Many of us were cultured to believe home ownership, fancy cars, and displays of wealth will make us happy through being seen as accomplished and worthy.
In It’s a Shareable Life, one of the taglines is “Living a champagne lifestyle on a beer budget” as the sharing economy creates an opening to rethink what we value, how we can use the resources we already have, and the design a life that’s marked by experiences, relationships, and access to the things we want and need, when we want or need them.
Thankfully, keeping up with the Joneses has lost its charm. For many people (especially young people) experiences and access are more important than displays of ownership. There’s a sort of freedom and fluidity that can be had with the ability drive a convertible one day and an SUV the next or to live where ever you want, working from wherever you are.
But freedom is also fluid.
What makes you feel free at one point in your life may feel like imprisonment at another. The sharing economy challenges us to take a good look at what we value, need access to and the pros and cons of ownership. For example, at what point is an asset a liability? Is access truly more important than ownership?
When does a car become more costly than it is effective? When there are urban sharing economy options like car sharing, Uber, Lyft, and now scooters connected to an app, car ownership sounds way less appealing. Why mess around with registration, insurance, maintenance, and spending time parking if there are other options?
And what about where you live (most people’s biggest expense)? When does buying a house become a liability? What if access to home gives you everything you need, plus the freedom to leave on a moments notice? Isn’t a mortgage just a fancy borrow contract anyway?
One of the most quoted phrases from It’s a Shareable Life is as follows:
“You can live a life dictated by choice, passion, and freedom — a life where your shared experiences are of the highest value,”
The sharing economy changed my life. The experiences absolutely transformed my idea of money, value, transaction, and relationships. I ‘Couchsurfed’ and went on trips with perfect strangers. I also hosted ‘surfers’ free of charge in my home. Experiencing all of this left me bewildered. How could this network of millions of users be based on gift? What did all of this mean about transaction and buying things? Exchanging through relationship and experience simply FELT better. I felt more connected to the human experience and to other people.
For me, this was my reason for jumping on the sharing economy train. This was my reason for altering my career. I felt like I had to share the experience of sharing. I wrote It’s a Shareable Life as the result of these experiences.
Beyond feeling good, the sharing economy enabled me to have greater flexibility. Seven years ago, when my internet business tanked quite suddenly, I had to cobble together an income. So I started experimenting. Since Couchsurfing and coworking had given me a new outlook on the power of strangers, I started looking for other sharing services.
My next sharing experiments involved my car and my home, but keep in mind that I’m a millennial and different people are various ages and stages share differently. I made $600 a month renting out my car and at the height of things, another $1,500+ a month having strangers stay with me. While this isn’t a large sum of money, I was able to cover my base level expenses and have experiences outside of my home base. Beyond covering expenses and traveling using the sharing economy, I also enjoyed clothing swaps and more recently, food swaps where people exchange individually packaged homemade dishes or treats.
As it turns out, It’s a Shareable Life is one part encyclopedia of sharing services and one part life hacking guide. The book takes you through eight different aspects of life such as Home, Creativity, Transportation, and Food — showing you all of the ways you can share more.
The sharing economy not only changes the way that we look at business, but also our relationship with stuff and ‘stranger danger.’ Within half a decade, the idea of sharing your stuff, time, space, or your home and car with perfect strangers is perfectly normal. That’s a big change!
I still find the quote about shared experiences being of the highest regard accurate. But today, I’d add a few caveats. What makes the sharing economy work is being able to use your assets and time in flexible and meaningful ways that provide opportunity for greater freedom and experiences. So you still need ‘stuff’ like a car and home to maintain a sense of groundedness and potential income. This is where the question of freedom becomes personal.
People often share differently at one point of life to another. In my research, I found that people are most likely to want to have have connected experiences and high amounts of sharing during transitional time periods like after college, a relationship ending, at the point of moving to a new city, or at the beginning of retirement.
For example, I no longer feel drawn to being a digital nomad and I have a lower appetite for shared experiences. But I do lend my car to friends of friends when I leave town and Couchsurf when I can. Today, freedom means the ability to be generous and to ground in my local community and in my friendships as much as possible. I still travel a lot for work, but I very much enjoy coming back to my home base.
What’s freedom for you in this moment? What do you value? What’s your idea of a rich life? And how can you orient your life around that?
The sharing economy gives you a jumping off point, but you have to have a vision of the life you want to create for yourself. And expect that as you grow, so too will your idea of freedom.
Author: Chelsea Rustrum is the founder of Blockchain for Good, a co-founder of Blox 7, and the author of ‘It’s a Shareable Life,’ a practical guide to sharing. She focuses her efforts on companies and ideas that merge the possibility of value distribution and shared ownership via blockchain technology, reinforcing the original ethos of the sharing economy.
