Be happier: Rent Everything | Hacker News Reader

Be happier: Rent Everything

georgesaines.com

127 pointsgsaines135 comments

Yeah it sounds great but have you ever been to one of those places that rent out furniture and TVs? They are great if you want to make your room look and smell like a seedy motel room that rents by the hour. You are better off financially and aesthetically getting a bunch of cheap stuff from IKEA and assembling it yourself.

As far as renting housing, as a proud home-owner I would say definitely rent.

This has become my philosophy. You can buy the Ikea stuff almost as cheap as renting that crummy rent-a-center junk for a few months.

When we move, we just make sure we find a rental close to an Ikea, Craigs List all of the Ikea stuff before we go and then buy it again when we get there, saving thousands on moving expenses.

I'm wicked good at assembling the entire "Lack" series...

I'm about to try this with our biggest jump ever. From the USA to Australia. Selling everything and starting over is hard but has been strangely refreshing.

What have you found to be the biggest cultural hurdles in moving to Oz?

Compared to my other overseas adventures, Downunder is a much easier adjustment. I have a family now and we're all going so I'm happy about this. Good to ease them into the whole expat thing.

We'll be starting down south, in Adelaide, coming from DC. What struck me most about the difference in these two places is just how laid back and casual everything is down there. Right-hand drive is stressful for me though!

I'll be back down there in a weeks time looking for a place to live and finishing immigration paperwork. Any HN folks in SA who might want to meet up for a quick pint some idle evening, drop me a line.

Interesting. My wife and I have friends down there. I've often thought about immigrating. The way our economy is tanking here (I'm near Philly) and comments like yours are encouraging this line of thought. I'm wondering how difficult it is for an American to immigrate there compared to less friendly countries.

Could you elaborate more on the immigration process that you went through? I'm very keen on Australia myself.

where are you moving to? We're in the West, my email's in my profile

Even better, if you're going to go to that extreme to restructure your life, is to simply attack the problem directly. If you're concerned about your possessions owning you, just fix that. Watch a few episodes of "Clean Sweep" to get in the mindset, then clean your place out, and make sure you do this periodically.

Ownership has benefits too. In my opinion when you rent everything you are simply trading a situation in which your possessions metaphorically own you for a situation in which your possessions more literally own you, or rather, the person who actually owns them owns you. Everything you rent has a contract attached to it; what's the fun in that? My house is full of things repurposed; an entertainment center with the top cut off, chairs with customizations induced by pets, a couple of doors I've added internal cat doors to. Chunks of the "house" I've sold, chunks I've added. And I'm not even "handy".

Don't treat the symptoms, treat the problem!

Excellent point; once you're good at "ruining" or getting rid of stuff, the stuff you have doesn't bother you. The more you get rid of, the easier it gets, because you realize you don't regret any of it. Once you've got over the horror of throwing away valuable things yourself, you can exploit it in other people. "Hey, do you want...? If you don't, I'm just going to throw it away." Your stuff ends up in their closet instead of yours. You can also donate stuff to friends who enjoy having garage sales or selling at flea markets.

Bottom line, as with alcohol, there's no need to avoid it unless you know you can't handle it.

It sounds like both approaches are ways of dealing with the same root problem: attachment and the illusion of control.

IMHO, renting vs owning isn't the real issue. They're both just different ways of financing. The issue is the overdeveloped attachment people get to the "stuff" in their lives.

Best possible response. When you rent you are constantly and painfully aware that this stuff (whatever it is) is owned by someone other than yourself and that you are paying them for the 'privilege' to use it.

List exact list of things you need, clothing articles, personal hygene... all minimal, and keep what is minimal. If you want something find , something you can or want to get rid of. This will keep balanced list of items in your life - without weight dragging you down.

Good timing on the article -- I actually ran the numbers early this evening to see if (financially) ZipCar + public transit was cheaper than TCO for the car I sold 6 months ago. I looked at 6 month of each, living in Nob Hill. Owning a car ended up being $2700 and ZipCar about $1600. The cost savings, while validating, is not the biggest gain. Not worrying about parking tickets (or towing!), finding a parking spot (always the worst part of my day), getting broken into (happened once already), mechanical problems -- it's hard to put a price on that burden being lifted.

Outside of that, since I moved to SF a little over a year ago (to a smaller place) it made me realize how much junk I have that I don't need and have been actively trying to minimize my possessions. So far, I've shed a lot of extra weight and my entire life feels a little less cluttered. It's very re-assuring that articles like this keep coming up on HN.

While Zipcar is nice, that $1600 will realistically buy you 10 trips, in NYC anyway. Due to the high price of Zipcar I usually find myself avoiding any trips that would require one.

Fortunately in NYC there aren't much of those, thus making Zipcar or similar a good option.

Motorcycle is an under-considered car alternative. Fuel is peanuts and total annual costs only a few hundred; a small fraction of car ownership. Only a few grand of capital is tied up in the bike.

It's great if you only need to drive a couple times a week and can resort to other means if necessary.

I'd love to explore this option at one point (Vespa drooling time). In the meantime there is the ebike and ordinary bike options too. Until you need to grocery shop for a week or two ahead that is.

I don't know what the heck the point of these scooters and vespas are. They're the same price as 250cc proper motorcycles. Seems like a tax on hipsterdom.

> Seems like a tax on hipsterdom.

you say that like it's a bad thing.

