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Do you have children? How many people do you need to buy groceries for? Have you ever needed to buy one (or multiple!) sheets of plywood? Do you own your own home, or do you rent an apartment?
Car/stroad haters seem to overwhelmingly be young, childless, apartment-renting city-dwellers. If you somehow aren't, then your critiques make no sense.
I lived in Europe as a missionary for two years. Carried all my shopping by hand either walking or on public transit. It sucked then, and I was 19 to 21 at the time and extremely physically active and only shopping for myself (my companion was carrying his own groceries). It would suck far more now.
lol, on Reddit there is a nearly 1-1 overlap between childfree/fuckcars subs
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I have three sons, do practically all the shopping and I have been doing just fine without a car for the past 4 years. If I lived in a suburb it would probably not be fun but I live in an urban area with a medium sized shop between me and the subway station. An alternative is of course having your groceries delivered, which is still far cheaper than owning a car.
On the rare occasion we actually need a car we just borrow or rent one. We found owning one was excessive for our current needs.
Not always. in the long-run a car is cheaper. You pay a huge premium for delivery.
Not that big a premium. I'd have to buy groceries in excess of $5000 a month for car to just break even with home delivery.
You need other frequent or important uses of the car for it to be remotely economical.
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That probably depends on location? Where I live grocery stores will deliver to you for free if you order more than €40 of food.
Yes, but how much do they charge for smaller orders, and how much do you pay each year to own a car? In the UK we pay £2–4 for delivery of a £40+ order every few weeks (buying the rest of what we need on foot, typically once a day on the way home from the station). Let's say we spend £150/y on delivery (certainly an overestimation). No car can be owned for so little, even if you could get insurance and fuel for free.
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In my big city (indeed the biggest) in Europe, what most people in the middle class and above do is order groceries 1x per week online. Because the city is so dense, the truck makes like 20 stops over a couple of hours and delivery fees are therefore very cheap. I pay $5 a month for unlimited deliveries, and all the groceries are the exact same price as in the store with no additional service charges or fees.
This accounts for all heavy items like detergent and bottled water, bulky bags of potatoes etc. Then for the rest of the week I either walk to the grocery store, deli/butcher or farmer’s market on Sunday (all a maximum of ten minutes’ walk) and get fresh meat/bread/pastries if I want them. This works pretty well and I never feel overburdened.
I could buy all my groceries every day in person with little additional nuisance, because there are multiple grocery stores in the five minute walk between my subway station and home and in the four minute walk between my destination subway station and my office. In that case, like many people, I’d just buy items in smaller purchases instead of once for the week or fortnight. But I prefer planning my meals.
I have family who live out in the suburbs in New Jersey and Connecticut. Walking from the parking space to the store, around the huge and not very dense grocery store (since space in big warehouse stroad strip malls is cheap), and then back to the car likely covers a greater distance than many trips to and from (and around) the grocery store in dense cities on foot.
LOL, no. The distance to the furthest spot to the store entrance in my suburban NJ grocery store shopping center is 600 feet. Nobody ever has to park that far away; those particular spots are only used by employees and other far spots are used by people going to other stores that are closer. More typically it's less than half that. Most places in Manhattan are more than 600 feet, never mind the typical lesser distances, from the grocery store. 600 feet is just over two short blocks in Manhattan, and less than a long block.
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I thought i did too, because that was how my mother taught me, but when i stopped it was as if a massive weight came off my shoulders. Now i just shop every other day, buy what's on sale and make something from that. If me or the family happen to crave something specific I can adjust on the day. I plan like 1 meal a week and I love it.
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