Comment by tuna-piano | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tuna-piano | Hacker News Reader

The author is missing one big thing: The main point of life is not optimizing for optimal spending, its optimizing for enjoyment.

Of course the rational break-even level math for some of these purchases can be analyzed, including taking into account tail risks and hassle costs.

But I think the point the author is missing is that some things are affordable luxuries that people enjoy. For a long time I didn't have a car in the downtown part of a city I live in. Public transit+rideshare+zipcar was a totally fine substitute (like the author).

But owning a car is better/easier/more enjoyable/more freeing! We didn't do a fine-grained analysis on how much using zipcar+hertz would cost vs buying a car. The car isn't costing a significant percent of our income, we were annoyed with alternative and wanted it, so we bought it.

If you used a blender 2x a year and it cost $1 to rent vs $30 to buy, would you really consider going through the hassle of saving money to deal with renting a blender? I'm not suggesting a car is the same significance for all, but certainly it can be rational to own one even for people in the same position as the author.

If you actually enjoy owning the car/blender, sure, knock yourself out. But my impression is that a lot of people buy these things thinking they'll bring them joy, and they actually end up with a closet full of junk that they never use weighing them down.

I moved last year and got rid of a lot of stuff; to my surprise, not only do I not miss the things I got rid of, I find myself wishing I'd kept less.

That’s fair but I think it’s a different argument when you have five (5!) kids. A minivan is hardly a luxury item at that point.

Does anyone look out the window and smile at the minivan in their driveway? I don't think a minivan is something people enjoy owning, it's a means to an end - so optimising like this makes a lot of sense. The author's found an approach that works better than owning a minivan all the time, and frankly with five kids I'd definitely want to start teaching them to travel independently as early as possible (bicycles and buses, as in the article) rather than always depending on lifts from their parents.

I think some people treat optimizing spending as a hobby that they enjoy doing, even if it's not strictly rational.

>The main point of life is not optimizing for optimal spending, its optimizing for enjoyment.

The trouble comes when optimizing for enjoyment today causes pain tomorrow.

Well then your just not optimizing for enjoyment across a long enough time scale

> The main point of life is not optimizing for optimal spending, its optimizing for enjoyment

I'm pretty much there. And having got there, I'm not convinced (yet) that it's the right goal at all. Hard to divest from it, however, since enjoyment is hard to walk away from.

Yeah, there are thousands of years of philosophy that still haven't come up with the answer here, so you're not alone by a long shot.

For most people it is a significant amount of their income. AAA puts the average annual car cost at $7k for a small sedan and 10.8k for a truck.

Does that include petrol or not? Either way sounds like an exaggeration.

It's not. Australia calculates fully loaded car costs at $0.72AUD/km. If you add up depreciation, registration, insurance, servicing, fuel, repairs and amortize it the numbers check out.

That must be "average body temperature in the hospital, including the morgue".

In Germany you can tax deduct 35-40 Eurocents/km for you commute. That's reasonably close to the Australian number. The AAA also estimates similar numbers: https://exchange.aaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/AAA-Your...

Just ran the numbers for my 10 year old Honda and my 15,000 km per year.

Accounting for depreciation, interest, insurance, actual service bills and petrol, I ended up with A$0.25 per km and A$4150 per annum, so ATO-sanctioned business travel compensation always rightfully seemed to be a handout to me.

A new BMW can easily cost 6x as much, hence "average body temperature".

In the US, business auto deduction is around 52 cents per mile.

An oldish paid-off relatively inexpensive car will absolutely do better than that on average. But it's actually not unreasonable that the business deduction bases costs on something like a late model leased midrange sedan like a sales rep might use to drive clients around.

That misses the biggest cost, parking. If you work in the city like most people thats easily $15 down the drain.

Surprisingly, ATO is rather generous with this one. Few posts below is my estimate for an oldish car, running the numbers for the "new small car every 3 years" model I still end up significantly below A$0.72. The averages must include luxury cars, which doesn't make much sense.

Is owning a car (or maybe, a second car?) more freeing? Are you that much happier for owning a blender?

I think there's another take on this advice, that it's not about optimizing spending, but simplifying your life and obligations by avoiding the burden of ownership and minimizing debt.

I think the point is more that renting is a pain in the ass and you simply wouldn't bother. You either buy the blender or you don't use a blender. No one would go through the effort of renting one when they don't need it.

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