"things you should borrow instead of buy"

Como todos nós sabemos, é super importante utilizar a internet em prol do inglês... já que ela oferece diversos recursos para o aprendizado do idioma. Eu encontrei um texto interessante, e gostaria de dividi-lo com vocês.

Abaixo dele segue o vocabulário. Caso haja algum erro ficaria muito grato em ser corrigido! See ya! (:


Wrote by
KATE ASHFORD
writes about personal finance and health.


Remember the book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten? It was written by a Unitarian minister who thought the wisdom handed down when we were 5 years old was the best: Play fair and don’t hit people. And, he wrote, “share everything.”

That’s a good principle in life, really, but what if sharing could also save money? What if you could split the cost of your major expenses? (Or your minor ones?) What if you didn’t have to own a car, or a lawn mower, or an electric drill, but you could use one whenever you wanted? The combination of the recession and a country that’s more green-minded than ever has produced a generation more willing to share their stuff — or less willing to shell out for big-ticket items if they aren’t using them all the time.

Before you accuse me of being some kind of commune-loving, share-the-lawnmower hippie, there’s a capitalist side to this as well — for instance, the proliferation of people who rent out their own stuff to offset the cost. The website Rentalic.com, which describes itself as “an online rental marketplace,” recently carried listings for a 12-inch miter saw in New York City for $45 a day. In Berkeley, Ca., you can rent a dorm-room-sized fridge for $5 a month. In Honolulu, you can rent a VW Beetle for $20 a day.

There are obviously limits to this resurgent “Sharing Economy” — we’ll just go ahead and leave out mattresses and half-eaten food. And “sharing” doesn’t necessarily mean “convenient.” If it did, everyone would do it. Consider that out of more than 200 million licensed drivers in the U.S., only 448,574 of them participate in a car-sharing program. (That’s less than half of one percent, for those of you who didn’t whip out your calculators.) Sharing means a particular kind of lifestyle — planning your usage of something, making do with things that aren’t brand spanking new, and forgoing a certain kind of convenience. Not everyone is going to be interested. But in the spirit of being servicey here at Bundle, let’s focus on the big winners for you to consider when sharing and renting goods:

Cars - Car-sharing has been around for years. But until recently, it hadn’t really caught on. My husband and I belong to Zipcar, because (like many Manhattanites) we don’t own a vehicle, but in other cities, people were happy as clams to hang onto their wheels. But Zipcar turned a profit last year for the first time ever, and other companies are starting to copy the business model: Hertz’s Connect service and Enterprise’s WeCar both offer rental cars by the hour. And there’s no doubt that car-sharing saves money. The average American spends $463 a month on car payments, gas and repairs, according to Bundle.com data. “Eighteen percent of the average income is spent on owning a car,” says Rachel Botsman, author of What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. “And it’s idle for 23 hours a day. When people switch to car sharing, on average they save 40 percent per year.”

Rides - Maybe you don’t want to share an entire car. Maybe you just need a ride to Ikea? There’s an app for that. For instance, Weeels is a cab-sharing app for New York City folks. Headed to Chinatown? The app will search for someone nearby who’s going in the same direction. Once it makes a match, the app will send you a meet-up location and send a car to pick you and your travel compadre up. (Let’s hope he isn’t a close talker.) And of course, services to help you organize a more traditional ride are available as well. For instance, GoLoco.org helps members organize trip sharing, and eRideShare.com points members toward carpool partners or other members driving to the airport. “To the extent that that can begin to happen on a larger scale, that could be a really huge way for people to save money,” says Janelle Orsi, an attorney in Berkeley, Ca., and co-author of The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community.


Disponível em : http://money.bundle.com/article/women-r ... tead-buy/1

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Vocabulary

to hand down - proferir
split the costs - dividir os custos
lawn mower - cortador de grama
an electric drill - furadeira elétrica
recession - recessão
green-minded (creio que seja alguém de mente imatura)
to shell out - gastar dinheiro, despender
to accuse - acusar, encriminar
proliferation - proliferação
to rent out - alugar
offset - verb. (compensar/equilibrar) adj(deslocado/fora do alinhamento) subs.("enfeite")
listings - anúncios
resurgent - "resurgente"
mattress - colchão
to whip out - "sacar" - Ex. (Naquele instante eu saquei o meu celular e liguei para a polícia)
usage - uso
to forgo - renunciar
to catch on - "pegar" (O jeito que Jully se veste "pegou") - [agora todos querem se vestir igual a ela]
profit - lucro
income - renda
idle - inativo (não está em uso)
To the extent that - Na medida em que

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1 resposta
Philipe, thanks for the text and vocab.

It's a very interesting concept, yet I believe that the ones involved should be very close or everything should be handled by someone neutral. People love to quarrel about money, sex and ego, this is why such idea is more complex than it seems and requires a complex plan of action.