This was a good read but the section on cars is not right. They are a special kind of asset in that they depreciate incredibly fast, which makes leasing not so much of a bad proposition. In places where interest rates are low, you might end up spending a mere 10-20% more, and in turn you don’t have to deal with insurance, maintenance or selling it at the end of the period.
About 10 months ago I started a hobby printing art reproductions on an inkjet printer.<p>I realized right away that the printer would dry out if I didn't use it every day, so I committed myself to print something every day.<p>It's been like a road trip where I decided to go drive west without much of a plan then hit the west coast and turned my car into a hydrofoil.<p>My printer is a<p><a href="https://epson.com/EcoTank-Supertank-Printers/c/hc110" rel="nofollow">https://epson.com/EcoTank-Supertank-Printers/c/hc110</a><p>and doesn't need cartridges. I print mainly 4″x6″ cards and use expensive paper and my material cost is about 8 cents for that kind of card, 20 cents for a 8″x8″ card. 15 cents for an NFC sticker looks expensive in comparison!<p>If I had a large format printer I could do some amazing things in principle but with the small card I can afford to take chances, make mistakes, and get good at it.<p>For borderless prints of subjects like<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Non-Objective_Composition._Color_Painting_(Rozanova,_1917_(RM)).jpg" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Non-Objective_Composition...</a><p>you have to be very careful because the algorithm is designed for "color snaps" and the printer doesn't know exactly where the paper edge is and you have to finesse it if you want to keep the narrow strips of yellow at the top and bottom which I think is an important detail.<p>So I don't trust the print shop or shutterfly with my prints, they do pretty good but not good enough.<p>I think today's printers are a miracle and don't regret in the slightest what they cost.
<i>The average user prints exactly one colour page during the lifetime of their colour printer. It is usually the test page.</i><p>Really? So I guess I'm one of the few that accidentally prints in color more than once during a printer's lifetime?