relayrides | The Young Urban Unprofessional

Over the last year I did a series of 30 day lifestyle experiments covering everything from nutrition to minimalism. Starting fresh in 2013, I’ve decided to refocus my efforts on a new topic: the Sharing Economy. I had trouble finding a decent definition on the internet so I’ll describe it my own way: If a local commune of hippy entrepreneurs made babies with social media platforms then it would be this phenomena we’re currently seeing called the Sharing Economy.

I have been a part of this sharing “revolution” since back in college. In 2007 out of necessity (a mostly broke and entirely car-less student), I jumped at the chance to join Zipcar, a company that offered a car-sharing service where you could rent cars by the hour (~$7/hour) instead of owning one. Considering that I was hardly making any money at the time and that my parents weren’t going to finance one for me, having access to a car when I needed one was a huge improvement to my daily life. It allowed me to get groceries, run errands, and all of the other things that are difficult to do via public transit.

Zipcar makes it very easy to find cars near your location. I frequently will find a car on the fly and rent it using my smartphone. It works great.

Even after graduating and attaining a decent income, I’m now car-less by choice because the car-sharing programs have been very convenient, accessible, and cost effective for me. After accounting for monthly payments, parking ($100-200/month), auto insurance, excise tax, snow tires, repairs, and other various expenses, the math just makes it a no-brainer for me to participate in car-sharing instead of ownership. All that money that I would be spending on owning a vehicle, I’m dumping into my student loans instead, not a bad tradeoff if you ask me. I still do a fair amount of mooching off my friends and their vehicles but that’s only because our plans frequently line up (mostly weekend outdoorsy shenanigans).

Since Zipcar, I’ve been involved in other sharing programs like RelayRides (similar to Zipcar but peer-to-peer car-sharing instead) and organic farming programs like Community Supported Agriculture (CSA, aka farm-sharing).

The best part about not owning a car is getting to drive other peoples expensive cars, thanks @RelayRides #thanksgiving

First meal of my Enterprise Farms #CSA: penne pasta w/ tomato sauce, red kale & baby bok choi, simple and delicious

So far, these experiences have been economically viable for me which is a major driving factor to me participating in them. Secondly, they are more environmentally sustainable than their alternatives (taking cars off the road and eating local produce). Also, each of these platforms creates a global (ish) community but at a local level so you have access to a wide range of geographic data while still being able to operate within your neighborhood. It’s a win-win on a lot of levels, or “We’re checkin’ a lot of boxes here” as my friends and I like to say.

Over the past 3-4 months I’ve started doing more research into the dozens of other programs and companies involved in the Sharing Economy. My mind is continually blown not only at the number of companies and services that exist but the level of engagement throughout the world. For example, Airbnb is an online housing rental platform that allows you to rent private rooms to/from people in 192 countries and over 30,000 cities! It’s a fantastic idea that I feel like everyone is participating in and that I’m being left behind. With that being said, it’s time for me to get involved.

I’m excited to dive head first into anything and everything that I can find in the sharing world and my 30 day lifestyle experiment blog will be a great mechanism to explore the topic. I don’t think I’ll force myself into the frequency of doing a new concept every 30 days but I still have a lot of interest in the idea of lifestyle experimentation. It has been a route toward self improvement for me so experiments in the sharing economy is certainly a logical extension of my last project.

So please feel free to suggest new topics for me to explore. If you’ve had good/bad/indifferent experiences with the Sharing Economy please share those as well (pun intended). My first experiment will be with Airbnb so look out for future posts in the apartment-sharing theme. I’ll be blogging at least weekly but tweeting as often as possible/tolerable. So if you’re Twitter-savvy check out @YoungandUrban, if you’re Facebook savvy check out My Facebook Page, and if you’re neither then wake up and get with the program or you can sign up for an email digest of my blog’s content (see right column of my website). Wish me luck as I spend 2013 doing lifestyle experiments in the Sharing Economy.

We got back to Boston from two days of climbing sore, tired, hungry, and happy. Immediately after returning to civilization, a few of us gave a winter climbing safety seminar to students from the Tufts Mountain Club. There was no better way to teach this topic than to show up all geared out from a weekend of climbing. After this meeting I had planned to hang out with Sarah. She just moved into a new house and has been complaining about not having any food b/c without a car it’s sometimes hard to get to a grocery store. She has some basics but nothing for a serious meal. However, after a weekend of being out in the cold I wasn’t exactly psyched about going on a grocery shopping adventure. I was more interested in a beer and a nap. However, I knew that it wouldn’t take much effort and it would make her really happy, so it would be a win-win for everyone if I brought her shopping. I offered to use Zipcar or RelayRides to take her to Trader Joes.

Both companies do car sharing by the hour only Zipcar has a fleet of new(ish) cars parked in strategic locations throughout the city while RelayRides is peer-peer car sharing, so you are renting someone else’s car by the hour (the Myers Bridges ENFJ in me makes me like this community sharing model better). To read up about how this process works, both as a car borrower and a car lender, check out their website, it’s actually a quite ingenious concept. We looked up Zipcars in the area but due to the last minute nature of our grocery shopping expedition, the only cars available were $10.75/hour and I didn’t feel great about spending $11 to go to the grocery store. Usually there are $8 cars available of you reserve them ahead of time, but today we were in a time crunch. Then I realized that I had $25 of free driving credit with RelayRides as I am a new member and hadn’t done any driving yet. For all intents and purposes, the process is exactly the same as Zipcar. You login online, put in your location and your timeframe, and search for cars that are conveniently close and in the right price range.

I found a brand new Honda Civic right down the street. I just had to hold my card to the sensor on the windshield and the car unlocked itself. We managed to make it to and from Trader Joes in less than an hour, spending only $6 of my $25 of free driving credit. So I didn’t have to spend any money and I was able to help Sarah stock her kitchen with food. While searching for cars online I found out that someone has a really nice convertible up for rent on RelayRides (they provide bomber insurance apparently). So once the weather gets a bit warmer I plan to do some cruising around with the top down. The best part about it is that the car is someone else’s! Win for me.

Me outside of Trader Joe's in my climbing getup with two of our own shopping bags. Look at us being all green and stuff :)

Sarah was grateful that I used my random act of kindness on her today. She came up with the suggestion for next month’s experiment that I should repeat this month’s experiment only do random acts of kindness for her every day. I said I’d think about it :)