4 ms·

I lived the no car/short-term rental car life for eight years when I lived in Seattle. I would use bike & public transit to get around the city, but if I wanted

I lived the no car/short-term rental car life for eight years when I lived in Seattle. I would use bike & public transit to get around the city, but if I wanted to go out to the mountains I would need to rent a car (or carpool with a friend who owned a car). The truth is it's different psychologically to spend $150 on going out to the mountains instead of the marginal cost of driving out to the mountains in a car you already own. Yeah you can be like but that's not rational with X Y Z reasons all you want but the actual decision experience becomes "do I want to spend $150 today on going to the mountains", which is matched up against any other thing I could do that day for much cheaper, and still have a fair bit of fun. $150 would buy you & someone else dinner at a very nice restaurant! Hell, it would nearly buy a round-trip plane ticket from Seattle to Palm Springs to visit Joshua Tree NP.

mhb 5y ago
Also relevant is that the fun of using the car is offset against the pain of the rental experience. Buying a car means having that experience once. Renting means having it every time you want to rent.
maximus-decimus 5y ago
That's the thing though. Recurring payments hide the cost from you and it hides the fact are making a choice by owning a car instead of going to a nice restaurant every month. Paying for stuff only when you use it puts the costs in your face and puts you in control of your spendings.
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  Sure, but are you optimizing for "utility" or happiness? There are definitely circumstances where you can be happier "wasting money" than not.
  - maximus-decimus 5y ago
    My point is orthogonal to "utility vs happiness". Let's say someone spends $5 on starbucks per day, I just want them to realize that's $1800 per year and so they're really making the choice between a coffee per day and an RTX 3090 every year. Or a $150 bottle of wine per month. Once you accept you are indeed making a choice, then you have the power to consciously choose what you want to splurge on.
    - hiptobecubic 5y ago
      But it's ignoring the human psychology involved. "Ignorance is bliss" is true. Yes ok, I could have invested in $GOOG and earned a bunch of money that would be worth more to me today, but that just isn't how we process information. What happens instead is that I buy the coffee because I want it and now I can't even enjoy it because I know it's "stupid."

mhb 5y ago

Also relevant is that the fun of using the car is offset against the pain of the rental experience. Buying a car means having that experience once. Renting means having it every time you want to rent.

maximus-decimus 5y ago

That's the thing though. Recurring payments hide the cost from you and it hides the fact are making a choice by owning a car instead of going to a nice restaurant every month. Paying for stuff only when you use it puts the costs in your face and puts you in control of your spendings.

hiptobecubic 5y ago
Sure, but are you optimizing for "utility" or happiness? There are definitely circumstances where you can be happier "wasting money" than not.
- maximus-decimus 5y ago
  My point is orthogonal to "utility vs happiness". Let's say someone spends $5 on starbucks per day, I just want them to realize that's $1800 per year and so they're really making the choice between a coffee per day and an RTX 3090 every year. Or a $150 bottle of wine per month. Once you accept you are indeed making a choice, then you have the power to consciously choose what you want to splurge on.
  - hiptobecubic 5y ago
    But it's ignoring the human psychology involved. "Ignorance is bliss" is true. Yes ok, I could have invested in $GOOG and earned a bunch of money that would be worth more to me today, but that just isn't how we process information. What happens instead is that I buy the coffee because I want it and now I can't even enjoy it because I know it's "stupid."