Ray E. Toler, Jr.

I’m going through a phase.

Well of course I am. I’ve been going through nothing but phases for my entire life. But this time I’m aware of it and it feels a little different. This one started a few years back for a variety of reasons (many of which I suspect I’ll write about down the road), but can be best summarized as “the end of the acquisition phase.”

Or more accurately, “how did I end up with all this crap?”

Actually, just watch this (at least the first minute and a half), then continue reading.

Prior to our move, Mary and I sold, donated, or trashed a lot of our stuff. We were moving from a 3,500 square foot house into a 1,500 square foot apartment and there was no way it was all going to fit. So the great purge of aught-seven began.

In some cases, it was really nice stuff. In other cases, it wasn’t useful to us, but would certainly have been useful to someone else. More often than not, however, our reaction was, “why did we ever think we needed that?”

Take a moment and look around whatever space you’re currently inhabiting. Look critically at each thing. Why did you buy it? How long have you had it? When was the last time you used it? As we went through our stuff, the litmus test for keep or not came down to a highly complex mental equation that can’t possibly be described without a psychic link. The closest summation I can provide is that if it hadn’t been used in a year, it was a very good candidate for oblivion unless it was either very small or very expensive. The latter became my personal prime criteria. “Given that I haven’t used this [insert obscure object here] in over ten years, how much would it cost to replace it if I ended up needing it again?

The worst part of all of this is that I am largely helpless to prevent this ongoing collection of objects. I am genetically predisposed to packrattery. As evidence, I present a ziploc bag of peaches.

Peaches

Around 2002, my parents moved. Among their belongings was a large coffin-style deep freeze that they bought (used!) in 1978. The thing was indestructible. It was also apparently magic. If you asked my mother what was for dinner on any given day during the two decades following 1980, she would tell you, “leftovers.” I never could remember the last time she had cooked an “original” meal – it was always “leftovers.”

It is my belief that she purchased a pound of ground beef in 1979 and placed it in the freezer which then dutifully produced leftovers for the next 23 years until it was at last unable to maintain the wormhole connecting it to whatever parallel universe feeds on ground beef and secretes leftovers as waste energy.

So what, you might ask, does that have to do with said ziploc baggie full of peaches? Well, the freezer wasn’t entirely full of leftovers. There were various other things lurking at the bottom under the fog. Past the occasional tub of ice cream or package of frozen burritos, buried beneath the sedimentary layer of paleolithic leftovers, you would find glistening ziploc time capsules covered in an inch-thick protective layer of razor-sharp, quartz-like ice crystals. Leather gloves were required to extract these without needing stitches. Included in this treasure trove was a quart-size baggie full of some sort of yellow-sliced fruit pieces and labeled, simply, “Peaches – Alabama.”

We hadn’t lived in Alabama since 1982.

Put aside, for the moment, the horror of realizing that we were looking at a twenty year-old bag of sliced peaches. Ignore that these peaches were eligible to vote, almost of legal drinking age, and just five years shy of being able to serve in the House of Representatives. What is most amazing about these peaches being in the freezer is that my mother transported them across state lines three separate times.

These peaches, which were grown, harvested, and purchased in Alabama, moved with us to Georgia, Virginia, and Texas. Thinking about this logistically, every time we moved my mother would have to have taken the peaches out of the magical leftover-spewing deep freeze on moving day, stored them in a non-magical household freezer, lovingly placed them in an ice-packed cooler for the interstate drive, transferred them to the ordinary freezer in the new house, and then placed them back in the safety of suspended animation below the leftover zone when the deep freeze was finally delivered by the moving truck.

Three states. 2,326 miles. Twenty years.

Peaches.

PEACHES!

It is this biological heritage, this genetic baggage handed down through the eons, that makes it impossible for me to get rid of things, especially shiny, sparkly, technology things. Mary once guilted me into throwing out a largely useless, tiny 3″ IBM green-screen monitor. I tossed it in the dumpster in a fit of rebellious “oh yes I CAN SO throw things away” and then went to bed. After an hour of tossing and turning, I put my clothes on and fished it back out. I actually went dumpster diving to retrieve a miniscule and obsolete monitor. Despite it now having a nervous twitch and being slightly out of focus, I still kept it for another three months.

Since moving to Milwaukee, I have gotten pretty good about throwing at least some things out. Granted, I still have every videogame system I’ve ever owned dating back to an Atari 2600 and an original Pong game from Sears. I still have half of the books that were in my library prior to the move. I still have every shred of paper from my MBA program.

