>>Paying a startup $15/mo to reclaim even 40 mins a month of my personal time is a no brainer.
Just asking, how do you wish to spend those 40 mins you are likely to save per month? Which you will likely get in installments of 20 minutes per 15 days(avg 1 minute/day).
I'd spend them doing anything aside from random boring necessary chores. If I could pay someone to actually handle all the boring mundane stuff for me just so I could have an extra hour a day to play video games, I'd do it. I have more money than time right now and you can't buy time ever, especially not while you're younger. I don't want to wait until retirement to have time to do whatever I want all the time. There is no promise of tomorrow. I'm not sure that I'll be alive in a week, much less in 40 years. I'm not willing to spend more time than I need to planning for tomorrow when I can enjoy my life now, and maximizing that is worth what is a relatively small sum for me right now to not have to think about small chores from which I derive no pleasure.
>>If I could pay someone to actually handle all the boring mundane stuff for me just so I could have an extra hour a day to play video games, I'd do it.
Sure, makes perfect sense for anything that goes beyond >1hr a day.
But lets do the math here. Lets say some one charge $15-$20 per hour do your chores(Going by the minimum+ wage). For two hours you are now looking at $450-$600/month expenses for that. If you can afford that and are willing to spend that kind of money, then it makes perfect sense.
To be fair, this is probably a trade-off people in SF are already making. I know I am in NYC - if I was willing to spend an extra hour/day commuting (and that's only weekday, of course), I could easily save $500/month or more on rent.
Lets do some more math. Lets fix that figure to something like $600/month. That is $7200/year. Over a decade that is $72,000.
Say if you started when you were 21. By the time you are 46- just the savings would be $180,000. Progressively invest that in a good fund. That could mean a home right there or a 401k equivalent, Just on your travel expenses. To me, that's a decent nest egg.
I don't believe the parent poster was serious when he said he'd like to spend it all because he refused to believe he would be alive in a few decades. In most cases the person would generally be alive, live long, and be poor in old age. What follows next is blaming government, youngsters, immigrants, bankers and what not for your predicament while very clearly it was your choices at work all the time.
Now don't tell me spending extra time on commute is hard. Obviously it is, you don't get to an extra 401k by 46 by walking in the park.
25 years * 5 days a week * 48 working weeks a year = 6000 hours spent commuting.
Assuming 8 hours sleeping and 8 hours working, those 6k translate to 375 days worth of waking hours and 750 days worth of non-work hours.
Alternatively, you could devote those 6K hours entirely to working and get the equivalent of 3.125 extra working years over that time (6000 / (48 * 8 * 5) = 3.125), which should exceed a nominal $180K pretty easily.
For me it would be not needing to experience the little bit of stress I see when the fuel indicator is edging down to 1/4 tank and wondering when I'm going to squeeze in a trip to the gas station when I'd really rather be somewhere else.
Does it really stress you out that much? The only time low fuel stresses me out is on I-80 when I know for a fact the closest station is a hundred miles away.
I also don't get these 40 minute estimates. On one of my little motorbikes I used to fuel up and back on the road in no more than 3 minutes, and my truck doesn't take more than 5-8.
If I stay on my optimized routes I can get from work to home pretty quickly. But if I stray to hit a gas station, I never know when I'm going to end up stuck in a micro-jam that sucks back 10 minutes or more. Each way. And it feels like an hour.
First world problems for sure, but I'd happily pay to be rid of that inconvenience. And while they're at it, I'd pay an extra $10 for them to do a quick wash of my car once a month.
Well in that case make sure you have your car parked exactly where they want it parked to be refilled. Else you have to now experience additional stress of getting the car to that place and that falling levels of fuel in your tank at the same time.
Its not like they track your car through GPS and show up at the exact place where you are empty.
"Rather than delivering “on-demand,” Yoshi users schedule refueling one time, typically at a place of work where they park for hours during the day without needing their vehicle."
and
"This “set it and forget it” approach allows Yoshi to optimize their delivery routes, explains CEO and co-founder Nick Alexander."
I don't think it works like Uber, where you can order for something and get it on demand. You need to tell them where you will be a few days in advance for them to chart our their route to finally reach you. You need to be aware/anticipate that you will run out of gas a few days before and then schedule the refill and keep your car unused for a good few hours.
Firstly that is more like 20 minutes. Secondly, I don't know of any one with a schedule so packed that they can't spare 20 minutes once two weeks.
The only two situations I can imagine is if you are poor and work more than one job and have to often rush. Which in case it doesn't make sense to pay more for something like this. Or if your time is worth in thousands of dollars an hour/minutes. Which in case you anyway have drivers and servants to do that for you.
Or may be if you are meeting your kids once in a few days/weeks and you just can't wait anymore to meet them not even a few minutes.
I'm assuming you don't have kids. Kids slurp up every extra moment. And you as a parent are fine with that. Except in the morning when you need to get to work and don't have gas in your car. Then, I'd wager this service is worth even more than $15. In fact, I think these guys should send their email marketing out at 9:45 when harried parents have arrived at work and are still painfully replaying their mornings, trying to come up with a solution to skipping the refueling line.
I'd imagine this would work if this is a daily scene. You wake up every single day and learn you are out of gas. I don't think it happens to anybody everyday.
Either way the service requires you let them know a few days in advance and keep your vehicle unused for a good few hours. If you need to plan out things like filling gas a few days in advance, I'm very sure you wouldn't end up surprised not having gas in the car in the first place.
Just asking, how do you wish to spend those 40 mins you are likely to save per month? Which you will likely get in installments of 20 minutes per 15 days(avg 1 minute/day).