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canyoneer posted:http://bikeportland.org/2012/06/28/with-six-kids-and-no-car-this-mom-does-it-all-by-bike-73731 This just boggles my mind. An hour to get ready, minimum? Bungee cord strapping kids into their seats? What do they do in the snow? Does she only live her life within a few square miles? I have so many more questions. This sounds like something you'd see in China or India. (Also, they do have a small car; the dad drives it to work.)
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Sep 16, 2014 13:52
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My wife and I spend $50-60/month on ZipCar and Car2Go. When we want to go on vacation, we get a car from RelayRides which is $40/day or so. Conceivably we could own/maintain a beater 80's Corolla for less than that, but we'd have to pay for parking and I'd be doing oil changes myself. No thanks. The bus system in Seattle is fantastic though. When we lived in Nashville we each had our own car. Bad with money: One of my friends needed to pay his Verizon cell phone bill, so he called the number, read his card info into the automated system, and accepted a TEN DOLLAR convenience fee for his efforts. I dragged his rear end over to my house immediately and showed him how to pay via the website. God knows how many months he had been doing that.
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Sep 16, 2014 14:00
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:What do they do in the snow? They've got quite a few options I would imagine. School buses, city buses, and MAX Light Rail since she lives in Portland.
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Sep 16, 2014 14:42
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xie posted:Zipcar was Bad With Money when we actually worked it out. Peapod delivery is way cheaper than Zipcar, plus we gained hours of our time per week back. Zipcar makes sense if you don't already own a car and have insurance, as a rental with no insurance costs something like $18-30/day in addition, unless you risk it. Zipcar covers that.
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Sep 16, 2014 15:18
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I'm in the process of selling my car and switching to a car share program/rental cars. Each month my car costs me $80 for insurance, $7 for registration, and over the next four years I estimate about $70 in depreciation for a total of $157. Compared with the cost of using the car share program in my area, which is $6 per month for registration, my fixed costs go down $150 per month! To take a car share car for a one hour trip to the grocery store (6 KM), it costs roughly $5.00. But I can often get groceries on my bike anyway, so I don't really need a car for groceries. I also bike to work, or can take the bus. And from October-May, Enterprise offers cheap weekend rental rates at $9.99 per day. So from October-May I could rent a car every weekend for less than $100 and still be $50 ahead on fixed costs. Add in the fact that I won't ever have to worry about maintenance or replacing tires, and I get to drive new cars when I rent from Enterprise and drive nearly-new cars from the car share, it's pretty awesome. If these numbers sound insanely cheap to you, it's because they are. Now everyone be jealous of my cheap car share program.  fake edit: I'll also be investing the $8500 I gain from the sale of my car. So instead of that $8500 decreasing each month, it'll be increasing (over the long-term, anyway). real edit: LorneReams posted:Zipcar makes sense if you don't already own a car and have insurance, as a rental with no insurance costs something like $18-30/day in addition, unless you risk it. Zipcar covers that. My credit card offers free insurance when I rent a car with it. Rick Rickshaw fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Sep 16, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 15:22
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Centripetal Horse posted:At a quick glance, I can get an economy or compact car for a full day at a price of $28+tax. It's tough to see any of these hourly/minutely rentals as being very cost-effective compared to just getting a car for a whole day. Fuel is paid on Zipcars and the locations are extremely convenient. If I went to National, my preferred corporate rate is about $33/day. Plus taxes and fees, that's about $45 in my area. That is 3 hours on a Zipcar. Plus, for the rental, I'm on the hook for fuel and I have to get over to the airport to pick up and drop off the thing. edit: There are thirty zipcars within a ten minute walk of my front door. KYOON GRIFFEY JR fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Sep 16, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 15:59
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Rick Rickshaw posted:My credit card offers free insurance when I rent a car with it. Yes and no. Those programs almost universally pay for damage to the rental car itself. For instance, my Amex will cover up to $50,000 worth of damage to a rental car - if I bring it back scratched, dented, or crushed into a cube, it's not my problem unless I rented a very expensive car. This replaces the damage waiver that rental car companies charge extra for. But, that's not "real" car insurance, because it doesn't cover liability in an accident. If you carry regular liability insurance on a personal vehicle, it will extend to a rental car. If you don't have your own liability insurance, though, you'll need to carry it through someone else. The only place you're going to get short-term liability coverage for a car rental is through the rental company. Your credit card company won't do it.