The objective issue is that scooters have automatic transmissions, which make them quite a lot easier for many people to handle. Subjectively, they are in general much less intimidating, which seems to be a positive for the scooter crowd and a negative for the motorcycle crowd.

But I think the automatic transmission is the big thing. Honda tried to sell auto transmission motorcycles a while back, but nobody wanted them.

Honda's selling new CVT-based automatics now, the spacey DN-01 and overkill-redesigned VFR1200. Very expensive and aimed at no discernable market (unlike the old Hondamatics you mentioned). I haven't seen a single one on the road yet.

At least on a car, a stick shift is a lot more fun than an automatic. Since people ride motorcycles largely for fun, I'm not surprised they're uninterested in automatic transmissions.

eh, you can get pretty big bags for a motorcycle. with a topcase and two sidecases, you could carry a weeks worth of food, at least a weeks worth for one person, on a small motorcycle.

I love the idea of motorbikes, but find the risk of death off-putting. E.g. http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/risks_of_travel.htm

I wouldn't ride a motorbike for just this reason. I wonder what the corresponding stats are for mopeds. It's a truism that some [young] reckless motorcyclists ride machines that are too powerful for them to control. Mopeds, not so much I'd guess.

This is the best source I could find with comparative accident rates for motorbikes/mopeds: http://www.motorcycle-accidents.com/pages/stats.html

Is this because riding a motorcycle is more dangerous or because people who like driving fast and taking risks are more likely to have a motorcycle than people who aren't?

Ie, if you ride a motorcycle sensibly, is it really that much more dangerous than driving a car sensibly? I suspect it is always going to be higher because you've got less protection when you do crash, but still, it can't be that much higher...

I am guessing it's because motorcycles are capable of going faster, accelerating quicker, so people go faster on them and tend to drive more aggressively. I'd say, at the same speeds, a motorcyclist is much more likely to be injured than a driver. In one case, the car is the crumple zone, in the other the motorcyclist's body is the crumple zone.

A sage once told me, "On a motorcycle, you are the bumper."

Given equal sensibility, a car is safer than a motorcycle. A car can take getting hit by a drunk driver or wildlife (they fucking jump out of nowhere), a motorcycle can't. I follow the writings of one particular rock drummer who travels extensively by motorcycle, especially on tour, and he wrote--referencing another prominent motorcyclist, who wrote for motorcycling magazines and was at the time recently killed by a deer collision--that the one danger a skilled motorcyclist can never fully mitigate is wildlife. Deer kill plenty of people in cars, too, but you have a better chance surviving having a deer jump on top of your car as opposed to your motorcycle.

(I read once that deer kill more people in North America than any other animal.)

Yeah, I wasn't arguing that motorbikes are just as safe as cars. I just don't think the difference is as large as those figures suggest.

I'd be interested to see the motorcycle accident/fatality rate controlled for rider demographics, using car accidents as the control. I bet the difference is much less than commonly indicated.

I think the risk is very controllable. It's also a "dose is the poison" kind of thing. I only average about one fairly local ride a week. I am quite sure I am safer than people who drive on highways every day.

The danger depends heavily on the driving environment. Suburbia and semi-rural areas are rather dangerous because you get a mix of fairly high speeds and many space cadet drivers (grandma, 16 year olds): the kind of people who back out of driveways without looking. In this particular urban area those risks aren't present. It's pretty safe 50mph free-way sprints and then stop & go in a grid system.

I'd be interested to see the motorcycle accident/fatality rate controlled for rider demographics, using car accidents as the control. I bet the difference is much less than commonly indicated.

You should review the findings of the Hurt Report, the most comprehensive study of motorcycle safety to date (even though it's from the 70's):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_findings_in_the_Hurt_Re...

If you want to live: ride dirt bikes as a kid, attend a training course, stay sober, wear all the gear all the time (ATGATT!)

If you want to die: have a friend teach you how to ride in a parking lot, skip the helmet on short trips, drink one for the road, do not assume that everyone is trying to kill you all the time

Just read on facebook this morning that a friend hit a 6ft Gator in FL. Can't imagine what THAT would feel like on a motorcycle!

I did a few days' worth of online research on motorcycles when I was in my "hey, let's get a scooter" phase.

The results:

Statistics show that you are dramatically safer on a motorcycle if you take a safety course before you ride at all. Start with a safety course. It teaches you all the nonintuitive things that you need to know.

You are also safer if you dress properly.

Once you've done that, the primary danger is other people. You will motorcycle happily until the day that a driver who is making a left turn fails to notice you approaching (you are small relative to a car, and more difficult to see) and pulls out in front of you, too close for you to stop. Then you are going to dump the bike and/or go flying, because you have no airbags or crumpling metal to help stop you. This will happen sooner or later. There is very little you can do about this, except to do everything you can to enhance your visibility, and to ride very slowly, which can be difficult -- according to many cyclists, once you're on the thing and feeling comfortable you will speed up, perhaps even unconsciously. ;)

Obviously, deer are even worse at noticing you than humans. I hit a deer in my car once. It was traumatic enough in a four-wheeled vehicle.

No motorcycles for me, I'm afraid. The risk/benefit ratio is too high for my personality.

