Will we end up renting EVERYTHING ?

[Bf2142]

Ok, so with Spotify you don't get to own a physical product but your sub does give you unlimited access to a massive library, possibly more music than you can ever listen to.

[TallTom]

Puggit said:

This - it just means someone else paid up front, and will then charge for the pleasure of turning the cost in to a monthly model.

Just like IT organisations turning to the cloud. Someone else's infrastructure, with charges on top.

Well also if you are clever about it, it can cost you less than maintaining the infrastructure you require** & scale accordingly. Also dont discount the pay as you use model for 'experimenting' that could create a huge revenue stream for a bit of a gamble.

• If previously you had a system you would buy 5 years of capacity up front, including maintenance for that system. On the 'Cloud consumption' model, you can build a system that is 1 years worth of capacity and architecture'd/configured to scale up to the 5 years capacity when needed (3-4 years down the line, if predictions are true), the costs will be significantly lower on average over the same timescales

Or you dont maintain the processing capacity for 10,000,000 transactions per second (month end or similar), when you only process on average 10,000 every 12 hours. You just scale at month end and reduce your cost by over 50% + or more even with paying the charges on top.

(I will stop there, but there are great use cases for consumption based models vs traditional owning your own infrastructure/assets)

[MikeDB1]

RB Will said:

I think the manufacturers have quite a significant margin built in.
...
I guess it must only be costing BMW about £40k or less to make an M5?

Probably quite a bit less than that for the actual car, which after all is mostly just a collection of steel, aluminium, rubber, copper wire and other electrical items common to cars of all prices. The M5 has some extra bits, but the major cost in a mass-production car is the design and then the tooling, which can be eye-watering. If people didn't all want new styling, cars would be a lot cheaper, but would still look like 1980s Fiestas or whatever :-)

[PartOfTheProblem]

dartissimus said:

Buying something you don't need, with money you don't have, to impress people you don't like

Really smart

I like Dave Ramsay too, I wish there was a UK equivalent

[J4CKO]

Bf2142 said:

Ok, so with Spotify you don't get to own a physical product but your sub does give you unlimited access to a massive library, possibly more music than you can ever listen to.

Thats completely true, 30 million songs, if they average 4 mins each would need to live well over 200 years to listen to them all once.

[Fastpedeller]

J4CKO said:

Bf2142 said:

Ok, so with Spotify you don't get to own a physical product but your sub does give you unlimited access to a massive library, possibly more music than you can ever listen to.

Thats completely true, 30 million songs, if they average 4 mins each would need to live well over 200 years to listen to them all once.

I've always wondered why people brag about the millions of songs they can listen to, when they can't possibly. When you find one you like, and listen to it again, you're cutting the likelihood of finding another that you like!
I make it 228 years, if you don't listen more than once - and what happens if they add some?

[Rostfritt]

WonkeyDonkey said:

Stick the interest rate up 5% and watch the country crumble.

Plenty of people are on fixed rate deals, so that would make a lot of people safe for the moment but awaiting the expiry date of their deal with dread. I'm a year into a 1.64% 2 year deal. I could have locked in to 5 but the cost to leave the deal would have been higher. Coincidentally I currently get 5% in my current account so overpaying would not make sense.

In reality the treasury and BoE know that if they did that they would crash the economy as nobody would be able to buy a house or move. But a lot of credit is on a way higher rate than that anyway, so would raising the base rate do anything to consumer spending on tat?

From the news this week, it looks like they want to lower the rate anyway, so we might be looking at even more credit to fuel the economy so we can pretend everything is fine for a few more years.

[Digby]

Was your Mum Gwen Guthrie ?

[anonymous-user]

Digby said:

Was your Mum Gwen Guthrie ?

I've not heard that song in something like 25 years

[wibble cb]

We take the middle road these days, in that we use credit where its sensible to do so, but if not, then cash is king

House - mortgaged naturally, but we overpay as much as possible and chunks of capital if we can, it will reduce the term by something like 8 years, yay!

Car - it was financed on a cheap loan deal and paid off after 3 yrs, the car is now 9 years old, I doubt we will replace it soon, but if we do, it will not be a lease.