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Sep 16, 2014 16:00
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Space Gopher posted:Yes and no. Those programs almost universally pay for damage to the rental car itself. For instance, my Amex will cover up to $50,000 worth of damage to a rental car - if I bring it back scratched, dented, or crushed into a cube, it's not my problem unless I rented a very expensive car. This replaces the damage waiver that rental car companies charge extra for. Fiddlesticks. This throws a loop into my glorious plans. I need to do some research on this. Thanks! edit: Ok! Crisis averted. My credit card indeed doesn't include liability coverage - it only covers the car I've rented, as you say - but the rental company (at least, Enterprise does) automatically includes third-party liability coverage. They need to do this to make the car street legal. So the last remaining part is personal injury, which is an extra $6.99 per day. So not quite the amazing deal it once was, but all-in-all not too bad. Rick Rickshaw fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Sep 16, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 16:23
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canyoneer posted:http://bikeportland.org/2012/06/28/with-six-kids-and-no-car-this-mom-does-it-all-by-bike-73731 With 6 kids in 9 years, at least she has somewhere to park the bike when not using it.
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Sep 16, 2014 17:36
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Ethiser posted:Even if you live in an American city without a car how do you travel? I've never been able to figure our how you make that work. I live in the suburbs/country so I need one anyway but how would I go visit family and friends who live elsewhere? Generally people who live in the city won't travel to see friends/family in the suburbs, they'll make them come into the city. Just the way it works and the lifestyle choice(they chose to live in the city so they wouldn't have to drive everywhere). When they travel out of state, they rent a car. Not too complicated.
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Sep 16, 2014 18:02
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Ethiser posted:Even if you live in an American city without a car how do you travel? I've never been able to figure our how you make that work. I live in the suburbs/country so I need one anyway but how would I go visit family and friends who live elsewhere? Basically, those people rarely if ever leave their neighborhoods and demand everyone else comes to visit them, or at best will meet up for after work drinks assuming their friends all work in the same business district. It's really annoying.
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Sep 16, 2014 18:35
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mastershakeman posted:Basically, those people rarely if ever leave their neighborhoods and demand everyone else comes to visit them, or at best will meet up for after work drinks assuming their friends all work in the same business district. It's really annoying. I often bike to my sister's place in the suburbs, 20km away. I am not an urban-rear end in a top hat.
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Sep 16, 2014 18:42
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I pay a premium to live in a transportation hub in Boston. I can get almost anywhere in Eastern MA with <10 minutes walking from my apartment. 15 minutes if I don't want to change subway lines. I almost never need a car for anything and it saves me a lot of money. We're not 100% no car because of vacation rentals but we're drat close. People freak out when they hear where I live because "it's expensive" but we don't have a car and keep an honest, real budget, which our place comes in a few dollars under. Everyone happily pays a few hundred less in rent each month but doesn't see that their car makes up the difference. For example my buddy from work lives in a bigger 1br place by himself that's $300/mo cheaper than my smaller place, but he pays $500 to lease that Passat so who's really winning here? There's a double mental savings too because my girlfriend doesn't drive, so that places 100% of the car burden on me. Between Amazon Prime, Peapod, laundry down the street, etc. we really only need a car in the area for the 1-2 times a year we want to go to Ikea or the Outlet stores.
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Sep 16, 2014 19:51
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xie posted:We're not 100% no car because of vacation rentals but we're drat close. People freak out when they hear where I live because "it's expensive" but we don't have a car and keep an honest, real budget, which our place comes in a few dollars under. Everyone happily pays a few hundred less in rent each month but doesn't see that their car makes up the difference.
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Sep 16, 2014 20:11
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Cicero posted:Yeah, a few times I've seen when people ask about what % of their budget they should limit themselves to for housing, someone will respond that they should think of it in terms of housing + transportation cost instead, precisely because of this tradeoff. Seems to be the thing with cars where people willfully ignore the cost of ownership. The sensible approach for cars is when you've bought one you start saving for the next one. In the mean time you have operating costs, repairs and insurance to pay. I know some people leasing vehicles which gives an honest cost of ownership but also the lease is a complete tax write off.
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Sep 16, 2014 21:27
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Centripetal Horse posted:Do they pick you up, or offer some other service that makes them better than normal auto renting? It seems to me that if you have enough poo poo to do that you need the car for 2+ hours, you may as well just rent one for a day, and not have to worry about charges adding up if you fall behind schedule. The last time I rented a car from an urban area, it was quite the hassle. Spent at least 45 minutes waiting to get finished (people ahead of me, and paperwork takes a while). Had to do insurance, of course, which drives up the price. Had to drive way out of the city in a mess of one-way streets and traffic to pay for gas on return. And the biggie: PARKING. I could spend an hour just looking for a spot. Oh, but it's only two hour parking if you don't have an annual pass. So now I have to go back and find somewhere else to park. Hey, now it's rush hour and I'm fighting with people who do this every day and know all the tricks and good areas. Not to mention now I have to schedule time tomorrow to take the drat thing back... Or I can load up the app, pick from the cars and trucks available within an eight block radius, and off I go. I make sure to pick a car that has a wide availability window so that if I'm running late, I just log on the app and extend my rental. No gas, no insurance, no parking. MUCH cheaper and far less time spent.
