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People who can buy more services instead of goods tend to be wealthier. I’m happier now that I can just Lyft/uber/bus/subway everywhere and don’t have to own a
by mattnewton 4y ago
People who can buy more services instead of goods tend to be wealthier. I’m happier now that I can just Lyft/uber/bus/subway everywhere and don’t have to own a car- but when I was poorer I couldn’t afford to just grab a 30 minute taxi whenever I wanted and I had to own a car. I feel like this is a huge confound.
- SaintSeiya84 4y agoIs the other way around: people that are wealthier can afford to buy more services. They are objectively more expensive than owning in the long run.
- mattnewton 4y agoI think we’re saying the same thing?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- velmu 4y agoAll depends. Regarding moving about every day, hard to beat owning a beater Toyota or Honda over a 2-3 year period than using Lyft or Uber for that. But if you want to move around with the latest gadgets a couple of days a week, maybe car sharing or taxi or sharing makes more sense.
- PuppyTailWags 4y agoI think this depends on the service being purchased and the location. Cars have an upkeep cost, insurance, etc. If you're using a car only sparingly it may in fact be cheaper to use a service.
- realPubkey 4y agoGet even richer an rent a house in the middle of the city, ed voila you "save" even more money.
- moffkalast 4y agoIf you move to a different city every few months then yeah, probably.
- freitzkriesler2 4y agoIf I was moving every few months, id just stay in Airbnb's or corporate housing. Any more than that I'd get a mortgage. Housing inflation post 2008 has always covered my closing costs that it makes sense to buy and sell over renting always.
- wing-_-nuts 4y agoEh, you're extending the good reasoning of 'if you plan to stay more than a few years, buy' a bit too far. There absolutely be good reasons to rent unless you intend to live somewhere long term. Even then, some vhcol locations it never makes sense to buy. You gotta do the math.
- freitzkriesler2 4y agoSorry if it wasnt clear. Shortest amount of time i stayed in a place was 1.5 years. Housing inflation covered the closing costs each time I sold. Ill never rent again considering how bad the cost of housing is.
- jeffwask 4y ago“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.” ― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play
- jareklupinski 4y agosuccinctly put: "Poor man pays twice"
- cinntaile 4y agoI don't think this is true for most physical objects nowadays. The quality of the cheap stuff has gone up tremendously.
- jareklupinski 4y agooh god you're right it has become worse: "poor man pays forever" (subscription)
- sublinear 4y agoThe phrase you're looking for is "false economy". The hard part is not scraping together the money to buy the superior product, but determining if it really matters to you. Boots that you wear all day every day? Sure easy. Furniture that ends up getting light use? Maybe not. Which laptop does a college student really need, if at all? Does the family really need an SUV? It's just as easy to overbuy.