Credit cards - we have them as its just easier (and offers better protection in some cases), but they are paid off every month, so I would guess that our credit scores are pretty good as we can show we can manage credit.

Holidays - bought and paid for using credit cards, but as above, paid off at the end of each month in full.

Weirdly here in Canada you can rent water heaters/air conditioners and furnaces, we choose not to as the contracts are very restrictive and often in favour of the provider not the user, I had to assume a contract when buying our house, but have since bought it out as it turned out it was a 'whole life' contract where we would have to keep paying till the unit died, something like 15 years, crazy!

We pay for TV/Spotify/Netflix, and rarely buy physical media these days, I used to buy films and CD's weekly, but its now a special event to even think out owning them (star wars etc)

All bills are settled as they come due in full, I owe no one any money bar the mortgage (in fact people owe me money, but thats another story)

Our aim is to not necessarily leave assets/money behind when we are gone, as we don't have kids, its more a symptom of how we were raised, and I am fine with that. Modern life does depend on others consuming via credit, thats how the world works, so long as cheap credit binges are balanced (the current one is going on for far too long) its all good, I don't judge others if they use credit for everything, I just don't find it something I want to do.

Edited by wibble cb on Thursday 30th January 04:36

[h0b0]

Fastpedeller said:

J4CKO said:

Bf2142 said:

Ok, so with Spotify you don't get to own a physical product but your sub does give you unlimited access to a massive library, possibly more music than you can ever listen to.

Thats completely true, 30 million songs, if they average 4 mins each would need to live well over 200 years to listen to them all once.

I've always wondered why people brag about the millions of songs they can listen to, when they can't possibly. When you find one you like, and listen to it again, you're cutting the likelihood of finding another that you like!
I make it 228 years, if you don't listen more than once - and what happens if they add some?

The average length of songs has dropped over the last couple of years due to the way You tube monetizes videos. If people don’t make it to the end you may not get paid so shortening the video/song means you are more likely to see the cash.

Based on that you can drop the average length in your calculation and plan on living to 134 years old havining listened to a lot of music you don’t like. When you hit 60 and reach the rap era you will yearn to go back to your 50’s when you criticized Country. When at 120 you are in the classical zone you can plan your funeral play list.

[Jammez]

Is obsolescence going to force us all down this line eventually?

I've had a few Apple products over the years and they seem to reach a certain age where they become almost impossible to use and stop being supported. Our original Ipad & Imac are now so terminally slow that they're almost unusable.

Are cars going down the same route?

With so much being software based in a vehicle it seems inevitable they will go the same way & be almost unusable/unserviceable as they get older. They're almost at the point where they are no different than a "white good" for many people. As houses become more reliant on tech will they eventually be the same and we'll all end up getting new houses every few years?

[Antony Moxey]

J4CKO said:

Bf2142 said:

Ok, so with Spotify you don't get to own a physical product but your sub does give you unlimited access to a massive library, possibly more music than you can ever listen to.

Thats completely true, 30 million songs, if they average 4 mins each would need to live well over 200 years to listen to them all once.

No, you'd only need to live for four minutes...

[CambsBill]

I've been renting beer since the late '70's

[Fastpedeller]

Antony Moxey said:

J4CKO said:

Bf2142 said:

Ok, so with Spotify you don't get to own a physical product but your sub does give you unlimited access to a massive library, possibly more music than you can ever listen to.

Thats completely true, 30 million songs, if they average 4 mins each would need to live well over 200 years to listen to them all once.

No, you'd only need to live for four minutes...

I said ALL ONCE not ALL AT ONCE!

[Jonno02]

Jammez said:

Is obsolescence going to force us all down this line eventually?

I've had a few Apple products over the years and they seem to reach a certain age where they become almost impossible to use and stop being supported. Our original Ipad & Imac are now so terminally slow that they're almost unusable.

Are cars going down the same route?

With so much being software based in a vehicle it seems inevitable they will go the same way & be almost unusable/unserviceable as they get older. They're almost at the point where they are no different than a "white good" for many people. As houses become more reliant on tech will they eventually be the same and we'll all end up getting new houses every few years?

