hotel. I can't wake you up for breakfast and make you coffee. We can't watch movies on the couch until either feels sleepy. And so on. You can't rent the experience of sharing your home with someone if you don't have a home to share.
  - Groxx 6y ago
    >>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 must be well-off with well-off friends. As always, It Depends™. I have friends allergic to our pets, some have significant trouble sleeping on inflatable beds or couches, etc. Some have kids, so one couch / one bed won't cut it. The only way it's reasonable for them to visit without having pretty major issues after a day or so is when we're all up for setting up a hotel + transportation (or similar)... which ends up meaning it's less often than some other friends.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    > You must be well-off with well-off friends. I don't think extravagantly so, but I have worked in software for a couple decades and saved a lot. But I think you're confusing the fundamental question here. Sure, when I was in my twenties I crashed at friends' places, and they at mine, all the time. But the article is specifically about the tradeoff of getting a smaller, cheaper, apartment, vs. getting a larger house in the suburbs with a spare guest room. The idea that it's usually a cheaper option to pay for the occasional hotel than to specifically purchase a larger house with rooms you rarely use. Obviously the "crash on my couch" is a different dynamic entirely.
anm89 6y ago
I really don't think there is any right or wrong answers to any of this stuff. For one it depends on how much spare money you have. But I think it as all just preferences on a spectrum.
_jal 6y ago
It is funny where people come down on this. I'm far better off not owning a car than if I had one, for instance, whether you measure in money or aggravation. Public transport here is lovely, rentals of multiple flavors plentiful, and maybe I'm strange, but when I owned a car, I knew what it cost me to own per mile or per day of ownership. It was routine for me to mentally estimate the cost of a trip. But on the other hand, I own a lot of specialty tools that probably only see a few minutes of use per year each, if that. Not having them means waits, sometime long waits, or making something to make do. Someone who chose to have kids probably prefers the car. What makes sense to own depends on what you do.
- etothepii 6y ago
  I suspect your per mile / per day costs were not the marginal ones. Once you've bought a car and insured it the cost per mile is "just" the gas and a penny for wear and tear.
  - _jal 6y ago
    Cars wear out (depreciation), and insurance costs over time. It is simple math. But of course you count the cost of the car and not just the gas, otherwise you're not actually comparing costs.
    - NoOneNew 6y ago
      >Cars wear out (depreciation) No. Depreciation is something you consider if you intend to resell the vehicle. It's independent of wear and tear. It's a financial concept, not an engineering/mechanical concept. Jeep Wranglers, for example, hold a better value compared to the average even if they have higher mileage and age, especially if its in a mountainous local market. Wear and tear is mechanical repairs and maintenance. Oil changes, tire changes, spark plugs, etc. A good amount of people buy a certain car and maintain it, intending to run the vehicle into the ground completely. If you really want to do the "simple math", don't forget about the opportunity costs associated with the wait times, scheduling around someone else's schedule and delays due to public transit and rideshares. That's where you realize just how much a car actually saves you. I used to live in Seattle and Portland for a few years (each). I bit that poisonous apple of, "I don't need a car since I'm going to live in the city". 15-20 minute car commutes would be about an hour on average on public transit (that's if they ran on time). Never. The. Fuck. Again.
Hello71 6y ago
if it's so hard for you to consider opportunity costs when budgeting (a trait unfortunately shared by most humans), this seems like it could be easily fixed by putting the money you save into a discretionary spending account, to be used for renting hotel rooms for friends, or rideshares, or any such "unnecessary expenses". if your original assumption that buying a smaller house or whatever saves money, then this account should still increase in value every year, which can be rolled over into general savings. by keeping the money in a separate account, you can feel free to spend it on things that would otherwise be "free".
- landryraccoon 6y ago
  > used for renting hotel rooms for friends Does this actually happen? I'm serious. I'd like to hear some stories of offering to pay for your friend staying at a hotel room while they are coming to visit you (and them actually accepting that offer). How does that even work? I mean socially, in terms of etiquette, embarrassment, and power imbalance?
bartread 6y ago
A lot of this stuff also works even less well when you don't live in a city. Couple of examples... On average, I need a car once or twice a week. Maybe three out of every four trips something really dinky like a smart car would do the job, whereas on one out of four I need the mid-sized estate car that I actually own. I live in a small village so to hire a car I'd have to get on a bus to the nearest town, then walk to the car hire place to get the car. That probably adds an hour to an hour and a half every time I need an estate car. Am I going to deal with that BS once every two weeks? Hell no. Even if I did, over time would it cost less than simply owning the damn car? Maybe, but it's pretty fricking marginal. I'd save a bit on fuel, no doubt, but economical cars hold their value much better than those that are less economical so the price of the cars (I always buy used) might not be so different. I don't "use" my back garden a lot as a place to hang out, but it's certainly a handy place to leave the motorbike when I don't want to put it away, and also a great place for cutting up wood, MDF, and the like when I'm doing DIY. The space has value that goes way beyond the amount of time that I use it for. I could list plenty of other examples where this is true.
- csomar 6y ago
  > I live in a small village I think we can agree, this lifestyle is only for people living in the city in downtown or midtown with all amenities nearby.
  - 8ytecoder 6y ago