But I’m getting much, much better and I’ve thrown a lot out. I’ve been carting some of these things around since high school: homework, previous versions of software, Happy Meal toys… all finally losing their grip on me. And with each bag sliding down the trash chute (or going in the recycle bin for all you horrified hippies out there), I feel just a tiny bit of weight lifted from my shoulders. And I’m about to get serious about not having stuff. Really serious.

Payments

For the last ten months, Mary and I have only had one car. We gave my car to a nephew before leaving Texas with the intention of buying a new one here once I got a job and/or we sold the house. But during that time, I’ve grown to like not having a car. I haven’t really missed having it, I don’t have a payment, and it’s one less thing for me to deal with.

But it looks like my job search may finally be ending, so I spent several hours this past weekend looking at cars online. I built dream cars. I contemplated tolerating an econo-box. I even looked at a couple of hybrids just for grins (even with higher gas prices, they’re still not as cost effective).

I constructed an Excel spreadsheet to give me projected fuel cost calculations for each model. I incorporated insurance and maintenance. In short, I did my homework.

And after all of that I don’t think I’m going to buy one.

But apparently it’s not for the reasons that most people go carless. I did a quick Google search on “living without a car” and was dumbfounded by the level of smug, self-satisfied, self-righteous, earth-loving, tree-hugging, global warming hippie crap I found. Instead of the tips or general overviews I was looking for, I found everything from anti-corporate diatribes to Al Gore disciples screaming that it was my “responsibility as an American” to get rid of my car to some pretentious soccer mom patting herself on the back for “riding the bus with the poor.”

The following are not reasons that I going car-free.

• To reduce my “carbon footprint”
• To “do my part for the environment”
• To avoid depleting our precious remaining fossil fuels and natural resources
• To impress everyone by “going green”
• To be a “good world citizen”
• To express solidarity with the poor
• To feel smugly superior to those helpless prisoners of Big Oil and Madison Avenue
• To satisfy my responsibility as an American
• To stick it to the man!!!

You get the picture. Nope, my reasons are entirely selfish, capitalist, and greedy. In a nutshell, I don’t want to spend that much money, time, or mental energy on another piece of stuff.

Here’s a quick fiscal breakdown. I’m going to use two scenarios: “Best” and “Worst.” Best consists of a totally generic, lifeless, soulless, econo-box. The specific model doesn’t matter because they’re all the same. They look the same, they cost the same, and they get about the same gas mileage. But they’re relatively inexpensive. Right? To put it in the absolute best light, I’m using only the highway mileage estimate.

“Worst” for this comparison is a tricked out Nissan 350z. It has bluetooth, gps, cameras, satellites, cruise control, and a small thermonuclear device if you get the premium package. (Carpeted floor mats, however, are extra.) It gets you there and leaves you with a vapid smile on your face along with an unnatural craving to smoke a cigarette. To make sure that this harlot gets her due, I’m using only the city mileage estimate.

In both comparisons I assumed:

• a commute distance of 5 miles (it’s actually 4.2, but I rounded up to be conservative)
• 250 days (50 weeks) of commuting
• 10k discretionary miles for a total of 12k miles/year (probably too high)
• 60 month financing at 6%
• a gas price of $4.50/gallon (possibly too low)
• annual insurance costs of about $700, though I think that’s low, even for the econo-box, because I apparently live in the worst zip code outside of Tehran.
• four oil changes per year at $50/each
• a registration fee of $80/year

As anyone with a car knows, I’m probably underestimating my costs. I’m not allowing for major non-warranty repairs, accidents, tickets, depreciation, etc.

So the cheapest possible option for me is still over $500/month. Over five years, I’m looking at spending between $31k and $63k – roughly double the sales price of the cars!

So how do I get to work? Well, there are a few ways:

Walking/Bicycling: Free, 45-90 minutes, only in good weather, my schedule.
Motorcycle (45 mpg): $30/month, 10-15 minutes, only in good weather, my schedule.
Bus: $75/month, $900/year, 35-45 minutes, year round, their schedule.
Taxi: $458/month, $5,500/year, 10-15 minutes, year round, my schedule.

I could also combine those with other options like having Mary drop me off/pick me up or carpooling with a co-worker who lives in my building.

There are four primary things making this a feasible choice for me:

1. Short commute
2. No kids
3. Living downtown and within walking distance to most anything I need
4. We do already have one car

Are there tradeoffs? Of course. There are times when there’s just no substitute for having a car. Most of those, however, involve getting more stuff and that, of course, is what I’m trying to avoid.

So I’m going to try it. I’m quite certain there will be days that I will be cursing myself. The benefit to you is that there will be a high probability of entertaining rants. On the whole, however, I think it will be worth it . The fiscal savings that can be applied directly to getting out of debt combined the mental health benefit of not carrying around a giant bag of peaches for the next ten years is just too seductive for me to pass up.