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Sep 16, 2014 21:41
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I also live in Boston, and I use Zipcar regularly. A car rental for tomorrow is $35.50 + $4.20 train fare + gas, which is ~4 hours worth of Zipcar rental, not to mention the time investment in getting to the rental place and picking up the car. If you're using it for weekly groceries and poo poo, then yeah, that's silly, but we usually get it for an epic errand run where we're buying a hundred pounds of cat litter and a coffee table. We rent cars for weekend trips fairly often, and it's still cheaper than car ownership.
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Sep 16, 2014 21:45
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Old Fart posted:Or I can load up the app, pick from the cars and trucks available within an eight block radius, and off I go. I make sure to pick a car that has a wide availability window so that if I'm running late, I just log on the app and extend my rental. No gas, no insurance, no parking. MUCH cheaper and far less time spent. This doesn't always work, you can't rely on it. The car you want can have the next 500 days "open" the second you pick it up, but if someone reserves it while you already have it you can get hosed hoping you can extend it. This is a major, major problem in my area. There are ~30 Zipcars within a mile of me, but I've never been able to extend a rental more than 30m since moving here. I've gotten so desperate that I rented another zipcar next to mine, run back with the one we had, and chinese fire drilled all of our poo poo in the new one. Maybe I'm a big old baby but Zipcars come with a ton of stress/anxiety for me unless you rent them for way longer than you need, which is also sort of Bad With Money. edit: But as I said, there is NO parking by me, so an overnight rental is out of the question unless I pay $15 to park it. We just try and live as no-car as possible. If it can be delivered, we pay to have it delivered and it's usually cheaper than any sort of car option. disheveled posted:I also live in Boston, and I use Zipcar regularly. A car rental for tomorrow is $35.50 + $4.20 train fare + gas, which is ~4 hours worth of Zipcar rental, not to mention the time investment in getting to the rental place and picking up the car. If you're using it for weekly groceries and poo poo, then yeah, that's silly, but we usually get it for an epic errand run where we're buying a hundred pounds of cat litter and a coffee table. This seems a bit silly. Some people live closer to a car rental place, just like some people live closer to a Zipcar. There aren't a ton of places in Boston that are more than a mile from Zipcars, but there's also lots of car rental places that aren't at Logan. There's like 3 in walking distance from my job, and a few near my home. Picking up and dropping off definitely can take longer (I usually drop off and just leave the keys in the box?), and Zipcar definitely has its place, but it's not like renting a car is a 4 hour burden like going to the RMV. xie fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Sep 16, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 21:58
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mastershakeman posted:Basically, those people rarely if ever leave their neighborhoods and demand everyone else comes to visit them, or at best will meet up for after work drinks assuming their friends all work in the same business district. It's really annoying. I am fortunate enough to live on the east coast in a place with great transit, so I'm not really like this, but generally the city is a better place to hang out anyway. 
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Sep 16, 2014 22:06
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xie posted:This seems a bit silly. Some people live closer to a car rental place, just like some people live closer to a Zipcar. There aren't a ton of places in Boston that are more than a mile from them, but there's also lots of car rental places that aren't at Logan. There's like 3 in walking distance from my job, and a few near my home. Uh... cool, but I was explaining why Zipcar can be cost-effective...? 
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Sep 16, 2014 22:10
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disheveled posted:Uh... cool, but I was explaining why Zipcar can be cost-effective...? I know, it just seemed like you were calling picking up a rental some burden when Zipcars are for some people as well.
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Sep 16, 2014 22:22
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Ethiser posted:Even if you live in an American city without a car how do you travel? I've never been able to figure our how you make that work. I live in the suburbs/country so I need one anyway but how would I go visit family and friends who live elsewhere?
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Sep 16, 2014 23:43
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i like nice words
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I live in the exburbs of Seattle and i've driven ummm twice in the past 3 years to work and I can take a ferry to see any of the assholes who decided to live across the water. Buses, trains, amtrak, planes... i've rarely even needed to rent a car when i've traveled because i try to use the local metro there as well. never had an issue.
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Sep 17, 2014 02:15
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The local car co-op here (which is kicking zipcar's rear end in terms of market share) has a plan where you only pay $3/hour plus a mileage rate, plus you get half of that $3 back for any unused time if you end your booking early. So it's pretty easy to just add an extra half hour or hour when you book just in case, which is probably part of why they're doing so much better. Anyway I've been using it for about a year and even using it a fair bit (2x a week for a while) it's way cheaper than owning and running a car.
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Sep 17, 2014 03:22
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xie posted:I know, it just seemed like you were calling picking up a rental some burden when Zipcars are for some people as well. Picking up a rental is more burdensome than picking up a Zipcar CP solely because of paperwork processing. If you are bad at forecasting your time, Zipcar is not for you.