Since you mentioned scooters, I tend to rent those regularly on vacations, for those considering one make sure you get one with large diameter wheels ( ex. http://vtwincyclemotorcyclescooter.com/wp-content/uploads/20... ) rather than something like a vespa. You only sacrifice a little bit of agility for a big boost in safety.

There's plenty of things you can do.

- Make sure you see the car in the left lane

- Realize he may be about to do something stupid

- Lower your speed a bit

- Watch his front left tire (that's his tell)

- Meet his eyes

- Wiggle your bike

- Flip your high beam on/off

If you're too far away to see his face or his tire, and you're still at risk, you're going too fast period.

(From what I gather, left turns into oncoming motorcyclist is one of the most common accidents outside rider error and riding drunk, so I'm always thinking about it)

While motorcycles are clearly not quite as safe as cars, every study I've seen found that the vast, vast majority of motorcycle accidents involved at least one of the following:

- untrained rider - failure to use safety equipment - drunk

My conclusion is that a properly trained and equipped motorcyclist who stays 100% sober while riding is pretty safe. My 15 years of riding on the streets has borne that out -- I've had a few close calls due to insane drivers, but keeping up with safety training has given me the skills to deal. Without having taken the safety classes, no question I would have had multiple crashes.

In driver's ed they also told me that since they're smaller and drivers are used to looking for cars, drivers often don't see/notice motorcycles. There's nothing you can do about the fact that other drivers suck.

The real issue is that even if you only get in as many accidents on your motorcycle as you would have in your car (which is probably nonzero, even if you're a great driver--other drivers suck, remember), each one is way more likely to kill you or cause serious injury when you're not surrounded by a ton of steel.

The visibility problem is one of the first things they mention in any safety training. You definitely don't belong on a motorcycle if you don't understand that & don't have the skills to deal -- it's not for everyone.

Disagree. I rode one for 10 years. I fit your criteria perfectly. It's only a matter of time before some driver does something that you can't anticipate. I had 3-4 very close calls in the time I rode. I stopped because people I knew had had accidents of varying seriousness. My driver's ed teacher in high school walked with a pronounced limp due to a motorcycle accident.

My father, stepfather and uncle were all motorcyclists and they all told me that long time motorcyclists, almost without exception, are eventually in some kind of serious accident.

My stepfather (rode for 50 yrs) drove off a cliff and landed in a tree. My uncle was hit by a cyclist going through a red light and broke many bones in his hand (the cyclist's arm was severed!) My mother, a scooter driver, got her front tire trapped in streetcar tracks in the middle of traffic.

In my experience owning a motorcycle in Canada or the US is more expensive than owning a small car.

Even medium sized sport or sport touring motorcycles (e.g., Honda VFR) aren't cheap to run. The engines are tuned for performance not fuel efficiency and usually need premium fuel, so small cars are about as cheap to re-fuel per mile. Also the maintenance cost that killed me was tires: You have to pay around $500 dollars for (two) good tires on a motorcycle every 10k miles (if you're lucky) whereas I spent only $200 at Costco for (four) tires for my car that should last more than 50k miles.

Also consider than motorcycles depreciate faster than cars and the resale market is less liquid so you lose more money when you sell.

Summary: Buy motorcycles because they're fun, not because they're cheap!

Granted a 50cc scooter would certainly be cheaper to run than a car but then you're restricted to city streets (i.e., no highways).

I have no idea what arithmetic you're using. I get over 50 mpg. Annual insurance is about $100. Averaged out I spend maybe $200 on maintenance, taxes, and registration.

Motorcycles are very much cheaper than cars.

Japanese motorcycles are totally liquid and don't depreciate quickly. You can sell a Ninja in a day.

Indeed. I get about 50mpg, and could re-tune to get 60mpg if it was worth it to me (bike becomes an anemic heap though).

Insurance is cheap, bike cost $1,500, oil is cheap (6,000 factory change interval, and truck oil which works well in my bike costs $13/gallon)

Your parent is right, tires can be expensive. It depends on the bike you ride and the tires you buy. I can get ~10,000 miles out of $80 of tire, and I install them myself.

I'd say it really comes down to the bike you have. Some bikes are way more expensive to own than a commuter car, but that doesn't mean all bikes are.

It will depend on the bike. In Vancouver BC my Ducati Monster 696 costs more to insure ~$1800 then my Infiniti G35 Coupe ~$1600. That is with a 42% discount safe driver discount. If you are concerned just about cost you will need to get a small displacement city only bike.

annual insurance about $100 for a bike ? I'm assuming this is a typo.

Mine is actually cheaper... $75 annual for full coverage. And I think it's $75 because that's the minimum Progressive can charge for an annual policy.

I had a motorcycle. I drove my car for any kind of a long trip, and my bicycle for everything else. Needless to say, I sold my motorcycle.

Moving from car ownership to Zipcar does introduce other burdens, though, especially around scheduling. You have to make a reservation in advance -- in my neighborhood, a couple days in advance for peak times -- and you can't cancel beyond a certain time. You have to know exactly how long you'll be and your plans can't really change, and if you get stuck in traffic, you get to pay an extra $50 for being 5 minutes late. It's a great service for what it is, but it's not for everybody.

This only makes sense if you place a high value on mobility.

Many people value putting down roots and committing to a city or neighborhood. This often comes from having many tangled connections to other people.

