It's fun to get something new, but the thrill wears off pretty quickly, and the costs of ownership can be endless. For proponents of the anti-stuff movement, renting is in.

Having shelled out close to $700 in car repairs last month and facing a chimney repair that is creeping up to $5,000 or more, I'm fed up with the endless cost of owning stuff.

Ownership is supposed to be the key that unlocks the American dream. But there are hidden costs that no one talks about, like the constant repairs and upgrades and attention that possessions demand.

Is it any wonder that people are flocking to the small but feisty anti-stuff movement, bartering instead of buying, swapping instead of shopping and, in the latest trend, opting to rent things rather than own them at all?

All hail the new "transumerism"! It's hard to tell whether temporary materialism is any cheaper than keeping up with the Joneses, but an unfettered way of life looks awfully appealing right now.

A lease on life
What, exactly, is transumerism?

The transumer philosophy is largely based on a "leasing lifestyle," according to an analysis by Trendwatching.com, a global trend-spotting company based in the Netherlands. Rather than spending your money on individual things, which you then have to keep (suddenly an old-fashioned idea), you purchase access to an array of objects and experiences. It can save time as well as cash: The more you own, the more you have to worry about, maintain and upgrade.

"We're seeing the rejection of the accumulation society," says Kristina Dryza, a trend consultant based in London, in her report "Temporariness" (.pdf file).

Trendwatching has been tracking the lifestyle rental trend for a few years now, and CEO Reinier Evers says the worldwide recession is making nonownership more appealing.

"The 'save money' aspect of the transumer trend is definitely making it more popular," he says.

Some say it's better for you, too.

"You can get rid of the stuff that is clogging your life," said Eric Ginsberg, the vice president of marketing for BookSwim, a Netflix-like service for books. "Free it up for what you actually want now, and when you're done with those things you can go ahead and get rid of them without the constant cost and expenses."

Oh, the things you can rent!
Transumers are able to enjoy a vast and ever-changing number of experiences. For example:

* Why buy one pricey designer bag when you can rent a dozen at Bag Borrow or Steal or From Bags to Riches?

* Why pay for the upkeep of a car when you can car-share for a fraction of the cost, renting a Prius for your grocery trip, a Mini for your date and a truck for bringing home your latest Craigslist bargain? (Check out CarSharing.net to find dozens of services, like Zipcar, in cities all over the world.)

* Why buy a piece of artwork when you can adorn your home with a series of low-priced rentals from a local museum or online gallery such as Art Rent & Lease, or even free pieces on loan from a library?

Less is more in the short term
There's nothing new about renting, of course.

Renting has long been an alternative to buying things that were unaffordable or pointless to purchase because you needed them only temporarily (whether a tuxedo, pressure washer or diamond tiara for the Oscars).

But the seesawing economy has highlighted a big advantage of renting: Smaller, incremental payments are more manageable when you're worried about cash flow and job security.

Is renting really a cheaper way to go? It can be. Using a car-sharing service only when you need it can save hundreds, possibly thousands, over the full-on cost of car ownership.

When you count gas, maintenance, insurance, repairs, loan payments and depreciation, the average cost of car ownership is $8,095 a year, according to AAA. Yet the majority of cars in North America are driven only 66 minutes a day, according to a 2008 study by Susan Shaheen of the University of California, Berkeley. That works out to about $20 an hour, two to three times the hourly cost of car sharing.

But it depends on how often you rent. A Tory Burch tote (retail value $395) from Bag Borrow or Steal would cost $13 a week, plus a yearly membership fee of $60. I could swap designer purses with my own every other month for a year before catching up to the price of buying that one bag. On the other hand, if I rented a purse every week, I'd shell out about $740 in a year.

According to the old rules, I would have nothing to show for the money I'd spent. But under the transumer rules, you're not renting to own -- you're renting so that you don't have to own.

You're taste-testing, test-driving, flirting but never committing. And for some people, the parade of experiences and objects is more meaningful than purchasing them -- and therefore worth the money.

What about wearing it out?
There is something enticing about this idea of enjoying the transient pleasures of different things, rather than being wedded to certain fixed objects.

I never thought I would find myself writing this. I've been struggling for years now to follow the mantra: "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

But the downside of that sort of vintage American practicality is that, ideally, you're supposed to be loyal to the same handbag and shoes and rug and sofa and house for . . . decades.

