Teamwork
Occasionally, I like to through out ideas for saving or making money, and come up with experiments (for an example check out my Lunch Experiment)!
So my idea for today (actually I’ve been thinking about this for years), is to have a Neighborhood purchase program for rarely used things, then have the neighbors share those certain rarely used tools!
So let’s say that you have 10 neighbors, and each month they each pitch in $10. Well, after 2 months time the neighborhood could purchase a edger. Then 3 months later after the purchase of the edger, they could purchase a pressure washer.
Each purchase would be kept on 1 of the neighbor’s house and the entire neighborhood could all borrow the tool/item!
The beauty is that it would be cheaper than renting the item, the entire neighborhood would look better because all the neighbors should want to use the tools. This desire to use the tools would mean that their properties all look nicer…
Maybe after 1 year, the payments to the neighborhood kitty could be decreased to $5 a month instead of $10 a month.
Now one might wonder “But what if one of the machines/tools that the neighbors purchased broke”? Well good question and the answer would be that the money collected from everybody would have to be used to repair the tool. Unless someone in your group was good at repairing things already.
Why I think this would be a good idea is because mostly the tools I described above, sit in the corner of the garage taking up space doing nothing…
Another side benefit would be that the sharing of tools would be an opportunity to talk to your neighbors! This might create a more socially health community!
-MR
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Good idea in theory, in practice it’ll work fine if the neighbors are friendly and community minded. If not, then…..
Good point. I’m luck I have great neighbors! I guess if they weren’t so nice this definitely wouldn’t work!
I once sat in on a talk given by the person who invented the zip car concept (ie, renting a car by the hour). It was eye opening. If you think about just about anything you own, your car, stove, washer dryer, lawnmower, etc…those things sit idle most of the time, like over 90%. Even if you have an hour commute to work, your car still sits idle 22 hours of the day. Wow.
Stuff sharing is a cool idea, but you’d have to have good neighbors to do it with.
Very true about the good neighbors!
That’s pretty cool that you got to hear from the inventor of the “zip car” concept! I love speeches like those!
Good idea and I agree with 101C. Depends on how your relationship with your neighbors are.
Yeah, I agree with him too! I’m just fortunate that I have great neighbors!
This idea would have worked out great where I grew up, as everyone knew each other really well. Where I live now, most people use lawn services and don’t do anything themselves!
You should try it out MR!
I’ve been thinking about sharing a internet line with one of the neighbors (or two of them).
Ironically it would be for a redundant line when my provider is down (they have roadrunner, and one has dsl).
I like the idea, but it have to be a very special group of people who would do this. I would rather organize the community to negotiate for better pricing for services or products.
Ah, that a great twist on my post. I like that!!!
Bargaining power in numbers… You could even bring up the fact that by having a tight aggregate, the service provider could save on gas if the do lawn maintenance or something similar…
This is a great idea. This would work great in a co-housing type of situation. Here is one I know of in town. I think the majority of US people are way too private to share.
https://www.daybreakcohousing.org/SiteandDesign.html
Yeah, I think you are right about the US. I wonder if other countries do such techniques, it might serve them well.
In the US debt driven society, doing as the post I wrote above could go a long way… Too bad 🙁
Definitely a very creative idea. I think internet access could be something that a lot of neighbors could share, especially with new wireless N routers and MIMO technology. Sure, internet access isn’t a huge expense, but you could probably shave some off your monthly bill while buying a top-rate connection. 40mbits down, anyone? 😀
This is definitely easy to do too. Heck, I have a buddy at work that does this. He’s a tech (like me), and he lives in an more mature neighborhood. So he manages the router while splitting the cost with his neighbor. Truly a win-win…
I like the idea, but it would, in theory, require me to walk up to the door of each neighbor’s house, knock on their door, awkwardly introduce myself, and then effectively ask them for money.
Hmmm. Not appealing.
Alternatively, perhaps passing out flyers for the first meeting of the “Oak Street Neighbors Association” — and promising free pizza for the kids — could get things started. Forming a little “neighborhood association” would make the arrangement more official, too.
I’m fortunate in that my neighborhood has annual parties and poker parties. I would be easy for me to bring up the idea.
As @JT McGee brought up above, when not share a internet line with 1 or 2 trusted neighbors… My buddy at work is doing this exact thing with one of his neighbors.