My life isn't just about me anymore. It's about my wife, kids, and our extended family. If we were to move around a lot, each move would require the whole family to change their lifestyles, as opposed to just one person.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of nomadic families, but they are more rare than nomadic individuals because of the increased complexity.

For those of us who aren't as passionate about the nomadic lifestyle, settling down makes sense. And, if you're going to settle down, ownership is the way to go, especially of your house.

A great neighborhood is worth a lot of money. Good neighbors, good schools, good transit to work, and so on. If you're renting a house which provides those things, the idea that a landlord can take it all away isn't pleasant.

Nomadic implies you barely spend a couple years in one place at a time. Homeownership to stay put implies that you stay put for decades, because mortgages are usually 30 years. Isn't there anything in between?

Sure, buy a house when you get somewhere, sell it when you are finished there and accept the losses due to that suboptimal process as costs of the lifestyle. You can't be picky when you buy it, you'll have to sell in a hurry, you may have to pay fines for paying of mortgages at an increased rate, etc. However, it can be done.

But it can be done just as well, or in some cases even better, by renting. No fines, no selling (worst case scenario you have to rush to sublet, which is a lot less paperwork and hassle), and depending on the area you even get to be picky. You can move every 5 to 10 years buying and selling property, but it sounds like you have to throw away a lot of money to do so, and I thought the point of homeownership was to avoid throwing away money.

At this stage you're beyond rules of thumb and down to evaluating each deal on a case by case basis, factoring in everything from interest rates to how long you think you'll be in that particular place.

Renting isn't the real goal here, only one of many possible solutions to being nailed down to one place.

For example, I own a duplex, and furnished the top unit rather nicely and lived in it for a few years. But I decided to move abroad for a while and rented it furnished and got a property manager to take care of the duplex.

The key is just to plan for not needing income. I knew that I'd reach the break even point on my duplex pretty quickly vis-a-vis rent and mortgage, so although I own property, it isn't really an anchor, instead an investment.

I agree with some of the other posters, seems like if you are frugal and buy off of CL you are probably going to do just as well. You can also rent entire houses or apartments furnished for less than the cost of renting stuff separately, so that's another option.

Keep your options open, that's the real goal.

How is leasing a car less stressful than owning? I own my car, and at least I can put it on Craigslist whenever I like. If I was leasing it, who knows what I'd have to go through to get rid of it. I guess you could actually _rent_ a car... for $70 a day.

And if I was renting all my furniture and appliances, God, I'd be broke right now from the payments. If I had enough money to rent everything, I'd just buy it and save the rest. Or buy better stuff. Or go on vacation. If I want to move and not take stuff with me, I'll sell it.

Article argued for using public transportation instead of an owned vehicle.

I think you missed the point of the article, which was you can focus more on your passion (work, family, hobbies, start up) if you don't bind yourself to ownership. If you own a house, sure, you have an appreciating (???) asset, but you also are responsible for fixing every little thing that goes wrong. The "extra" you pay in rent vs owning is for having a landlord to worry about investing time and your extra money to fix things.

yeah, but the problem is that you have to worry about shit you rent. Really, you have to worry about it more than shit you own. My stuff is, well, mine, and nobody else will give me trouble if I destroy it.

Rented stuff belongs to someone else. I need to take due care, and if I do happen to break it, I usually have to pay more than what getting the equivalent thing off craigslist would cost me.

Also, when you rent, you usually commit to renting for a certain number of months (or sometimes years) - in many ways a lease is much less flexible than owning, because I can't sublet, and I can't force the landlord to lower the price, so if I want to leave, and the market prices of the rental is lower than what I paid for it, I'm potentially on the hook to pay off not only the difference between market value then and market value now, but instead the entire value of the lease.

That is what insurance is for.

yeah... but, for example, buying insurance on your rental car doubles it's cost. And getting anything out of insurance is such a hassle. If I had a nice new leased car and my brother put a dent in it learning to drive, I'd have to deal with it. even if it didn't jack up my insurance premiums, which it would, dealing with a little dent is probably going to cost you at least 5 hours. But the thing is, I don't rent; I own a jalopy. so the kid put a dent in it... so what? It wasn't the first dent, and won't be the last dent. Driving a car that is worth a weeks pay is a much lower stress experience, for me, at least, than driving a car that is half of a year's post-tax earnings. Sure, the thing will die one of these days. but who cares? Push the thing to the side of the road and call a cab and a wrecker to haul it off to the junkyard. borrow a friends car (because I'm free with loaning my jalopy, I have some credit) or rent until I find my next jalopy. It's been pretty good for the time I've had it.

Another example; a while back I stepped on my thinkpad. Now, being a 200lb guy, the monitor cracked. Will insurance cover "A fat man stepped on it?" If they do, they'd probably pay retail to replace it (lenovo wanted $700 to fix it, and that'd be factored into premiums.) I think I ended up paying $80 for a new LCD and spent two hours installing it. Probably less hassle than dealing with insurance would have been.

Insurance is best for risks that are beyond your capability to deal with... Usually for small things, it's cheaper, long term, to deal with it yourself. And unless you /enjoy/ bureaucracy, it's usually less work, too.

My ideal living space would be a medium-sized house almost entirely devoid of any "stuff". No art hanging on the walls. No stack of crappy DVDs I never watch. Just a bed, a computer desk, a nice TV, and some kitchen-ware.

But I have a wife, and she stuffs our house full of all kinds of stuff.