    I lived without a car in a city will amenities nearby and told myself I'll rent a car when I need one. I did that about 10-15 times before I realized if I want to travel or get out of the city it's going to get expensive pretty quickly. I ended up buying one soon after. Having access to a car all of a sudden entirely changed how I spent my weekends. I wasn't dependent on friends. What the OP describes is also very true. When I have to plan ahead and rent a car and deal with taking and dropping it off I avoided it as much as I can. This was with a zipcar membership and a whole bunch of rental cars two blocks from where I lived.
    - 6y ago
zmmmmm 6y ago
An interesting version of that is how cloud computing relates to development creativity. On the surface, why have any fixed server infrastructure at all, anywhere? Well, if you don't, you're putting friction in front of anybody not authorised to spend to develop / test / prototype something. Yes, you can give everyone a cloud account and let them use that. But even then you'll have people cautiously limiting their usage to avoid accidentally overspending. By contrast, when that server is sitting their idle half the time, I actually feel guilty for NOT trying out some whacky idea on it. Of course, it can work exactly the opposite way - if you DO give all your developers complete freedom to run stuff in the cloud then they have even more liberty than if you give them a fixed server to work with. But I suspect few organisations would tolerate the potential cost risk from that. It's a subtle mental difference but I think it can play into outcomes in a significant way.
- username90 6y ago
  That is pretty interesting. When I worked at Google I could spin up thousands of workers just to test the real world performance of different distributed strategies. Definitely worth it in the long run, servers aren't that expensive and there are a lot of issues you hit when you start having tons of servers instead of what you can simulate locally.
  - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    But at Google you fall in to the first category, right? Where Google has a ton of servers sitting idly all the time, so it costs them nothing (or nearly nothing) to let you use a few thousand of them to do some testing. Or were you renting the server time from another company?
    - virgilp 6y ago
      It was same when I worked at Adobe, really. And Adobe doesn't have servers sitting idly all the time. In the old days, getting approvals for a cluster, while feasible, would be a big overhead, take time, and then in 1 year it'd be already substandard. With cloud computing, I could easily spin up a huge cluster without asking anybody for approval, do some work on it, and turn it off after an hour. I could see how for small companies, "spinning up a VM" would be a thing to consider carefully - but for bigger ones (and especially for "big data" workloads), cloud computing is really a no-brainer.
sandworm101 6y ago
>> No backyard cookouts, no sitting on the deck, you'll go to the park less frequently. Hey, when some people think of the outdoors they think of a communal BBQ in the apartment quad. When some people think "park" they see green grass. When they think 'walk the dog' they mean go to a fenced acre with sections for small/medium dogs. Such people are urban dwellers who probably shouldn't venture past city limits. But some of us own labradors, huskies or even wolfhounds. Walking them means a car ride to a river with a few miles to run. When we think "park" we think Zion or Jasper ... not Central. Some people like to rollerblade to the corner starbucks with their Havanese dog on a retractable leash. I prefer to save my coffee money and spend it on a proper car to haul me, my canoe and my chocolate lab to a river beside a mountain. Remember the old Nissan commercials: Dogs_love_trucks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aYZrvG5BkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aYZrvG5BkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XCKSXvhbQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XCKSXvhbQU
- triceratops 6y ago
  I've seen many labs and huskies at my local dog park. I myself own a rather active breed dog who I keep occupied with long walks in town and visits to dog parks. You don't need to go out into the woods to take long walks or runs.
- ric2b 6y ago
  Central park is a weird example because it's absolutely huge and I can't imagine how it wouldn't be enough for any dog.
victorronin 6y ago
+1 I see a lot of merit to what the author is saying. However, he completely ignores externalities. Yes, car is not used 95% of time. And he is saying, let's target the 5%. The problem is that it's not 5%, it's rather 3% of planned trips where his model works really well and 2% when you need a car right now and oh... the demand for local car share through the roof, so please wait for next 20 minutes. And the same is true for everything else. People are buying extra on one hand to use it, but on another case to be an insurance that they can accommodate unplanned.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  But some of that 2% it's fine to put off, and the chance of the demand for local cars being through the roof at any particular moment is less than 1% of that, so now buying a car means optimizing for that 1/10000 case. How much is that worth to you?
  - victorronin 6y ago
    Let me start from another end. Owning a car (a couple of year old, not luxury) could be $400 month (deprecation, parking, insurance, gas, fixes, etc). Taking Uber to drive the same trips will cost you let say $300/month. Please don't read too deep into a specific number, this are all guestimates (they obviously wary in different places). As a result, you save $1200/year, which is nice. You are asking why I am optimizing for 1/10000 case and how much is that worth? Well... Here are a couple of scenarios, you need to drive a kid to an emergency room at 1am or super important business meeting popped up out. How much is it worth you? May be such events happens once in several years, but the price tag on them could be way-way higher than your savings. This is exactly why I used word "insurance". Why does anybody buy insurance? The probably is 1/10000 to get into trouble. The issue is that the price tag of this 1/10000 is too high to ignore.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      For the emergency room, I can call an ambulance. For a business meeting, I really doubt it's that important, and why can't I use Uber for this? Not everything needs insurance. And real insurance has costs that are pretty close to the expected average risk, while buying things just in case could be much more. And the 1/10000 calculation was not the chance of huge trouble, it's 1/10000 to be unable to get a ride to have any trouble at all. The vast majority of those incidents are going to be worth much less than a thousand dollars. The chance of an event being that major is another factor of 1% or less. Am I going to pay a thousand dollars a year to avoid a one in a million chance each of missing some important business meetings? Definitely not. Especially when other factors I can't change are much more likely to make me miss a meeting. I mean, if I had odds that low of major illness I probably wouldn't pay hundreds of dollars a month for health insurance either!
