Is it just me, or do I see Society in general (especially with the later generation) turning into a rental society
Take a look at the Uber argument. People would rather rent a vehicle and driver rather than own one for them selves
Same thing with phones. They have become a rental thing.
It seems to be that the usual mode of operation among the younger generation is to rent rather than buy.
Am I the only one who has noticed this ?
This very issue has been talked about on finance sites for the past 10 years. So no, you are not the only person to notice this. Are you renting your rock or do you have a mortgage?
Uber is just a new business model for taxis, which have been around since before cars were invented.
Phones aren’t rented, either. They’re purchased. It’s just that the purchase price is included in the monthly fee (think of it as an installment plan). If you have a no-contract phone, you buy it up front.
So neither example fits your premise.
ETA: Renting apartments is hardly a new idea, either. The main reason younger people don’t buy is that they don’t have the money.
Own my own place with no mortgage but I notice a significant amount of renters in the younger generation
I know that the phone is purchased via the monthly fees. However, it seems like the phone is always on a rental.
I know about the apartment rental. I did for a short period of time before getting enough for a mortgage.
However, it seems to be even more common to rent now than in the past
Another example is boats. It seems like it is more common to rent them and let the owner of the boat take the maintenance costs
Car sharing services like Zipcar are perhaps a better example for your argument.
But they also make sense for some people. Owning a car costs a lot, when you consider taxes, insurance, maintenance and so forth in addition to the car payments. And some people use their car for only an hour or so each day. So why tie up so much money in a depreciating asset? If a Zipcar location is convenient, you can have a car when you need it for much less money.
Understandable but what I have found it that community vehicles do not have anyone specifically maintaining them
Some of these ideas are good ones.
Uber and airbnb are both based around the idea that a huge number of Americans have cars they only drive a limited amount of time, and spare time, and space in their houses - spare rooms or just spare couches - that aren’t in use.
In theory, this is a sensible economic change. Making more effective use of resources is a good thing.
If we ever get automated cars to work on a mass scale, it will mean that the total number of cars America needs will plummet by large factor.
Of course they do. Zip and Enterprise both have maintenance crews that come by late at night and clean the cars. When the engine or change oil or whatever notice comes up, whoever has it at the time reports it to the company and they get it taken care of. The Enterprise CarShare cars I use are newer, cleaner and better maintained than many friends and coworkers cars, that’s for sure. Plus if I want to take an electric car for a spin, I can. If I need a cargo van, SUV, or just small around-town for the grocery store car, I have access to all those. And yes, my phone is leased. I get a new one every year.
Both of these options save me hundreds to thousands of dollars a year. Buying would never be the cheaper option in either of these cases.
Owning a car does not have to cost a lot. I drive 2 vehicles each worth maybe $1500 if I’m lucky. There was no tax to speak of on initial registration, maybe $25 tops. Registration costs $50 a year. Insurance costs me $55 every 6 months. Maintenance I can’t put a dollar amount on but it’s really not that much.
There is no way in heck that Zipcar is cheaper than what I am paying now.
The issue is these younger people with a sense of (fill in the blank) don’t want to drive $1500 cars. They aren’t willing to sacrifice on shinyness of their ride, and they aren’t willing to make the sacrifices required to save up for something better. Therefore, they rent.
Funny you should mention phones. Back when AT&T was The (Only) Phone Company, everyone rented their home phones. Practically nobody owned a phone. That model persisted for some time after the breakup of AT&T. I can remember when we first started buying phones; we worried about moving to an area where another phone company might not support the one we bought (turns out that never happened, of course).
Moved to IMHO from General Question.
samclem, moderator
I live within walking distance of work. So I walk. Or when the weather is crappy, ride the bus (which is free for me). Meanwhile, my car is almost always parked on the street. I absolutely love my car, which I take out on the weekends just to give my poor legs a rest. But between the insurance, the property taxes, the gas, the maintenance, it’s an expensive “love”.
I could save so much money just by walking more and renting a car on those occasions when I MUST have a car. But I don’t wanna, because I’m not young anymore. I’ve been brainwashed into thinking that owning is always better and that people who have a different mentality than me must be (fill in the blank).
I bought my phone and own my own car.
I can see car rentals becoming a thing when cars become self driving. About 95% of the time your car is just sitting idle in the parking lot. Plus with rentals you don’t have to worry about maintenance, keeping it clean, etc.
Part of it is economics, many people don’t have the income or stability to buy a home anymore. Also the wealthy are buying up the homes to use them as rentals (they get a higher ROI than they could with things like T bills) so that adds tot he problem, people buying up the homes drives up prices and that makes it harder for buyers to get in the market.
Overall though, I think it is just houses and cars that are becoming rentals and those are for different reasons.
Um…gas?
My carshare membership is $25 a year and with taxes on the hourly fee comes out to about $10 an hour each time I take a car out. Probably about 20 hours a year. So driving a new car with full road service if I should get a flat or something else goes wrong, gas, insurance, full stop all expenses, costs me $225 a year.
Then there’s sparing me the headache of bothering with parking and digging snow and all the other pain in the ass crap that comes with car ownership. I don’t have to deal with any of that and it’s absolutely worth it.
Is that my total transportation expense? No, I use the CTA. That doesn’t fall under renting or leasing anything, though.
That’s quite a facile view. When I was living in Boston, fresh out of college:
But I didn’t need a car that frequently, so Zipcar met my needs for weekend shopping trips and such. (Actually, I found that a $5-20 cab ride made a lot of sense in many cases where I just needed to get a trunk full of shopping from the store to my apartment.) Wanting a “shiny ride” didn’t even enter into my calculations.
Obviously a big part of those expenses was Boston. In, say, rural Ohio where anyone can fill their yard with junkers and be golden as long as one mostly works, it’s another matter.
I see this as far more relevant for entertainment.
I bought the music I wanted (on LPs, then tapes, then CD’s).
I bought VHS tapes & DVDs.
I bought books & magazines. And newspapers.
I bought computer operating systems & word processing programs.
Now this generation has been trained to just rent those things, and to pay over & over for them. No wonder they are always broke!
I see this as far more relevant for entertainment.
I bought the music I wanted (on LPs, then tapes, then CD’s).
I bought VHS tapes & DVDs.
I bought books & magazines. And newspapers.
I bought computer operating systems & word processing programs.
Now this generation has been trained to just rent those things, and to pay over & over for them. No wonder they are always broke!
The rental rates are a lot cheaper, and most media content you consume only once…
For every RedBox DVD you rent a second or third time, there’s about 9 movies you rent only once. If we followed your strategy, we would have paid full price (didn’t it used to be $15-$25 for a movie on DVD or VHS?) for everything.
But maybe this generation won’t need an ugly 3500 sq ft McMansion to store all this useless junk. Like their parents do.