That saying is rooted in an era when many things didn't change for decades. Now a decade is an eternity. The beauty of transumerism is that it assumes you can't possibly afford to keep up with every change -- but don't want a stagnant life.

Putting your money where your life is
Lately I've found myself doing a new sort of math on the cost of owning a home and whether my financial and life priorities are adding up.

We have about $50,000 sunk into our house (although it wouldn't be doing much better in the market). Our mortgage and taxes come to an affordable $1,350 per month. But that doesn't include the long list of repairs the house requires -- thousands of dollars' worth and counting.

And with a 95-year-old house, the repairs aren't likely to lessen over time. They'll just be different each year.

This past week, faced with all these expenses, I found myself considering a radical new approach to our lives:

What if we shared the ownership of this old house (and all its repairs) with two or three other families? That would dramatically ease the financial drag of maintaining one big home (buh-bye, American dream). We could rent a small apartment and ditch our car for an occasional car share. Then we could spend our money on seeing the world and doing things (such as visiting friends) instead of on chimneys and deck repairs and paint jobs and transmissions.

That's true transumerism: You divest yourself of costly material goods and put your money where your life is.

I'm not saying I want to rent objets d'art and designer duds to make myself look fancy. But maybe the rental lifestyle offers a new way to spend money on what you really want.


參考譯文：
擁有新東西是有趣的，但是那種興奮感很快就會過去，而“擁有”的成本卻是無窮無盡的。對反物質運動的支持者來說，租賃現正流行。

在上個月為汽車維修破費了將近700大元之后，現在我又要為煙囪維修掏出5000多元，這讓我厭倦了“擁有”所帶來的無盡成本。

所有權一般都被看作是打開美國夢大門的鑰匙，但是隱藏在其背后的成本卻很少被人談及，比如不斷的維修和升級，又比如各種財產所需的照料。

于是人們蜂擁而至投身到規模雖小但氣氛熱烈的反物質運動中，以物物交換替代購物，順應最新的潮流選擇租賃物品而不是購買，又有啥好奇怪的呢？

大家都為新興“瞬時消費主義”（transumerism）而歡呼！很難說臨時擁有的物質享受是否比大為講究的排場更廉價，但是這種不受約束的生活方式現在看起來很對大家的胃口。

租賃生活
“瞬時消費主義”（transumerism）究竟是啥？

總部位于荷蘭的全球性趨勢識別公司Trendwatching.com的一位分析師認為，瞬時消費者的哲學主要是基于一種“租賃生活方式”。他們不是把錢花在個別買下來之后還要去保存的物件上（這忽然間就成了個老掉牙的想法），而是花錢去買一系列物件和體驗的使用權，這不但省下金錢也省下時間：因為你擁有的越多，你需要擔心、維系和升級的東西就越多。

“我們目睹著‘堆積社會’被拒絕”，來自倫敦的潮流顧問克里斯蒂娜•扎拉薩（Kristina Dryza）在她的報告《臨時性》中寫道。

Trendwatching已經對生活方式上的租賃潮流做了好幾年的追蹤，其首席執行官克拉克曼•埃弗斯（Reinier Evers）表示，世界性的衰退讓“不擁有”變得更有吸引力。

他說：“‘省錢’肯定是讓瞬時消費潮流變得更受歡迎的一個方面”。

有人說，這種方式也會讓你更好。

埃里克•金斯伯格（Eric Ginsberg）是和Netflix類似的圖書租賃公司BookSwim的市場營銷副總裁，他說：“你可以丟掉一切阻礙了你的生活的東西，為你現在正想要的東西騰出空間，然后當你用完的時候，你又可以擺脫它們繼續向前，不用負擔那些持續的成本和費用。”

租些什么？
瞬時消費者可以享受到一長串不斷變化的體驗，譬如：

-當你可以在Bag Borrow or Steal或者From Bags to Riches那里租來數十個設計師品牌挎包時，你為啥還要付大把的錢來買一個呢？

-當你可以拿出相當于維修費中一小部分的錢來租車，弄輛普銳斯去一趟雜貨店，弄輛Mini去約會或者弄輛貨車把你在Craigslist 上買的便宜貨給拉回來的時候，你干嘛還要花錢維修汽車呢？（你可以在和Zipcar類似的CarSharing.net上找到好些在世界各個城市都能享受的服務）