bialpio 6y ago
> (...) having every travel decision be a purchase decision is a lot of overhead and is a constant pressure not to go somewhere. That's why doing the math once and then no longer worrying about it makes sense. I generally am opposed to paying for what I don't use (prevalence of unlimited data plans in the US drives me nuts), that's why the article resonates with me - I usually frame it as "don't optimize for the edge case". What the post misses to me in the house example is that homes usually at the very least maintain their value, so the added expenses are only related to maintenance (higher property tax, cost of heating, cleaning, etc).
- fossuser 6y ago
  I think a better model is reduce cognitive load when possible. Unlimited data plans are totally worth it (particularly with visible where it’s only $25/month on party pay). Reducing the amount of decisions you have to make frees you from drudgery - I’d argue it’s one of the best places to leverage money. I don’t believe it’s possible to do the math once and no longer worry about it. Every time you call a ride it’s a purchase decision.
  - vladvasiliu 6y ago
    I think it can be considered a one-time decision based on probability. In my case, I know I don't expect to call a ride every other day, at most once or twice a month (even less now when bars are closed – but that's an edge situation). I know the approximate cost of a ride, typically €12, surge pricing may go up to twenty. So at the most, I expect calling a ride to cost me €20 a month. That's less than what resident parking would cost for a car for the same month (a few years ago it was €9 / week). So the ride-sharing wins. I can think about this once and re-evaluate the situation every year. Yes, sometimes I may spend more on rides, sometimes less, but on average it's a cheaper way of getting around. So even though every time I call the ride it's technically a purchase decision in that I can decide not to do it and walk / bike / take the metro (assuming it's still open), it could be argued that I had already decided that in this situation I would call a ride. So no decision fatigue. Note that driving my own car isn't exactly a "decisionless" process. I have to think where I'll go, whether I'll have easy surface parking (free) or whether I'll have to purchase underground parking. Plus, bonus points for underground parking being paid by the hour, so now I have to make a decision every hour about whether I want to stay out (purchase more parking) or leave. Also, with regard to the data plan, we don't have those in France (that I know of). My plan has 40 GB and I've got it because it was cheaper than my older 15 GB plan. I know my usage never has me go above 3 to 4 GB. If an unlimited plan was available for a few more euros, that would be a net cost to me, for no practical gain in peace of mind or anything. I suppose not everybody has a "boring routine-based" life so this approach may not work in each and every situation.
gfxgirl 6y ago
I'm with you on all of those things, but just to play devils advocate, having a yard, a car, and an extra room are arguably all things contributing to climate change. The yard requires energy and materials to maintain. The room requires energy and materials to maintain, clean, and climatize. The car need gas, tires, oil, and maintainance. Even if it's an electric car it's still needs tires and that energy still has to come from somewhere. Plenty of people in the world live in much smaller places. See HK apartment or the "average" Tokyo apartment as examples. I owned a car for 19yr old but haven't for 14 of the last 20 years. I don't miss it. But I live somewhere where I don't really need it.
- callalex 6y ago
  This seems to perpetuate the assumption that existence without productivity is equivalent to failure. You are arguing that every square inch of land and human meat has to be constantly productive and efficient. I think the goal for humanity should be enjoyment of life. If we go wholly into other energy production methods (nuclear with battery and aquatic storage, and a sprinkling of solar to power A/C) we can get out of the rat race of mandatory productivity from every living molecule.
  - hoseja 6y ago
    It's a sentiment you see very often on HN. I wonder where it comes from, and where it might lead us.
  - teamonkey 6y ago
    Although I don't disagree with the sentiment, there's a difference between using only what resources you need and maximising the 'productiveness' of every moment of your life.
  - morsch 6y ago
    Yes, if you solve the grandparent's problem through fairy dust and pixies, it ceases to be a problem.
    - 6y ago
camgunz 6y ago
When I lived in NYC, this was the way everything was. You optimize the stuff you do all the time, and the stuff you don’t costs more time and money, but almost assuredly less money than having it all the time (just try owning a car or having a spare bedroom). Once you get used to it, it starts to feel pretty crazy that people have extra/spare stuff, and actually even kind of immoral in a weird way.
deleted 6y ago
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alasdair_ 6y ago
There is also the random negative event problem. Not owning a car and taking uber everywhere seemed okay when living in a dense city, until covid happened and Uber all but ceased operations for a while. The small condo in the city was a great choice when you went out most nights and worked at the office but it sucked terribly when circumstances changed and everyone was home all the time. The main blockers for me are transaction costs - sure I can rent a car when I want to drive to the mountains but the amount of extra time and effort required means I’d probably not bother. To be clear: it can work - I lived in central London and never bothered to own a car but, well, I don’t now because even something trivial like carrying around three car seats every time I wanted to take an uber would be so cumbersome I’d never do it.
- admax88q 6y ago
  Planning your life around once or twice in a lifetime events like a pandemic seems pretty wasteful. That's not paying for 95%, that's paying for 99.99%
