None. If you live in a city that has enough stuff nearby or public transit sufficient to be considered "walkable" your housing costs are 2-3x higher than they would be otherwise and your taxes are probably higher as well. Far more than the cost of a car.
You keep forgetting other scenarios - someone who works remotely and can just take Uber when he needs to go somewhere during the weekend.
In fact, my son started working at a pizza place before he had his driver's license. It was cheaper to pay Uber $350 a month than his current car note + car insurance.
Just to give you a hint about "affordability", we paid $335K in 2016 to have our house built - 3100 square feet - in the "good school system" in the burbs of a major metropolitan area.
Are you getting screwed over for how much liability your state requires you to carry? The insurance on my $0 value dodge neon in 2012 AFTER a fender bender was $400 a year, because it was on my mom's plan, and had $0 of coverage for my car and only the minimum liability required by the state (which is a reasonable amount).
All of my high school friends have the same experience as I do, a car with near zero value, and no collision coverage, just liability, and paid similarly dirt cheap rates. My friend had coverage on his old dodge van for $120 a year.
My car insurance on my nearly new car is actually double the price, despite me now being significantly older than 18, because I pay for coverage so I could repair it if it gets in an accident.
This is absolutely terrible advice in almost all circumstances. I am curious, what you consider a reasonable amount? People in California with the state minimum end up with $5,000 worth of property damage liability. Hope you have the remaining $75,000 sitting around when you accidentally run into a nice car.
Huh? Yes your housing costs will be higher but your salary will probably be higher too. I was able to save/invest insane amounts of money by ditching my car and job in suburban NJ and moving to Manhattan.
You say this like it's either/or.... which is dishonest.
I have no car, but between grocery delivery and an e-bike, why would I want to continue paying an exorbitant tax to get shitty, cold food two hours after I order it?
Basically - you having a car or not has zero (zilch, nada, nothing) to do with the insane markup these companies charge.
And if the difference in you having a car or not really was doordash... jeez man. Go re-evaluate your life.
Yes my difference between spending money on the average price of car + car insurance + gas + maintenance and using Uber for the weekend and a delivery service for the week is great.
I bet you live in a higher cost of living area and not in the cheaper burbs to be able to take an e-bike everywhere.
You keep conflating the type of wholesale delivery services talked about here (doordash/uber/grubhub/etc) with delivery in general.
I have no problem calling a restaurant and ordering delivery. Or ordering groceries for delivery.
Neither of those delivery services is charging me a 50%+ markup to get food from them. And the quality of the food is generally much higher.
Doordash and Uber are charging me a 50%+ markup.
Basically - I have no problem with you preferring delivery instead of a car (hell - I made a similar choice and take public transit and bike when delivery doesn't work)
I'm saying that's unrelated to the fact that you're getting swindled by these companies.
If you're coming out ahead by using doordash, imagine how much money you could save if you literally just called the same fucking restaurant and ordered delivery directly.
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As for your bet...
I live in SW Atlanta. For comparison - cost of living in Atlanta is almost exactly the national average (101.8%), and the south side of the city is MUCH cheaper (I paid less than you for our house, slightly smaller at ~2200 sqft, but we got nearly a full acre of land)
If you're in Cobb I'm going to laugh my ass off. No wonder you're averse to public transit (can't have those "undesirables" coming in).
Unless you mean you're actually out near cummings or something and just claim it's Atlanta still. In which case... maybe - I don't really head up near Lake Lanier all that often.
Otherwise... plenty of delivery in brookhaven/perimeter/roswell. Honestly, you probably have more options for local delivery than we have across all of these services.
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> If these companies aren't making money, how are they "swindling" anyone?
Well - outside of the obvious damage discussed in the article, a simple answer might be that it's entirely unsustainable, and you're making long term plans based on services that won't exist in a year or two if interest rates keep climbing (even the CEO of grubhub calls food delivery a "crummy" business and wants to pivot to handling the advertising while kicking the delivery service back to the individual restaurants).
In the mean time you're not doing anything to address the real problems with transportation in that area, and you continue to live in an area that's extremely hostile to your long terms goals of being a "digital nomad".
Further... even though these companies aren't making money, it's cheaper to order your food for pickup and pay someone on taskrabbit $18/hour to go get it for you rather than add $3-$5 to every item, a $5-$10 delivery fee, and tip on that new inflated price. So yes - I'd say you're getting swindled still.
> If you're in Cobb I'm going to laugh my ass off. No wonder you're averse to public transit (can't have those "undesirables" coming in).
I'm one of those "undesirables". When I use to go pick up my son, they immediately knew who my son was just by looking at me. Trust me, I'll be invited to a BLM rally way before I would ever be invited to a Klan rally.
> Unless you mean you're actually out near cummings or something and just claim it's Atlanta still. In which case... maybe - I don't really head up near Lake Lanier all that often.
Cumming is very much part of the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA MSA
> In the mean time you're not doing anything to address the real problems with transportation in that area, and you continue to live in an area that's extremely hostile to your long terms goals of being a "digital nomad".
I'll be "living" across the US and taking advantage of Uber/Uber Eats by the end of the year.
> Further... even though these companies aren't making money, it's cheaper to order your food for pickup and pay someone on taskrabbit $18/hour to go get it for you rather than add $3-$5 to every item, a $5-$10 delivery fee, and tip on that new inflated price. So yes - I'd say you're getting swindled still.
There is a markup. But UberEats is much more integrated into the food delivery system than a random task rabbit worker and it is still cheaper.