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Sep 17, 2014 11:51
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Hey reddit, how much did you spend on your wedding?quote:I spent $30,000 on my wedding three years ago. It took four years of light saving to earn that much.  I got courthouse married for $90 and skipped all the wedding bullshit. I had no idea that it got that ridiculous.
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Sep 17, 2014 13:47
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Here we go again with people making GBS threads on people for spending money on anything they wouldn't spend money on. I mean they say right there that they saved for it, and it was "light" saving. Since they didn't consider it heavy saving, you can probably bet they're debt free and invest in retirement accounts heavily, especially the way they analyze the expenditures after the fact. I would personally consider that "bad with money" if they said "we'll be paying it off for six years but it's so worth it!"
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Sep 17, 2014 14:25
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That is some dumbass spending, but I think I'd give him a pass on the limo if his only other plan was loading up the bride on a school bus.
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Sep 17, 2014 14:26
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Nail Rat posted:Here we go again with people making GBS threads on people for spending money on anything they wouldn't spend money on. But toothpicks dude specifically said that he ended up spending money on poo poo he wouldn't spend money on.
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Sep 17, 2014 14:30
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Nail Rat posted:Here we go again with people making GBS threads on people for spending money on anything they wouldn't spend money on. I'm curious if the initial plan for the wedding would have cost much more. 4 years is a lot of time to mull over a massive planned expense. But yeah, that really isn't being bad with money. Frivolous maybe, but it sounds like it got budgeted for.
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Sep 17, 2014 14:33
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slap me silly posted:But toothpicks dude specifically said that he ended up spending money on poo poo he wouldn't spend money on. If the focus is on the toothpicks yeah I agree that's stupid. But 30k is really about average for a medium-sized wedding in some cities, though most people are paying it off for years. How would you even monogram a toothpick anyway? How many people would even look at it closely enough?
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Sep 17, 2014 14:35
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Nail Rat posted:How would you even monogram a toothpick anyway? Hehe, this is what blew my mind. Not to mention that you're just going to chew it up. Seems rude!
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Sep 17, 2014 14:40
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.Z. posted:I'm curious if the initial plan for the wedding would have cost much more. 4 years is a lot of time to mull over a massive planned expense. But yeah, that really isn't being bad with money. Frivolous maybe, but it sounds like it got budgeted for. I think most well people would not categorize a 30k wedding as "frivolous". It's also one of the few things you can see coming years away, like a house down payment. In my case I've just been saving money since I started working, about 25k a year, and will just dip into the funds for our wedding (budgeted at around 20k). So technically I've been lightly saving for the wedding as well!
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Sep 17, 2014 14:51
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I have to agree, it doesn't sound bad with money. They saved for it, it sounds like it was paid for up front and they didn't go into debt over frivolous crap. Sure, I think 30k is a retarded amount of money to spend on a wedding, but I'm the kind of person who wants those rings made of technical metals and a justice of the peace.
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Sep 17, 2014 15:45
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I hope you people with courthouse weddings biked, walked, or at most used a zip car. Don't forget to pack a pb&j sandwich for afterwords (have you seen how expensive the lunch places are around those municipal buildings?) Bonus points if you absconded with the pen they gave you to sign the license.
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Sep 17, 2014 16:16
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Thesaurus posted:I hope you people with courthouse weddings biked, walked, or at most used a zip car. Don't forget to pack a pb&j sandwich for afterwords (have you seen how expensive the lunch places are around those municipal buildings?) You forgot the 
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Sep 17, 2014 16:30
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slap me silly posted:Hehe, this is what blew my mind. Not to mention that you're just going to chew it up. Seems rude! I still don't get it. Are we talking about wooden toothpicks? Or some kind of silver, souvenir jobbie?
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Sep 17, 2014 16:33
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Thesaurus posted:I hope you people with courthouse weddings biked, walked, or at most used a zip car. Don't forget to pack a pb&j sandwich for afterwords (have you seen how expensive the lunch places are around those municipal buildings?) Hell with common law you never even have to get to the courthouse, just wait seven years and imagine how much you can save in those seven years!
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Sep 17, 2014 16:51
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spog posted:I still don't get it. Are we talking about wooden toothpicks? I'd expect it's either toothpicks with a little monogrammed flag on them, or regular toothpicks in a monogrammed box. Bad with money: Olive Garden stopped salting its boiling pasta in order to improve the longevity of its pots
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Sep 17, 2014 16:53
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They look like this, so yeah, flags: http://www.hotref.com/vintage-weddi...8Z5MaAhKU8P8HAQ I went to a wedding with something similar, but the flags on their toothpicks were silk with gold embroidery, of course.
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Sep 17, 2014 16:57
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