  - landryraccoon 6y ago
    I have to disagree. I think the stress and anxiety I’ve experienced in 2020 is on the order of the sum of the rest of my life combined. The math works out this way too - global economic impact from Covid is probably $16T in the US alone. If I could have spent half my yearly income in 2019 to have a normal year in 2020 I would take that deal in a heartbeat and feel really good about it.
    - admax88q 6y ago
      Sorry to hear that this year has been that bad for you. I don't think your math works though. First off we were talking about individual life choices, living small in a big city and paying to rent services/tools as you need them rather than living on a larger property, owning most of the tools/services you need. This isn't a one time cost, its not spend twice as much in 2019 for a normal 2020, its spend twice as much _every year_ in case a 2020 happens. As for the covid impact, the US GDP was $21T in 2019, there's no way the economic impact in the US is 75% of last years GDP. That's like a civilization collapse level of recession. Lots of business seem to be doing fine, lot's of people are back to work.
ehnto 6y ago
A different take on your comment, you have made lots of good arguments for how to put the real cost of your lifestyle into dollar values which is an okay analogue for your carbon/consumption impact.
sershe 6y ago
I find this particular aspect to be the reverse for most cases, especially on the receiving end. Staying in guest bedrooms sucks. You have to be quiet at certain hours (and hosts may not be), you cannot do certain things (like walk around without dressing, or return super later, or have sex). I'd stay in a hotel any day, and would be if anything more reluctant to visit someone with a guest room cause it's such a hassle, literally the only reason I can think of to prefer guest rooms is to save money for the visitor. Similarly with cars (in a couple, you are designated driver half the time, you have to look for parking, etc.; although I do have to own a car to go to the mountains, that's one use case that is simply not covered by rideshares and such), backyards/parks (doing stuff in the backyard is just boring, it's much easier to convince me to go to the park). Indeed one would expect the "95%" owned versions to be inferior to the specialized ones; after all, the latter are specialized for a particular purpose, rather than a compromise faux replica like a guest room or a backyard.
- watwut 6y ago
  You have option living in hotel. But the thing op is talking about are visits to friends specifically, not visit in the same city. Those are the sort of visit when you come in for 2-3 days and both families intend to spend evening together and do activities together. So, the late night return is not the issue, because evening is spent together. And yes, saving money for visitor is one of purposes. Other is to make logistic of "being together as much as possible, being able to drink together after kids were put to sleep" is another. Yet another is to make it easy on granda when she visits or even babysit. It is clear that you dont do those, which is obviously fine. But other people do.
Kagerjay 6y ago
For sure, the author puts a lot of emphasis on cost. Not everything needs to be assessed by cost. I live near downtown because I can just walk to the bar. I would like a garage for a workshop, I wouldn't use it 95% of the time, but the accessibility means I could build whatever I wanted. Having a backyard cookout and swimming pool in a popular neighborhood makes it really easy for me to throw parties. I wouldn't want to rent a van for the same reason I never invited friends over when I couch surfed the first few months I moved to a new city I guess it just depends what matters in your life. Some people like nice cars, its a depreciating assets and poor investment choice but if it makes you happy that's a lot of hidden value not being accounted for
odonnellryan 6y ago
Agreed here entirely. However some of these can be benefits.
hinkley 6y ago
We tend to think of commercial services as providing skilled labor, but in some cases they are selling organizational skills. In these cases, we trade money for convenience, instead of money for finished goods we can't or won't make ourselves (eg, pros are less likely to hurt themselves, so I hire them). Then there are forcing functions. If you want to lose weight, don't keep snacks in the house. When my place had a postage sized lot, most of it in shade, I volunteered on a public spaces project and met a lot of cool people. (Also, I can highly, highly recommend walkable neighborhoods.) I would wager that the author has better than average organizational skills if they can pull all of these things off. But perhaps instead of thinking of it as a grocery list, pick a couple of them that are easy to put down again, try them on and see how they feel. You can always buy a pickup truck later, or rent a bigger apartment.
sanderjd 6y ago
You used a word in here that shoots straight into the crux of the issue: this person's approach is actually good in many ways (and I think financially is one of those ways), but it is a giant hassle. If you don't mind a lot of extra planning ahead and hassle, it seems like a good approach to life. But if that stresses you out, then it's an awful approach. I was thinking about what this person would consider the worst offender on this front in my lifestyle: early in the summer, we bought a teardrop camper trailer. I calculated how many nights of hotels it would take to even out the price, and it was a lot. But it also unlocked a bunch of trips this summer that we would have never taken without it. We could have rented a similar trailer for each of those trips, and we did look into that before we bought the trailer, but again, it was a hassle. In practice, we simply wouldn't have taken those trips. So a straight utilization comparison is not the right one.
mam2 6y ago
So true,. I've never ever done so much sport since I have my own gym, even if it's more expensive at first than a cheap gym in paris.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
You are correct. I used Zipcar for ~3 years in San Francisco (closest location was 6 minutes away by foot), then bought a used car (my apartment has a garage spot for me). We're a family of 2. Zipcar was nice, but I avoided using the car most of the time. When I bought a car, I found some sort of relief, and I of course ended up using the car way more frequently than Zipcar, while still biking around in SF most of the time. I did many more outdoor/weekend trips, in the order of 5x/6x.