-當你可以從當地博物館或者諸如Art Rent & Lease的在線畫廊低價租來一系列的藝術品，甚至可以從圖書館免費借來藝術品的時候，你作甚還要掏錢去買它們用以裝飾家居？

短期之內少就是多。
當然了，租賃本身是沒啥新鮮的。

長久以來，針對那些買不起的東西或者那些暫時用用完全沒必要買下來的東西，租賃是個變通的方法（無論是禮服、高壓清洗機還是奧斯卡上頒獎禮上用的鉆石頭飾）。

但是反復起伏的經濟突出了租賃的一大優勢：當你正在擔心現金流或者工作是否保得住的時候，小量、漸進的付款額會更易管理。

租賃是不是真的更廉價呢？有可能的。有需要的時候租輛車來用，可能會比擁有整輛車省下數百甚至數千的費用。

根據AAA公司的統計，當你把汽油錢、維護費、保險費、修理費、償還貸款額以及折舊計算進去的時候，擁有一輛車一年平均要花去8095美元。然而，加州大學伯克利分校的蘇珊•沙欣（Susan Shaheen）在2008年所作的一項調查表明，北美大部分汽車每天只行駛66分鐘，這讓每小時行駛的成本達到20美元，相當于每小時租車費用的兩到三倍。

但（是不是省錢）要看你多久租一次了。去Bag Borrow or Steal租一只零售價為395美元的Tory Burch tote挎包大約每周花費13美元，另加年度會員費60美元。我可以把設計師出品和我自己的手袋每隔一個月輪換著來用，一年下來花的錢肯定比買一只那樣的手袋來得少；另一方面，要是我每周都要租一個手袋，那一年下來我可能要花上740美元。

根據舊有思維，錢花完之后我沒啥可以拿出手炫耀的；但在瞬時消費思維下，租賃不是為了擁有，租賃恰恰就是為了不必擁有。

你在品味、試駕、玩耍，但你從來不用承諾。對某些人而言，一系列的體驗和目標比購買實物更有意義，因此也是物有所值。

破舊之后？
享受不同物件帶來的短暫愉悅而不是把自己綁在某些固的物件之上，這種想法確有其誘人之處。

我從來沒想過我會寫這篇東西，多年來我一直掙扎著遵從這個諺語：用完它用盡它，要么就是它，要么不用它。

可是，那種經典美式實用主義的含義就是：在理想狀態下，你應該數十年如一日地忠于同一個手袋、同樣的鞋子地毯沙發以及房子......

那句老諺語植根的時代，很多東西都是數十年不變的；現在，能堅持十年就算永恒了。瞬時消費主義的美妙之處在于，它假定你無力追上每一個變化但你又不想停滯不前。

花得其所
最近，我發現自己在做新的數學題，主要是在衡量擁有一間房子的成本以及我的財務、生活重點是否合理。

我們有5萬大元砸進了房子里（盡管這些錢投到市場里也好不了多少），每個月的抵押貸款以及稅收合共1350美元，還負擔得來，但這還沒算上房子維修所需的一大堆費用，那可得幾千美元。

而且這屋子房齡都有95年了，維修工作肯定不會與時遞減，只會每年搞些新花樣出來。

過去的這個星期，看著這一堆的費用，我發現自己在考慮一種極度新穎的生活方式：

要是我們和其他兩到三個家庭分享這房子的所有權（及其維修費用）會怎樣呢？維護一幢大房子所帶來的財政負擔肯定能顯著減輕（886！美國夢）。我們可以租個小點的公寓，拋棄我們的車轉為偶爾租車用。這樣一來，我們就可以把錢花在環游世界和其他事情上（比如說探親訪友），而不是花在煙囪桌子的維修以及油漆和運輸工作上了。

這就是真正的瞬時消費主義：你放棄了昂貴的物質商品，把錢花在你的生活上。

我不是說要租些藝術品和設計師出品服飾來讓自己看起來很迷人，但也許租賃生活方式會讓你找到一種新方法，把錢花在自己真正想要的事物上。