BTW, I'm not trying to start a gender flame-war; I'm sure plenty of guys annoy their wives with stupid toys.

I don't think I could do without some kind of art on the walls. Bare walls make a house feel cold and sterile. That's not some place I would want to spend a lot of time.

The grandparent should remember you don't have to hang any old art on the walls. It's really cheap to get your holidays photos blown up on to canvas these days, and the cheap-ish cameras are certainly up to it.

"No stack of crappy DVDs I never watch."

I'm starting to rip all my DVDs to a portable hard drive with the eventual aim of selling off my entire DVD collection. I smile to myself when I think of the CD collections of some people older than me have (MP3 players started to become affordable in my mid-teens). Now I have a sizable collection of music, but it's simply rearranged bits on a hard disc rather than a ton of CDs. No clutter.

I'm toying with the idea of selling of my large book collection and getting an iPad, but books have a high sentimental value for me plus I value the notes I've scribbled in the margins. Even the idea of having a portable hard drive will go away soon with cloud computing and the ever expanding services like Spotify and Netflix. It's amazing the amount of media you can accumulate without ever having to really "see" it (DVD cases etc).

Although not applicable to DVD collections, I realized the following:

When I started using Dropbox, I uploaded some media files onto my account and realized that even for the most obscure items, someone out there has already done so before me. As a result, backing up those files was merely an exercise of data deduplication in most cases.

Exactly. Physical media is pretty much redundant in the case of things that are easily pirated. I still buy CDs and movies to support the artists I enjoy, but I've pirated albums and movies that I already own simply for the convenience of having a well done rip without the knowledge required to do so myself. (I've started making FLAC copies of albums as soon as I buy them now, but for older CDs that wind up scratched, pirating was generally easier and of better quality)

Does dropbox do global file de-duplication? How does that fit in with their policy of encrypting user data?

This is why, in 2001, I made fun of Rhapsody. Why wouldn't you want to actually own your music? I mean, that's the whole reason I have this HUUUGE iPod, right?

Now I stream Pandora to my phone. I think I have 4 CDs ripped on my laptop.

Funny how times can change...

Reminds me of the early days of Steve Jobs in 1982.

http://workvitamins.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/6a00d8345...

I agree with Bruce Sterling. Buy an expensive bed and office chair (you spend most of your time in those and you only have one body). Then only keep stuff that's

- Extremely beautiful.

- Have an extraordinary emotional value to you. We're talking the watch in Pulp Fiction type of items.

- Highly practical.

Throw away everything else.

I'm sure you'll find many hoarders who can justify their entire collections with those three rules.

Bruce Sterling talks about that here: http://boingboing.net/2009/07/09/bruce-sterlings-clos.html It's a great speech filled with nuggets about life in the coming decade but the parts related to this starts at about 36 minutes in.

Great stuff in that video about knowing if something's beautiful or meaningful.

And some great stuff at the beginning about not wasting your time doing something you can do better when you're dead, like conserving water or electricity or reducing your carbon footprint. Flawed logic, but an interesting way to think about things.

But for people without that specific psychosis, they're pretty good rules.

Just remember that renting is like SAAS.. you don't really own your stuff and don't have control over it. For 90% of use cases - that's fine. But remember the 10%.

This is important; to me at least. I'm a tinkerer, and I like to mess around with things I own. While it might be worth avoiding ownership for the decrease in stress, the fear of damaging someone else's equipment by toying with it would be nightmarish.

My old earphones started dying the other day; they'd cut out whenever the moulded 3.5mm jack moved. So I cut it off and resoldered a new one, and now they work just fine. If I'd rented (a bad example, I know), they'd probably be sitting in a dump right now because no doubt the economies of scale dictate it's cheaper to simply manufacture a new pair.

Similarly, I live in a rented house with flatmates at the moment, and the things I'd like to do - install a couple of solar panels, run Cat5e through the house (instead of running it down the halls), rig up some neat project ideas I have with an Arduino - I can't, because it's not mine.

I guess my point is that we shape the world we live in, and we can't do that to other people's stuff (at least, not within social norms anyway).

Yes! Glad someone echoed my sentiment.

A parallel from my own world. I bought a new truck - only if I buy something that I truly invest in will I care enough about it to care FOR it for the 20 years I expect it to last. I do all the maintenance myself more out of a love-hate relationship with that type of work. But damn it is nice to drop in a new set of speakers or a beefier tow hitch when I get a wild hair up my ass.

  Owning a pet can be a delight, 
 but it is also a burden. 
 When my girlfriend visits she has 
 to get a cat sitter and she worries
 when she can’t get a hold of them.

If I were going to buy his thesis, I'd want it to be a little better researched. One of the few things that is pretty well proven to make you happier is a pet, pet sitting annoyances aside.

Obviously, the author is advocating pet rental.

OK, maybe not. But perhaps this represents an unfulfilled need in the marketplace? You can certainly get some benefits of having a pet without having it live with you long-term (or hospitals wouldn't bother with pet therapy). And you only need to look to Japan to see the urban future:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1570493/Japanese-p...

Edit, after more reading on this fascinating topic: Apparently there was a pet rental business in the US, but it folded under pressure from animal rights groups. Pet rental is now illegal in Massachusetts, and maybe the UK and elsewhere:

http://www.newsweek.com/2008/07/28/a-dog-for-a-day.html

Oh well... Perhaps there is still hope for cat cafes:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090406/tokyos-cat-c...

