Owning nothing is now a luxury, thanks to a number of subscription start-ups - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/style/rent-subscription-clothing-furniture.html Many young American urbanites have resigned themselves to a life of non-ownership, abandoning the dream of their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents before them, often out of financial necessity. But renting isn’t just a matter of necessity these days. It’s become almost posh. While paying to borrow décor, clothing and offices is nothing new, the options have grown substantially in recent years. Now, one can fill a temporary home with rented coffee tables and sofas from Crate & Barrel and West Elm, and refresh a wardrobe with rented outfits from clothing lines like Theory and Vince or mall chains like Loft and Express. Some of those garments can even be returned to special drop boxes at WeWork, where their short-term wearers might also rent office space. It doesn’t end there: Fancy camping tents, Vitamix blenders, Dyson vacuums and Oculus Rifts are all up for lease too. Some would say we’re living in the Gilded Age of renting. “We were raised to save and invest and buy a home and do all of these things,” said Miki Reynolds, 38, who pays a monthly fee for much of what she uses in her day-to-day life in Los Angeles. “But my mentality to currently rent — it’s not YOLO. It’s more living in the present as much as planning for the future because I feel like nothing is guaranteed.” Ms. Reynolds, the executive director of a nonprofit that provides resources like office access and mentoring to entrepreneurs, rents both her downtown apartment and her co-working space. She regularly swaps out high-end clothing and accessories through a subscription to Rent the Runway. She also pays a monthly fee to a furniture start-up called Fernish for a rental bed and floor lamp, as well as a borrowed coffee table and sofa. It’s easy and flexible to live this way, Ms. Reynolds said. The co-working space removes the administrative annoyances of running an office. She feels like she’s getting a deal on trendy furniture and clothing without being stuck with any of it. And she likes that she could pick up and move if she wanted, no moving trucks required. The point of ownership, Ms. Reynolds said, is not to own at all, but rather “to experience the thing.”

I can't even imagine renting a bed. The wooden bedframe I use has been in the family for like 100 years. I can't imagine my own bed not really being my own.

I can see vehicles going this way soon too. Pay $200-250 per month for a vehicle all-in, with different tiers of vehicle at different price points. People already lease every 3 years, why not just make it a service?

did they seriously just re-invent renting

This article just reads like a thinly veiled advertisement...

Wouldn't be a bad idea, but I doubt the Automakers would go for it. And if they can lobby to prevent Tesla from selling their vehicles without going through them, they can stop this dead

a few automakers are already doing a car subscription service (volvo comes to mind, i remember seeing a bunch of ads about it)

I'm going to be honest, renting furniture is not a consequence of millennials being poor, it's a consequence of vapid people thinking they are too good to buy used. There's no excuse for not owning a fucking bed.

You sure are being judgemental about this given that it's just a different choice. If they want to choose to rent stuff because they prefer it, why do you think that reflects on their character?

Beds aren't even that fucking cheap. You can get a mattress at Walmart for next to nothing now, then go to goodwill or a garage sale and buy a metal bed-frame for like 5-10 bucks.

“I want nice things, but I’m also not going to drop thousands of dollars all at once on a bunch of things when I don’t know in a year if I’m going to be in the same place,” Ms. Morton said. “I don’t need to own a lot of stuff — the two-car garage, the three-story house in the suburbs — to be successful,” Ms. Pellizzon said. “I’m actually trying to create an alternative lifestyle that works for me and that doesn’t necessarily mean all the trappings of what was considered successful in even the early aughts before the housing bubble burst.” Seems perfectly reasonable for mobile young professionals.

Construction workers have been doing this for decades in campers. Work a job, drag up and move on to the next.

I hate the idea of renting, a missed payment means it may be taken away from you, and no matter how long you rent you never keep it.