thatfrenchguy 6y ago

Every travel decision is a purchase decision, you're paying for that gas or electricity no matter what.

deleted 6y ago
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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 ;)

romwell 6y ago
>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 must be well-off with well-off friends. My friends would feel pretty bad if I were to pay for their hotel, and it is not an insignificant cost to many (especially since I'm living in the Bay Area). Crashing on a spare couch? No problemo. (Even if the economics of the spare couch work out in the favor of the hotel room. There is a utility in the spare couch beyond letting guests sleep on it, and that understanding takes away all the feelings of imposing, at least financially.) However, all of that ignores the fundamental difference. You're not my guest when you're in a hotel. I can't wake you up for breakfast and make you coffee. We can't watch movies on the couch until either feels sleepy. And so on. You can't rent the experience of sharing your home with someone if you don't have a home to share.
- Groxx 6y ago
  >>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 must be well-off with well-off friends. As always, It Depends™. I have friends allergic to our pets, some have significant trouble sleeping on inflatable beds or couches, etc. Some have kids, so one couch / one bed won't cut it. The only way it's reasonable for them to visit without having pretty major issues after a day or so is when we're all up for setting up a hotel + transportation (or similar)... which ends up meaning it's less often than some other friends.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  > You must be well-off with well-off friends. I don't think extravagantly so, but I have worked in software for a couple decades and saved a lot. But I think you're confusing the fundamental question here. Sure, when I was in my twenties I crashed at friends' places, and they at mine, all the time. But the article is specifically about the tradeoff of getting a smaller, cheaper, apartment, vs. getting a larger house in the suburbs with a spare guest room. The idea that it's usually a cheaper option to pay for the occasional hotel than to specifically purchase a larger house with rooms you rarely use. Obviously the "crash on my couch" is a different dynamic entirely.

anm89 6y ago

I really don't think there is any right or wrong answers to any of this stuff. For one it depends on how much spare money you have. But I think it as all just preferences on a spectrum.

_jal 6y ago

It is funny where people come down on this. I'm far better off not owning a car than if I had one, for instance, whether you measure in money or aggravation. Public transport here is lovely, rentals of multiple flavors plentiful, and maybe I'm strange, but when I owned a car, I knew what it cost me to own per mile or per day of ownership. It was routine for me to mentally estimate the cost of a trip. But on the other hand, I own a lot of specialty tools that probably only see a few minutes of use per year each, if that. Not having them means waits, sometime long waits, or making something to make do. Someone who chose to have kids probably prefers the car. What makes sense to own depends on what you do.

etothepii 6y ago
I suspect your per mile / per day costs were not the marginal ones. Once you've bought a car and insured it the cost per mile is "just" the gas and a penny for wear and tear.
- _jal 6y ago
  Cars wear out (depreciation), and insurance costs over time. It is simple math. But of course you count the cost of the car and not just the gas, otherwise you're not actually comparing costs.
  - NoOneNew 6y ago
    >Cars wear out (depreciation) No. Depreciation is something you consider if you intend to resell the vehicle. It's independent of wear and tear. It's a financial concept, not an engineering/mechanical concept. Jeep Wranglers, for example, hold a better value compared to the average even if they have higher mileage and age, especially if its in a mountainous local market. Wear and tear is mechanical repairs and maintenance. Oil changes, tire changes, spark plugs, etc. A good amount of people buy a certain car and maintain it, intending to run the vehicle into the ground completely. If you really want to do the "simple math", don't forget about the opportunity costs associated with the wait times, scheduling around someone else's schedule and delays due to public transit and rideshares. That's where you realize just how much a car actually saves you. I used to live in Seattle and Portland for a few years (each). I bit that poisonous apple of, "I don't need a car since I'm going to live in the city". 15-20 minute car commutes would be about an hour on average on public transit (that's if they ran on time). Never. The. Fuck. Again.

Hello71 6y ago

if it's so hard for you to consider opportunity costs when budgeting (a trait unfortunately shared by most humans), this seems like it could be easily fixed by putting the money you save into a discretionary spending account, to be used for renting hotel rooms for friends, or rideshares, or any such "unnecessary expenses". if your original assumption that buying a smaller house or whatever saves money, then this account should still increase in value every year, which can be rolled over into general savings. by keeping the money in a separate account, you can feel free to spend it on things that would otherwise be "free".

landryraccoon 6y ago
> used for renting hotel rooms for friends Does this actually happen? I'm serious. I'd like to hear some stories of offering to pay for your friend staying at a hotel room while they are coming to visit you (and them actually accepting that offer). How does that even work? I mean socially, in terms of etiquette, embarrassment, and power imbalance?

bartread 6y ago

A lot of this stuff also works even less well when you don't live in a city. Couple of examples... On average, I need a car once or twice a week. Maybe three out of every four trips something really dinky like a smart car would do the job, whereas on one out of four I need the mid-sized estate car that I actually own. I live in a small village so to hire a car I'd have to get on a bus to the nearest town, then walk to the car hire place to get the car. That probably adds an hour to an hour and a half every time I need an estate car. Am I going to deal with that BS once every two weeks? Hell no. Even if I did, over time would it cost less than simply owning the damn car? Maybe, but it's pretty fricking marginal. I'd save a bit on fuel, no doubt, but economical cars hold their value much better than those that are less economical so the price of the cars (I always buy used) might not be so different. I don't "use" my back garden a lot as a place to hang out, but it's certainly a handy place to leave the motorbike when I don't want to put it away, and also a great place for cutting up wood, MDF, and the like when I'm doing DIY. The space has value that goes way beyond the amount of time that I use it for. I could list plenty of other examples where this is true.