I've got to agree with the animal rights groups. Maybe not for the same reasons though.

An animal can be damaged by an irresponsible renter- killed, traumatized, injured, de-socialized. Unlike a rental car or TV, we cannot simply throw out the broken ones (I should hope you agree with me there)

Complicating things even more, the odds that you're not going to know how to interact with a pet go way up if you don't HAVE a pet!

While animals are not people, they are similar enough to people as to be completely different from 'stuff', and if you cannot deal with the responsibility of caring for a pet I do not think you should have one at all.

(In a controlled environment that can include supervision and a responsible figure who knows what they are doing, perhaps it could work, but not if you're taking them home for a week or such)

The author makes a lot of claims about renting, but then backs them up with points that aren't specific to renting at all. For example:

Speaking of which, having a car is convenient (and sometimes necessary), but is a monetary black hole and a source of stress if it’s having problems. My old Subaru got me from A to B but probably raised my blood pressure by more than the mileage as I worried about what would go wrong next.

And? How is that any different than leasing a car for X years?

The bigger issue is that the author goes on to talk about the stress of owning things vs the happiness of not doing so. But at the end of the day, knowing that a.) you don't owe money on an item (it really belongs to you) and b.) you are the only one that needs to be answered to for the status/condition/usefulness of an item brings a helluva lot more piece of mind than holding other people's property.

That being said, don't waste your time collecting junk, either.

> And? How is that any different than leasing a car for X years?

It's not, but it's certainly different than using public transportation or biking.

Bikes are awesome. For a month or two worth of gas, or probably less than a month of expenses (amortized, all-things-considered) you can buy a used bike. It's not as convenient, and is harder work, and it sucks going uphill unless you're in great shape, but on the other hand you can completely total your bike twice a year and still come out hundreds of dollars ahead compared to driving.

(What sucks about bikes is the infrastructure, at least in the US. "Bike friendly" means the city gives you a lane right next to the parking lane, and expects you to run headfirst into opening car doors and cars turning across your lane.)

Best case where owning is way better than renting for me: ski boots.

Rental ski boots are instruments of torture as far as I am concerned.

Absolutely. I've got custom foam injected liners and footbeds and will never ski without them again. Changed my (ski) life.

This seems like massive fluff - the "stuff" part I agree with garages full of random products is wasteful. Pets and houses as being burdens sounds a lot like "I just got out of college and am afraid of responsibility"

"I just got out of college and am afraid of responsibility"

For such a person, his advice is very sound.

I agree wholeheartedly with this article, and the PG article that preceded it. I try very hard to avoiding owning more than I must.

Big moves and traveling help tremendously with this. When I moved to New York city from southern California, I got rid of everything but a box (shipped), and what I could bring on the plane. I'd been traveling with much less than that for a few months before, and that helped me realize how little I really needed.

Tools and electronics are my weak points. Home laptop, work laptop, workstation+monitor (high power), bastion machine (low power). Power drill, a bunch of screwdriver extensions, multimeter, connectors for god-knows-what, etc.

NYC is very amenable to this philosophy: owning my apartment is out of the question. I have no need for a car (and my commute has become much less stressful). Apartments are small and don't give you much space to accumulate needless stuff.

I haven't considered the idea of renting furniture, but perhaps it's reasonable. I know services like that exist.

Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney in 'Up in the Air' lives out of his suitcase and thinks he loves it. This sounds like something Bingham would say in one of his motivational speeches.

You don't even need to pay Rent. There are a few resources out there to lead you to living rent-free:

http://www.caretaker.org/ - House sitting and property caretaking newsletter. Basically live in someones house in exchange for taking care of it.

http://www.couchsurfing.org/ - Find reliable people willing to let you sleep on their couch for free. I always look here when needing a place to stay and don't want to pay for a hotel. Search in advance if you know your travel dates and length of stay.

Evidently, the market value of awkward social obligations to strangers combined with having to move around a lot is several hundred dollars a month, because I can't imagine doing either of those for free rent unless I was desperately broke.

The real trick in life is finding the balance between what one can acquire and what one can use.

I've also grown pro-renting and pro-disowning.

I bought an apartment a few years ago, then relocated and rented a new apartment for myself, leased my own apartment to an acquaintance of mine, never went back myself, and finally had an enormous relief when I finally sold it.

I don't think I'm owning again any time soon, if ever. Even if I lived there myself all the time this time.

I think that it's sensible to own small stuff, like your pots and pans, furniture, clothes, and you know, personal stuff. You're probably not going to Europe on a whim all the time and there's always some place you can stash a few boxes while you're away.

It's just that I've also learned to own very little, to minimize the burden of owning stuff. So far I've recycled more stuff out of my home than hauled new stuff in. I'm quite ruthless in choosing what to give out: if I haven't used or needed something for some time, it's out. It always feels good. Books are a notable exception, though.

Then, personally, car is a bit of a borderline case for me. I'd definitely lease if I had to drive a new car. On the other hand, I drive little and only leisure-like trips that I could simply choose not to drive. So it makes sense for me to own an old car which is what I've done for the past decade. While I actually enjoy taking care of the car maintenance, should it happen to break down it would just remain broken until I would get to fixing it (or have it fixed). So I don't stress about its ownership either: my car is a convenience but not at all a necessity.

