Be happier: Rent Everything

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

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 <i>that</i>. Watch a few episodes of "Clean Sweep" to get in the mindset, then clean your place out, and make sure you do this periodically.<p>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".<p>Don't treat the symptoms, treat the problem!

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.<p>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.

This only makes sense if you place a high value on mobility.<p>Many people value putting down roots and committing to a city or neighborhood. This often comes from having many tangled connections to other people.<p>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.<p>Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of nomadic families, but they are more rare than nomadic individuals because of the increased complexity.<p>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.<p>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.

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

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.<p>But I have a wife, and she stuffs our house full of all kinds of stuff.<p>BTW, I'm not trying to start a gender flame-war; I'm sure plenty of guys annoy their wives with stupid toys.

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<p>- Extremely beautiful.<p>- Have an extraordinary emotional value to you. We're talking the watch in Pulp Fiction type of items.<p>- Highly practical.<p>Throw away everything else.

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%.

<p><pre><code> 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. </code></pre> 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.

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:<p><i>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.</i><p>And? How is that any different than leasing a car for X years?<p>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 <i>really</i> 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.<p>That being said, don't waste your time collecting junk, either.

Best case where owning is <i>way</i> better than renting for me: ski boots.<p>Rental ski boots are instruments of torture as far as I am concerned.

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 agree wholeheartedly with this article, and the PG article that preceded it. I try very hard to avoiding owning more than I must.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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:<p><a href="http://www.caretaker.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.caretaker.org/</a> - House sitting and property caretaking newsletter. Basically live in someones house in exchange for taking care of it.<p><a href="http://www.couchsurfing.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.couchsurfing.org/</a> - 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.

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

I've also grown pro-renting and pro-disowning.<p>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 <i>an enormous relief</i> when I finally sold it.<p>I don't think I'm owning again any time soon, if ever. Even if I lived there myself all the time this time.<p>I think that it's sensible to own small stuff, like your pots and pans, furniture, clothes, and you know, <i>personal stuff</i>. You're probably not going to Europe on a whim <i>all the time</i> and there's always some place you can stash a few boxes while you're away.<p>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.<p>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.

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.<p>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.

&#62;&#62;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”).<p>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.

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.<p>Is renting everything a new way to be cool?

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:<p>Rent/Lease in markets where prices are probably going down, buy in markets where prices are probably going up.<p>Of course, this rule has lots of exceptions, like computers.

<i>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</i>

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.<p>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.<p>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.