csomar 6y ago
> I live in a small village I think we can agree, this lifestyle is only for people living in the city in downtown or midtown with all amenities nearby.
- 8ytecoder 6y ago
  I lived without a car in a city will amenities nearby and told myself I'll rent a car when I need one. I did that about 10-15 times before I realized if I want to travel or get out of the city it's going to get expensive pretty quickly. I ended up buying one soon after. Having access to a car all of a sudden entirely changed how I spent my weekends. I wasn't dependent on friends. What the OP describes is also very true. When I have to plan ahead and rent a car and deal with taking and dropping it off I avoided it as much as I can. This was with a zipcar membership and a whole bunch of rental cars two blocks from where I lived.
  - 6y ago

zmmmmm 6y ago

An interesting version of that is how cloud computing relates to development creativity. On the surface, why have any fixed server infrastructure at all, anywhere? Well, if you don't, you're putting friction in front of anybody not authorised to spend to develop / test / prototype something. Yes, you can give everyone a cloud account and let them use that. But even then you'll have people cautiously limiting their usage to avoid accidentally overspending. By contrast, when that server is sitting their idle half the time, I actually feel guilty for NOT trying out some whacky idea on it. Of course, it can work exactly the opposite way - if you DO give all your developers complete freedom to run stuff in the cloud then they have even more liberty than if you give them a fixed server to work with. But I suspect few organisations would tolerate the potential cost risk from that. It's a subtle mental difference but I think it can play into outcomes in a significant way.

username90 6y ago
That is pretty interesting. When I worked at Google I could spin up thousands of workers just to test the real world performance of different distributed strategies. Definitely worth it in the long run, servers aren't that expensive and there are a lot of issues you hit when you start having tons of servers instead of what you can simulate locally.
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  But at Google you fall in to the first category, right? Where Google has a ton of servers sitting idly all the time, so it costs them nothing (or nearly nothing) to let you use a few thousand of them to do some testing. Or were you renting the server time from another company?
  - virgilp 6y ago
    It was same when I worked at Adobe, really. And Adobe doesn't have servers sitting idly all the time. In the old days, getting approvals for a cluster, while feasible, would be a big overhead, take time, and then in 1 year it'd be already substandard. With cloud computing, I could easily spin up a huge cluster without asking anybody for approval, do some work on it, and turn it off after an hour. I could see how for small companies, "spinning up a VM" would be a thing to consider carefully - but for bigger ones (and especially for "big data" workloads), cloud computing is really a no-brainer.

sandworm101 6y ago

>> No backyard cookouts, no sitting on the deck, you'll go to the park less frequently. Hey, when some people think of the outdoors they think of a communal BBQ in the apartment quad. When some people think "park" they see green grass. When they think 'walk the dog' they mean go to a fenced acre with sections for small/medium dogs. Such people are urban dwellers who probably shouldn't venture past city limits. But some of us own labradors, huskies or even wolfhounds. Walking them means a car ride to a river with a few miles to run. When we think "park" we think Zion or Jasper ... not Central. Some people like to rollerblade to the corner starbucks with their Havanese dog on a retractable leash. I prefer to save my coffee money and spend it on a proper car to haul me, my canoe and my chocolate lab to a river beside a mountain. Remember the old Nissan commercials: Dogs_love_trucks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aYZrvG5BkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aYZrvG5BkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XCKSXvhbQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XCKSXvhbQU

triceratops 6y ago
I've seen many labs and huskies at my local dog park. I myself own a rather active breed dog who I keep occupied with long walks in town and visits to dog parks. You don't need to go out into the woods to take long walks or runs.
ric2b 6y ago
Central park is a weird example because it's absolutely huge and I can't imagine how it wouldn't be enough for any dog.

victorronin 6y ago

+1 I see a lot of merit to what the author is saying. However, he completely ignores externalities. Yes, car is not used 95% of time. And he is saying, let's target the 5%. The problem is that it's not 5%, it's rather 3% of planned trips where his model works really well and 2% when you need a car right now and oh... the demand for local car share through the roof, so please wait for next 20 minutes. And the same is true for everything else. People are buying extra on one hand to use it, but on another case to be an insurance that they can accommodate unplanned.

Dylan16807 6y ago
But some of that 2% it's fine to put off, and the chance of the demand for local cars being through the roof at any particular moment is less than 1% of that, so now buying a car means optimizing for that 1/10000 case. How much is that worth to you?
- victorronin 6y ago
  Let me start from another end. Owning a car (a couple of year old, not luxury) could be $400 month (deprecation, parking, insurance, gas, fixes, etc). Taking Uber to drive the same trips will cost you let say $300/month. Please don't read too deep into a specific number, this are all guestimates (they obviously wary in different places). As a result, you save $1200/year, which is nice. You are asking why I am optimizing for 1/10000 case and how much is that worth? Well... Here are a couple of scenarios, you need to drive a kid to an emergency room at 1am or super important business meeting popped up out. How much is it worth you? May be such events happens once in several years, but the price tag on them could be way-way higher than your savings. This is exactly why I used word "insurance". Why does anybody buy insurance? The probably is 1/10000 to get into trouble. The issue is that the price tag of this 1/10000 is too high to ignore.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    For the emergency room, I can call an ambulance. For a business meeting, I really doubt it's that important, and why can't I use Uber for this? Not everything needs insurance. And real insurance has costs that are pretty close to the expected average risk, while buying things just in case could be much more. And the 1/10000 calculation was not the chance of huge trouble, it's 1/10000 to be unable to get a ride to have any trouble at all. The vast majority of those incidents are going to be worth much less than a thousand dollars. The chance of an event being that major is another factor of 1% or less. Am I going to pay a thousand dollars a year to avoid a one in a million chance each of missing some important business meetings? Definitely not. Especially when other factors I can't change are much more likely to make me miss a meeting. I mean, if I had odds that low of major illness I probably wouldn't pay hundreds of dollars a month for health insurance either!