I'm sure the practice won't be greeted here with open arms, but I often 'rent' items from big chain stores with long return policies when I need to and just return the items before the time goes up. 90% of the time I don't keep the purchases, but the 10% of items I do keep I use very often and am very happy with. Call it using the system.

Are these items that couldn't be legitimately rented from somewhere else? I'm personally very opposed to the practice, but am curious why people feel OK doing it.

I'm a student so the return policy way is really the cheapest out there. As to why people feel OK doing it, why shouldn't we? Costco, in particular, offers an unusually long return policy. I don't exactly return underwear or dirty plates, but electronic devices I don't see a problem with. A good example would be needing a good laptop for about a week or two when the university Debian based towers just don't cut it anymore.

I mean, anyone who's used an IDE written in Java will agree.

It feels to me like living outside of one's means.

If there is an opportunity to have something you temporarily need and likely wont need beyond the given project, then how is that not simply utilizing the system in place? It's a life hack.

>> It's a life hack.

No, it's unethical and cheap.

Cheap? Definitely. Unethical? Its in their policy. I pay the annual Costco membership after all.

You know what? Just because it's legal doesn't make it right.

If too many people do this, then the policy will change, and ruin it for everyone else.

You pay an annual membership so that costco can locate their businesses in cheap areas zoned for wholesale/warehouse outfits, not regular retail, saving them a ton of money. They have to charge you a membership fee - it's members only shopping.

It usually feels to me that if you don't want someone to take up the offer you need to have tighter returns policies. I see why companies do it, for the vast majority of people buying the product it's like an added bonus if something goes astray. This opens the system to gaming by the small minority of customers but still the benefits to the companies sales far outweigh the cost. If everyone was doing it I'm sure the companies would be a lot less generous with their returns.

Reminds me of a story a friend who works at EB Games (some campany as gamestop in america). Every week or 2 a lady would come in and exchange a game she purchased for her kids for another one, usually just falling inside the exchange period. Essentially she was using EB as a free game rental store. Eventually they cut her off but not before she had well and truly gotten value for money on whatever she had originally paid.

Why do you feel OK taking advantage of a buy-one-get-one-free deal? These stores aren't stupid. They know people do this. They do a cost-benefit analysis on their return policies and decide that they're OK with this gaming because it is compensated in other areas. Their salespeople can tell prospective customers, "Hey, you're not committing to anything. If you don't 100% want to keep it, you can just bring it back with our awesome return policy." They do this knowing that most people won't even if they're not completely happy. The flip side is that we actually get to take them up on the offer.

On the other hand, I don't personally do this because I'd rather just work a little more and properly rent or buy. Seems like less work in the long run.

Thanks for mass downvoting all my comments, whoever you are.

It wasn't me, but hey - the System lets people do it, so it must be okay to do it.

Totally. Which is why I said "thanks for downvoting". I'm happy disagreement resulted in deserved punishment.

Kinky!

I did something similar and took off to Argentina for a year. Took with me only one backpack and and my laptop. Got rid of all my other stuff.

Now that I'm back state side I'm trying to maintain minimal amount of stuff because it was fairly nice. Two words: furnished apartment.

>> Two words: furnished apartment.

Speaking as someone who went the other route (unfurnished, buy stuff), I wish I'd tried this. If you're going to be paying the money for a nice place anyway, it's probably worth going furnished.

>>Finally, owning very nice things makes using them less pleasurable because you have to be extra careful not to damage them (as Paul Graham says in his essay “Nothing owns you like fragile stuff”).

clearly we have different ideas of what constitutes "very nice" cause in my world very nice implies dependable and nigh invincible.

Probably the better general advice would be not to own or rent, but rather just do without.

The problem for me with wearing a hair shirt all the time is not that it itches, but that it's boring. Asceticism advocacy is a nice applause light, but not very good as practical advice.

Heh, I wouldn't know what to do with another car or a TV, but I can measure the ways in which my shiny new iPhone 4 has made my life better; and I'd love to have a house with a project room and a garage and a yard large enough to grow all the herbs and vegetables I'd like.

What sense does it make? If you rent apartment(s) for 10 years, you give money out and you have nothing afterwards. Mortgage, on other hand, is more investment: you will have something valuable after paying it back.

Is renting everything a new way to be cool?

Not always! I live in a space that is far more economical to rent. If I were to buy the space I am living in now, it would cost an extra X per month - and there is no guarantee the house I rent increasing in value. I take that extra X and invest it every month and get some decent compound interest off it and I am much better off in the long term.

What magnitude of X are we talking about? Where I live (Central Europe), the difference is really small.

Right now its about £400 per month difference (I live in South East UK)

You are compounding interest in this financial market? How? :) Is it above inflation?

Buying isn't always better than renting especially when you take into account interest payments, maintenance, closing and selling costs, taxes etc. So basically if the house doesn't increase in value enough to cover these costs than you are better off renting.

Check out this cool calculator for some more details: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calcula...

This depends on whether you are buying for investment reasons or other reasons.

We buy plenty of things for non-ivestnemtn reasons - a house COULD be one of those things, depending on your situation.

If you get a mortgage, you have to pay rent on money instead of paying rent on housing. And then you have to pay for the housing on top of that. And then invest your spare time maintaining a house, which is a better hobby than TV but not for everyone. If you take all that time and money and commitment and invest it in something other than a house, then you can probably rent an apartment and still come out just as rich in the long run.