You can't expect companies to limit things like software progression because there's devices out there that are 10-15 years old that run on an entirely different architecture. There's planned obsolescence and there's devices which are at the end of their life. Sure, they're still usable, but you can't expect manufacturers to support 1st gen products when the tech has moved on severely.

[Jammez]

Jonno02 said:

You can't expect companies to limit things like software progression because there's devices out there that are 10-15 years old that run on an entirely different architecture. There's planned obsolescence and there's devices which are at the end of their life. Sure, they're still usable, but you can't expect manufacturers to support 1st gen products when the tech has moved on severely.

I think you've picked me up wrong, they're not rubbish because they're out dated, the ipad & mac are so slow at doing tasks that when new they did perfectly fine. Several years of software upgrades touted at being improvements & fixes seem to eventually render the devices almost unusable. Hence we go out an buy a new one.

With more & more cars featuring complex software that is constantly needing updated will cars go the same way and become almost impossible to use after a period of time? Imagine if after 7 years the touch screen in your car becomes so ridiculously slow at adjusting the temperature or changing the radio that it makes using the car the most frustrating experience ever! Will this kind of stuff drive the need to replace vehicles so often that renting is the only way it makes sense?

[bloomen]

Jammez said:

With more & more cars featuring complex software that is constantly needing updated will cars go the same way and become almost impossible to use after a period of time? Imagine if after 7 years the touch screen in your car becomes so ridiculously slow at adjusting the temperature or changing the radio that it makes using the car the most frustrating experience ever! Will this kind of stuff drive the need to replace vehicles so often that renting is the only way it makes sense?

Aye. I'd vastly prefer it if infotainment/navigation was kept completely separate from everything else. And replaceable and modular too.

I rented a Clio a while back and its touchscreen was already a scratched mess and sluggish to boot. One bum update or burnout and you might lose ability to control your heating in the depths of winter which effectively makes your car unusable.

[anonymous-user]

Jammez said:

Is obsolescence going to force us all down this line eventually?

I've had a few Apple products over the years and they seem to reach a certain age where they become almost impossible to use and stop being supported. Our original Ipad & Imac are now so terminally slow that they're almost unusable.

Are cars going down the same route?

With so much being software based in a vehicle it seems inevitable they will go the same way & be almost unusable/unserviceable as they get older. They're almost at the point where they are no different than a "white good" for many people. As houses become more reliant on tech will they eventually be the same and we'll all end up getting new houses every few years?

Part of my work includes project managing the building of new housing developments/estates, mostly for property that will be rented out, whether that be 1- 4 bed houses or apartments in a block or tower.

We now work on 30 year NPV figures, meaning that we expect the development to pay it's build costs off and then return a profit within 30 years (based on the rental income) as 30 years is what we estimate it's useful lifespan to be.

Essentially the things we are designing and building are priced so that they only have to last 30 years, and then they can potentially be demolished and replaced with the next set of '30 year' properties.

They may well last an awful lot longer than 30 years, but that is the parameters we are working to right now.

[Rostfritt]

Lord Marylebone said:

Part of my work includes project managing the building of new housing developments/estates, mostly for property that will be rented out, whether that be 1- 4 bed houses or apartments in a block or tower.

We now work on 30 year NPV figures, meaning that we expect the development to pay it's build costs off and then return a profit within 30 years (based on the rental income) as 30 years is what we estimate it's useful lifespan to be.

Essentially the things we are designing and building are priced so that they only have to last 30 years, and then they can potentially be demolished and replaced with the next set of '30 year' properties.

They may well last an awful lot longer than 30 years, but that is the parameters we are working to right now.

How does that work with leases? My flat was built about 30 years ago and was sold on a 125 year lease. What would the process be of them demolishing the block if they came to the end of their useful life? Is my flat then effectively worthless? They are a red brick construction with concrete floors so a pretty standard construction, so have plenty of life in them, but they aren't going to last forever. Will they have to buy people out of flats in tower blocks when they need to be rebuilt?