bialpio 6y ago

> (...) having every travel decision be a purchase decision is a lot of overhead and is a constant pressure not to go somewhere. That's why doing the math once and then no longer worrying about it makes sense. I generally am opposed to paying for what I don't use (prevalence of unlimited data plans in the US drives me nuts), that's why the article resonates with me - I usually frame it as "don't optimize for the edge case". What the post misses to me in the house example is that homes usually at the very least maintain their value, so the added expenses are only related to maintenance (higher property tax, cost of heating, cleaning, etc).

fossuser 6y ago
I think a better model is reduce cognitive load when possible. Unlimited data plans are totally worth it (particularly with visible where it’s only $25/month on party pay). Reducing the amount of decisions you have to make frees you from drudgery - I’d argue it’s one of the best places to leverage money. I don’t believe it’s possible to do the math once and no longer worry about it. Every time you call a ride it’s a purchase decision.
- vladvasiliu 6y ago
  I think it can be considered a one-time decision based on probability. In my case, I know I don't expect to call a ride every other day, at most once or twice a month (even less now when bars are closed – but that's an edge situation). I know the approximate cost of a ride, typically €12, surge pricing may go up to twenty. So at the most, I expect calling a ride to cost me €20 a month. That's less than what resident parking would cost for a car for the same month (a few years ago it was €9 / week). So the ride-sharing wins. I can think about this once and re-evaluate the situation every year. Yes, sometimes I may spend more on rides, sometimes less, but on average it's a cheaper way of getting around. So even though every time I call the ride it's technically a purchase decision in that I can decide not to do it and walk / bike / take the metro (assuming it's still open), it could be argued that I had already decided that in this situation I would call a ride. So no decision fatigue. Note that driving my own car isn't exactly a "decisionless" process. I have to think where I'll go, whether I'll have easy surface parking (free) or whether I'll have to purchase underground parking. Plus, bonus points for underground parking being paid by the hour, so now I have to make a decision every hour about whether I want to stay out (purchase more parking) or leave. Also, with regard to the data plan, we don't have those in France (that I know of). My plan has 40 GB and I've got it because it was cheaper than my older 15 GB plan. I know my usage never has me go above 3 to 4 GB. If an unlimited plan was available for a few more euros, that would be a net cost to me, for no practical gain in peace of mind or anything. I suppose not everybody has a "boring routine-based" life so this approach may not work in each and every situation.

gfxgirl 6y ago

I'm with you on all of those things, but just to play devils advocate, having a yard, a car, and an extra room are arguably all things contributing to climate change. The yard requires energy and materials to maintain. The room requires energy and materials to maintain, clean, and climatize. The car need gas, tires, oil, and maintainance. Even if it's an electric car it's still needs tires and that energy still has to come from somewhere. Plenty of people in the world live in much smaller places. See HK apartment or the "average" Tokyo apartment as examples. I owned a car for 19yr old but haven't for 14 of the last 20 years. I don't miss it. But I live somewhere where I don't really need it.

callalex 6y ago
This seems to perpetuate the assumption that existence without productivity is equivalent to failure. You are arguing that every square inch of land and human meat has to be constantly productive and efficient. I think the goal for humanity should be enjoyment of life. If we go wholly into other energy production methods (nuclear with battery and aquatic storage, and a sprinkling of solar to power A/C) we can get out of the rat race of mandatory productivity from every living molecule.
- hoseja 6y ago
  It's a sentiment you see very often on HN. I wonder where it comes from, and where it might lead us.
- teamonkey 6y ago
  Although I don't disagree with the sentiment, there's a difference between using only what resources you need and maximising the 'productiveness' of every moment of your life.
- morsch 6y ago
  Yes, if you solve the grandparent's problem through fairy dust and pixies, it ceases to be a problem.
  - 6y ago

camgunz 6y ago

When I lived in NYC, this was the way everything was. You optimize the stuff you do all the time, and the stuff you don’t costs more time and money, but almost assuredly less money than having it all the time (just try owning a car or having a spare bedroom). Once you get used to it, it starts to feel pretty crazy that people have extra/spare stuff, and actually even kind of immoral in a weird way.

deleted 6y ago

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alasdair_ 6y ago

There is also the random negative event problem. Not owning a car and taking uber everywhere seemed okay when living in a dense city, until covid happened and Uber all but ceased operations for a while. The small condo in the city was a great choice when you went out most nights and worked at the office but it sucked terribly when circumstances changed and everyone was home all the time. The main blockers for me are transaction costs - sure I can rent a car when I want to drive to the mountains but the amount of extra time and effort required means I’d probably not bother. To be clear: it can work - I lived in central London and never bothered to own a car but, well, I don’t now because even something trivial like carrying around three car seats every time I wanted to take an uber would be so cumbersome I’d never do it.