Also, if you rent apartments for 10 years you can spend 10 years moving around to follow opportunities. If you pay a mortgage for 10 years, you can look forward to spending the next 20 paying the same mortgage, and unless you want to pay for housing twice, living in the same place. Standard mortgages are 30 years! That's maybe half of your adult life you have to spend paying interest. That's a level of commitment comparable to having a damn kid, except instead of a living and thinking person it's a material possession.

Most of my friends (in Poland) spend monthly less for mortgage than they would on rent. It seams that housing/mortgage market here is very different.

Same here in England. If you have the deposit and plan to stay for a few years, then buying makes economic sense.

Plus, owning your own home, even if there's a mortgage outstanding, feels very different to renting. Certainly for the English, home-ownership is a cultural value.

It's a cultural value to Americans, too. That's how we got into a bubble and then a recession--it was such a cultural value people tried to become homeowners even if it made no financial sense at all.

Myth: http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/07/16/renting-vs-buyi...

Now, home prices have fallen a bit since that article was written, but you really need to examine all the costs that go into home ownership (including mortgage interest), and see if it really gives you a net positive. For a lot of people it may not.

The amount required as a down payment to achieve the equal can be too great to make it worth it. Especially so if you are a single hacker living in a 1 or 2 bedroom rental.

For example, to get my mortgage down to the cost of a 1 bedroom rental I can only take out about a $90,000 loan. So, if I want a modestly nice $150,000 to $200,000 home I have to save up to put down $60,000 to $110,000 down payment. That's alot of money and to see it all disappear in a near instant is intimidating and scary. I'd rather stick that kind of money in some sort of investments and watch it grow.

Owning also can come with some undesirables to me such as the location is not as good as my apartment (unless I can up my purchase price of a home to $300,000+ or want a higher mortgage), the house is not that nice (not nice enough to want to live in forever and needs upfront fixing), if it needs maintenance (roof, A/C, lawn, etc) I have to pay for it.

However, what I have noticed is if you need at least a 2 bedroom and preferably 3 (family of 3 to 4 perhaps), at least where I live, a small down payment and mortgage is so worth it. Renting would be stupid. The rent for a 3 bedroom is usually more, even for a 5%-10% down payment.

Well, a few years ago having the bank lend you a house and then let you pay it back for the next 30 years, but not worrying about that burden because you knew real estate markets always went up was the way to be cool. Consider also that people doing this generally rinse/repeat, rather than using the first couple of good trade-ups to set them selves up financially. Lots of people with big fat expensive homes got there this way and now can't afford to live there, or to sell them.

I know a whole bunch of people who bought houses 10 years ago and, today, if they sold their homes, would have lost several times what I've paid in rent during that same period. If they can hold out until the market returns they'll be okay, if not, who knows.... but now they're stuck with them.

The key is to just put some clarity around what mortgaging, or even buying a home outright, really is - and why you are doing it.

If you are doing it because you WANT to own a home and you think it's a magic, foolproof investment - that's foolish. Those are two different things.

If you're doing it because you WANT to own that particular home and raise your family there for the next 30 years, then some day retire to a smaller apartment, or even stay there until it's time for the funny-farm, and you are doing it on terms you can afford over that time, that's fine - but your primary reason in this case is not as an investment. You will have expenses along the way that are more or less the same as renting. and while it seems unlikely over a 30 years span, it's always possible that the home won't be worth much in terms of equity 30 years later when you want to sell it. (the dollar value may have gone way up, but the cost of living will have risen as well. I'm not saying there will be no equity, but it may not be the best investment you could have made, and it could easily turn out to be a bad one)

If you are into the real-estate business for investment purposes, then you should be studying various real-estate markets and looking for the best opportunities to buy/fix/hold/sell strategically. THese are typically not the types of houses you want to live in.

The author is advocating renting stuff instead of buying it. This suggestion doesn't help much in the long run, because you become addicted in the same way. A better suggestion would be using less stuff, period.

Disclaimer: Renting everything doesn't work if you're broke.

I would change it to:

Rent/Lease in markets where prices are probably going down, buy in markets where prices are probably going up.

Of course, this rule has lots of exceptions, like computers.

Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner

This would be a non-issue if he owned a badass diesel truck.

Be happier, find or borrow everything.

I dunno. Craigslist has made the market for "stuff" pretty liquid. I can get rid of most of my crap for a healthy fraction of what I paid with way less than an hour of effort per item. Hell, a whole lot of my stuff came from craigslist.

Just deliberately live in a small place, don't buy a lot of crap, and regularly cull. Buy only high quality and durable items and do it after a couple day's deliberation.

I'm pretty sure I could be liquidated and out of here in under a week. This seems to be the goal he's shooting for. I guess that's a good thing if you're rootless. But it makes one wonder about the days when people bought or inherited heirloom furniture, made to last over 100 years. The culture of disposable and cheaply made crap, and rootless people, is ... questionable.

Exactly. And if you buy it on Craigslist, you can usually sell it again for almost no loss.

Exactly. Don't think of eBay and Craigslist as being in the buying and selling business -- think of them as being in the storage business. Store your unused stuff there and buy it back if/when you need it again.

And the best part is, you don't even have to pay rent to the storage company!

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