Women in Red: The Sharing Economy: 7 things you should borrow instead of buy

Kate Ashford  |  01:50 PM, Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Remember the book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten? It was written by a Unitarian minister who thought the wisdom handed down when we were 5 years old was the best: Play fair and don’t hit people. And, he wrote, “share everything.”

That’s a good principle in life, really, but what if sharing could also save money? What if you could split the cost of your major expenses? (Or your minor ones?) What if you didn’t have to own a car, or a lawn mower, or an electric drill, but you could use one whenever you wanted? The combination of the recession and a country that’s more green-minded than ever has produced a generation more willing to share their stuff — or less willing to shell out for big-ticket items if they aren’t using them all the time.

Before you accuse me of being some kind of commune-loving, share-the-lawnmower hippie, there’s a capitalist side to this as well — for instance, the proliferation of people who rent out their own stuff to offset the cost. The website Rentalic.com, which describes itself as “an online rental marketplace,” recently carried listings for a 12-inch miter saw in New York City for $45 a day. In Berkeley, Ca., you can rent a dorm-room-sized fridge for $5 a month. In Honolulu, you can rent a VW Beetle for $20 a day.

There are obviously limits to this resurgent “Sharing Economy” — we’ll just go ahead and leave out mattresses and half-eaten food. And “sharing” doesn’t necessarily mean “convenient.” If it did, everyone would do it. Consider that out of more than 200 million licensed drivers in the U.S., only 448,574 of them participate in a car-sharing program. (That’s less than half of one percent, for those of you who didn’t whip out your calculators.) Sharing means a particular kind of lifestyle — planning your usage of something, making do with things that aren’t brand spanking new, and forgoing a certain kind of convenience. Not everyone is going to be interested. But in the spirit of being servicey here at Bundle, let’s focus on the big winners for you to consider when sharing and renting goods:

Cars. Car-sharing has been around for years. But until recently, it hadn’t really caught on. My husband and I belong to Zipcar, because (like many Manhattanites) we don’t own a vehicle, but in other cities, people were happy as clams to hang onto their wheels. But Zipcar turned a profit last year for the first time ever, and other companies are starting to copy the business model: Hertz’s Connect service and Enterprise’s WeCar both offer rental cars by the hour. And there’s no doubt that car-sharing saves money. The average American spends $463 a month on car payments, gas and repairs, according to Bundle.com data. “Eighteen percent of the average income is spent on owning a car,” says Rachel Botsman, author of What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. “And it’s idle for 23 hours a day. When people switch to car sharing, on average they save 40 percent per year.”

Rides. Maybe you don’t want to share an entire car. Maybe you just need a ride to Ikea? There’s an app for that. For instance, Weeels is a cab-sharing app for New York City folks. Headed to Chinatown? The app will search for someone nearby who’s going in the same direction. Once it makes a match, the app will send you a meet-up location and send a car to pick you and your travel compadre up. (Let’s hope he isn’t a close talker.) And of course, services to help you organize a more traditional ride are available as well. For instance, GoLoco.org helps members organize trip sharing, and eRideShare.com points members toward carpool partners or other members driving to the airport. “To the extent that that can begin to happen on a larger scale, that could be a really huge way for people to save money,” says Janelle Orsi, an attorney in Berkeley, Ca., and co-author of The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community.

Workspaces. If you work in an office and never have to worry about how much your broadband costs, well, lucky you. But for small business owners and the self-employed, finding an affordable place to lay your laptop can be a real financial headache. Enter places like the Hub, a business that offers coworking spaces in Atlanta and the California Bay area. Or New Work City, which provides coworking space in (you guessed it) New York. Or the COOP in Chicago. For a modest membership fee, you can buy drop-in privileges a few times a month, a desk for 20 hours a week, or full-time why-not-just-live-there access — it’s up to you. But you’ll be sharing the cost of the lease, the printer, the phone lines, the printer, the high-speed Internet, and perhaps even a pleasant receptionist. Need a conference room to meet a client? Voila. Plus, you don’t have to toil away by yourself all day long. “I work at one of these usually about one day a week,” Orsi says. “It creates community.”

Bikes. So you can afford the spiffy helmet, but not the bike itself? (Or maybe you just have no place to store it?) “Almost every major city has a bike sharing system,” says Neal Gorenflo, publisher of Shareable magazine. (Yes, there’s even a magazine for sharing.) For $60 a year in Minneapolis, you get access to Nice Ride Minnesota’s large collection of two-wheelers. For $75 a year, you can choose from Capital Bikeshare’s more than 1,100 bikes in Washington D.C. That’s a big savings over the $390 a year this New York Times article estimates you would shell out to own one. And just think: You’ll never have to fix a bunged-up bike chain ever again.

Tools. While many sharing opportunities are confined to major urban areas, tool sharing can be done in any community. “In a handful of cities around the country there are actual tool lending libraries,” Orsi says. By that she means libraries — as in, the book kind — that also lend drills, saws and ladders. (Don’t believe me? Check out this one at the Oakland Public Library in California.) But you don’t need a formal library to make this happen. In some neighborhoods, people take it upon themselves to create a master list of who owns what — and then you can borrow accordingly. Need a staple gun? Your neighbor Sue has one. A hedge trimmer? That’d be at Charlie’s house. Home improvement and repair — $263 a month, according to Bundle data — gets cheaper when you don’t have to buy your own pair of wire strippers.

Time. What’s that, you say? In some communities, neighbors or friends set up time banks. For every hour they spend doing something for someone else, they get an hour of service for themselves. So if you spend an hour installing shelves for your elderly neighbor, you might earn an hour of babysitting from the neighbor down the street. You can also trade like for like, setting up something like a babysitting co-op — you keep your neighbors’ kids one Saturday night, and they keep yours the next. Some parents even use the concept to set up a summer camp co-op instead of splashing out for pricey formal camps. “There are so many people with untapped skills or time they could be putting into something,” Orsi says. For info on setting up your own time bank or finding one near you, visit timebanks.org.

Whatever you can. Some folks who have houses near major venues — airports, sports stadiums — rent out parking spots in their driveways. Those with a spare room or apartment over the garage offer nightly lodging on sites like AirBnB.com (or a free couch on CouchSurfing.org). People with an over-abundant crop of fruit or vegetables can advertise the surplus on NeighborhoodFruit.com. Other neighborhood swaps and rentals can be found on sites like ShareSomeSugar.com and NeighborGoods.net. College students in New York City with a little free time can make money running errands for people on AgentAnything.com. And, Orsi says, “a friend of my co-author was interested in sharing goats.” Not sure exactly what you’d like to share? Check out the list of sharing sites on Mesh, the “network of sharing.” Because, really, you just never know.