admax88q 6y ago
Planning your life around once or twice in a lifetime events like a pandemic seems pretty wasteful. That's not paying for 95%, that's paying for 99.99%
- landryraccoon 6y ago
  I have to disagree. I think the stress and anxiety I’ve experienced in 2020 is on the order of the sum of the rest of my life combined. The math works out this way too - global economic impact from Covid is probably $16T in the US alone. If I could have spent half my yearly income in 2019 to have a normal year in 2020 I would take that deal in a heartbeat and feel really good about it.
  - admax88q 6y ago
    Sorry to hear that this year has been that bad for you. I don't think your math works though. First off we were talking about individual life choices, living small in a big city and paying to rent services/tools as you need them rather than living on a larger property, owning most of the tools/services you need. This isn't a one time cost, its not spend twice as much in 2019 for a normal 2020, its spend twice as much _every year_ in case a 2020 happens. As for the covid impact, the US GDP was $21T in 2019, there's no way the economic impact in the US is 75% of last years GDP. That's like a civilization collapse level of recession. Lots of business seem to be doing fine, lot's of people are back to work.

ehnto 6y ago

A different take on your comment, you have made lots of good arguments for how to put the real cost of your lifestyle into dollar values which is an okay analogue for your carbon/consumption impact.

sershe 6y ago

I find this particular aspect to be the reverse for most cases, especially on the receiving end. Staying in guest bedrooms sucks. You have to be quiet at certain hours (and hosts may not be), you cannot do certain things (like walk around without dressing, or return super later, or have sex). I'd stay in a hotel any day, and would be if anything more reluctant to visit someone with a guest room cause it's such a hassle, literally the only reason I can think of to prefer guest rooms is to save money for the visitor. Similarly with cars (in a couple, you are designated driver half the time, you have to look for parking, etc.; although I do have to own a car to go to the mountains, that's one use case that is simply not covered by rideshares and such), backyards/parks (doing stuff in the backyard is just boring, it's much easier to convince me to go to the park). Indeed one would expect the "95%" owned versions to be inferior to the specialized ones; after all, the latter are specialized for a particular purpose, rather than a compromise faux replica like a guest room or a backyard.

watwut 6y ago
You have option living in hotel. But the thing op is talking about are visits to friends specifically, not visit in the same city. Those are the sort of visit when you come in for 2-3 days and both families intend to spend evening together and do activities together. So, the late night return is not the issue, because evening is spent together. And yes, saving money for visitor is one of purposes. Other is to make logistic of "being together as much as possible, being able to drink together after kids were put to sleep" is another. Yet another is to make it easy on granda when she visits or even babysit. It is clear that you dont do those, which is obviously fine. But other people do.

Kagerjay 6y ago

For sure, the author puts a lot of emphasis on cost. Not everything needs to be assessed by cost. I live near downtown because I can just walk to the bar. I would like a garage for a workshop, I wouldn't use it 95% of the time, but the accessibility means I could build whatever I wanted. Having a backyard cookout and swimming pool in a popular neighborhood makes it really easy for me to throw parties. I wouldn't want to rent a van for the same reason I never invited friends over when I couch surfed the first few months I moved to a new city I guess it just depends what matters in your life. Some people like nice cars, its a depreciating assets and poor investment choice but if it makes you happy that's a lot of hidden value not being accounted for

odonnellryan 6y ago

Agreed here entirely. However some of these can be benefits.

hinkley 6y ago

We tend to think of commercial services as providing skilled labor, but in some cases they are selling organizational skills. In these cases, we trade money for convenience, instead of money for finished goods we can't or won't make ourselves (eg, pros are less likely to hurt themselves, so I hire them). Then there are forcing functions. If you want to lose weight, don't keep snacks in the house. When my place had a postage sized lot, most of it in shade, I volunteered on a public spaces project and met a lot of cool people. (Also, I can highly, highly recommend walkable neighborhoods.) I would wager that the author has better than average organizational skills if they can pull all of these things off. But perhaps instead of thinking of it as a grocery list, pick a couple of them that are easy to put down again, try them on and see how they feel. You can always buy a pickup truck later, or rent a bigger apartment.

sanderjd 6y ago

You used a word in here that shoots straight into the crux of the issue: this person's approach is actually good in many ways (and I think financially is one of those ways), but it is a giant hassle. If you don't mind a lot of extra planning ahead and hassle, it seems like a good approach to life. But if that stresses you out, then it's an awful approach. I was thinking about what this person would consider the worst offender on this front in my lifestyle: early in the summer, we bought a teardrop camper trailer. I calculated how many nights of hotels it would take to even out the price, and it was a lot. But it also unlocked a bunch of trips this summer that we would have never taken without it. We could have rented a similar trailer for each of those trips, and we did look into that before we bought the trailer, but again, it was a hassle. In practice, we simply wouldn't have taken those trips. So a straight utilization comparison is not the right one.

mam2 6y ago

So true,. I've never ever done so much sport since I have my own gym, even if it's more expensive at first than a cheap gym in paris.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

You are correct. I used Zipcar for ~3 years in San Francisco (closest location was 6 minutes away by foot), then bought a used car (my apartment has a garage spot for me). We're a family of 2. Zipcar was nice, but I avoided using the car most of the time. When I bought a car, I found some sort of relief, and I of course ended up using the car way more frequently than Zipcar, while still biking around in SF most of the time. I did many more outdoor/weekend trips, in the order of 5x/6x.