Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Rent is too damn high


In India toilets seem to be a luxury item.

Back closer to home...

"A 23-year-old Google employee lives in a truck in the company's parking lot and saves 90% of his income"
The idea started to formulate while Brandon — who asked to withhold his last name and photo to maintain his privacy on campus — was interning at Google last summer and living in the cheapest corporate housing offered: two bedrooms and four people for about $65 a night (roughly $2,000 a month), he told Business Insider.
"I realized I was paying an exorbitant amount of money for the apartment I was staying in — and I was almost never home," he says. "It's really hard to justify throwing that kind of money away. You're essentially burning it — you're not putting equity in anything and you're not building it up for a future — and that was really hard for me to reconcile."

As for food and showers, that's all on Google's campus. He eats breakfast, lunch, and dinner at work and showers every morning in the corporate gym post-workout.

12 comments:

ampersand said...

Good for him. He needs to save his money to pay California's exorbitant income tax.

Shouting Thomas said...

And I own my little 800 sq. ft. cabin in the Catskills free and clear (except for the taxes)!

Methadras said...

So let me understand this. This kid discovers that he can live in his truck, essentially a motor home and this is news? If he had a motor home outside or a van conversion, would this story be any different?

Chip Ahoy said...

Excellent. Guys can get away with stuff like this. It's odd but not unusual. I know a guy who did a similar thing on his own property. He rented his home and lived in a shack on the lot of the home. It wasn't an ownership thing. He inherited a lot of acreage that his dad collected by brokering cattle. His family has a lot of money and he personally has a lot of land, horses, and the rest. Another house built out there. But there his is living in a shed in his yard here in town. And he's 6'4". That's edge to edge of the shack. Also, he is a seriously major philosophical type asshole. All discussions with him are exercises in futility. Rarely can you reach in and contact the real person.

So we're sitting there in the shed that he's showing me and I go, "Jesus Christ, Hugh, this is like fuk'n David T horeau."

An unusually long silence, for Hugh.

"Wow. You're exactly right. I actually never thought of that."

He was in real life, acting it out in the physical world observable to all, imitating a hero without even knowing it . Is that psychological or what?

He also slaughtered pigs right there in a trailer on Englewood property. The street of his property. A couple of times. Blood runs out of the trailer into the street sewage. It is a big bloody mess, straight up Silence of the Lambs inside the trailer. Hugh described this to me.

Then he felt guilty about a lifetime of pig slaughter and cattle auctioning and brokering and buying of odds and ends here and there until a fortune in animals and land is amassed, he went full on vegetarian and bugged the living piss out of everybody regarding every single facet of vegetarianism of a full decade.

Until one night I made rumaki for another's party, the tray was passed around and he plunked one right into his mouth. Chicken liver niblet wrapped in bacon with the crunch of fresh water chestnut and globbed with brown sugar and baked to crunchy perfection. Plunk. Right into his gaping maw. And I'm all, "You m#%*th$k*#*$r, a full decade of your obnoxious bullshit and then this? No. No rumaki for you!" Plunk.

Plunk plunk plunk.

Five rumakis right there. "Well, it's never good to be absolutist about things." And that was the end of vegetarianism and all defense of it.

But speaking of David Thoreau.

At another card playing gathering I was observing the people play cards without participating myself. Hugh was on about tarot cards. He kept pronouncing them differently from everybody else, to separate himself from others by his authentic pronunciation signaling his superior knowledge, "tag-ROH" cards over and over this pronunciation that's different is emphasized. Hugh is not the only philosopher there. Two others there will be familiar with philosophers but not the rest I'm not so sure what or who they know. They're not educated, but who knows?

Tired of hearing tahROH over and over and knowing others noted it too I said, "Well, I don't know much about reading tahROH but I have read some Emerson."

A joke he liked so much he named his dog tahROH, a weird little dog hit by a car that peed by standing on his front two legs, like a circus dog except peeing, and we never did know if the name referred to the cards or to the philosopher.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

It's smart for a single guy. Why not?

In Hillary-Bernie land, WE would pay off this guy's student loans.

Soon, he will be living debt free and he will save enough to buy an actual home somewhere. Probably not in San Fransisco or the over-priced bay area in general - but somewhere.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

That truck is depressing, but if all he does is sleep in there - again - why not? I wonder where he parks? He's not paying property tax, and that right there must really irritate the leftwingers.

bagoh20 said...

When I first moved to California, I lived in a broken down van and washed up in a McDonalds bathroom. No shower, no bed, no money. This young dude is living the life.

ampersand said...

Wait til the California Department of Camaraderie shows up. There's enough room for 12 undocumented families in there, not counting the cab and gas tank.

William said...

Week ends are weak ends. Maybe, like Thoreau, he goes home on week ends.

Titus said...

Please my mortgage and loft fees are $4,500 a month.

When you live in fab hoods expect to pay.

tits.

look at my body.

Titus said...

if you want to see face and dick pics that will cost you....just saying

Leland said...

A few former coworkers and I were discussing this in regards to SpaceX. California companies really do treat employees like crap. They pay you what appears to be an impressive salary, but then expect you to work 14 hour days. When I worked in California, it was 16 hour days with no weekends off. So yeah, an apartment or other dwelling is near useless other than to sleep. The company provides meals and other accommodations, so what do you have to complain about? Except burn out.

I work 40 hour weeks with flexible schedule and permission to work from home whenever that is more convenient. My 2,300 sq ft has a monthly mortgage of $1,200/month. So I'm little surprised that I keep seeing more California license plates around here.