Buy cheap, buy twice

A long time ago I heard a woman who could be ranked among lower-middle class (in Poland there are no standards of social stratification, hence such assignment was purely judgemental) claiming she “could not afford to buy cheap stuff”. At that time I thought she was showing off she could afford some decent items to make up for her inability to buy more expensive durable goods, such as more comfortable dwelling. With hindsight, I recognise the wisdom in such attitude.

The musings should begin with a question whether there is a positive correlation between price and quality. I would argue it exists, yet not really strong. If you buy expensive items, you might be let down by their poor quality, yet if you buy cheap items, it is far more likely the cost of acquiring them reflects their shoddiness. There are bargains you might chase, but laws of economics remain unwavering – products or services of high quality might be attractively priced only for a short time, then the market will drift towards equilibrium.

With age (and rising earnings) I lean towards buying more expensive durable goods and my higher disposable income is not a core reason. I like using stuff for several years, I realise such consumer habits are good for the planet, I detest producing rubbish and I generally dislike shopping, so if I buy something that serves me for many years, it saves me hassle which replacing a defective or worn-out item involves. Besides, the comfort of using quality stuff is usually higher. Such approach requires a larger initial expenditure. As I point out, I pay more up-front, but over years I do not spend more money by replacing one shoddy item with another. Quite sadly, the initial outlay is the biggest barrier for the poorer who for financial reasons are stuck in a vicious circle of buying cheap stuff: furniture which fall apart after a few years, clothes which look like rags after a few washes, etc.

One would say it is contrary to manufacturers’ interest to put out durable objects, as capitalism is driven by ongoing, never-ending demand. Bosch brand, being a symbol of quality gives lie to this. My dishwasher has never let me down over 7 years. By dint of high quality, I have come by a driller, a universal brush, a wire detector and a washing machine, all manufactured by Bosch, which since decades has been a renowned producer of reliable and durable machinery. It earns on clients recurring to buy a different product, not to replace an item they bought a few years ago.

In purely economic terms, the strategy of buying expensive items does not always make sense, especially when quality does not go together with practical properties of an item or if you are going to use an item once in a blue moon. In the latter situation, sharing economy should be the answer, nevertheless despite some progress, Poland still lacks a well-organised platform for renting / borrowing stuff (such as tools used once a year or less often).

In condemnation of oversized vehicles

My deep dislike for agrestic oversized vehicles has not been a secret for many readers of this blog for years. I could go on and write a tirade how far too big vehicles reflect their users’ oversized ego, megalomania, inferiority complex, but… spewing out so many insults would mean hurting some of my good friends and workmates, hence in order not to spoil my relationships with people I contain myself and in casual conversations only express my (strong) preference not to use such cars. Instead of compiling a yet another rant about their uselessness (they are not more capacious than a smaller and lighter well-designed estate cars) and lack of off-road capacities, I will make reference to a series of articles published recently in the Guardian, quote (italicised) the crucial takeaways and add a few words of my own comments.

1. Monsters of the road: what should the UK do about SUVs?

After a period of falling, the CO₂ emissions of new cars sold in both the UK and the EU have been rising since 2016. Experts attribute the reversal to an increase in SUV sales.
–> you won’t circumvent the laws of physics. Heavier vehicles need more power to be propelled and even with more fuel-efficiency improvements in place, a two-tonne SUV emits more carbon dioxide than a small city car manufactured in the 1990s, whose weight is over 50% lower. Actually if only cars kept being reasonably small, overall emissions would go down considerably.

For a couple of years, more than a decade ago, I was the car reviewer for the Guardian. I test drove very few SUVs, but on the rare occasions that I did, I experienced two distinct feelings. The first was a debilitating concern about navigating such a large vehicle through the capital’s congested streets. And the second, as that anxiety began to ease, was a sensation of being above the fray, apart from the crowd, somehow superior to my surroundings.
–> sitting higher and looking down on the surrounding traffic from above is what I detest about SUVs. Oddly enough, it does not make me feel any safer. I feel more comfortable in a “normal” car, where a gravity load is located lower.

After a slightly banal tour of west London’s A roads, I ask the salesman what the car is like at negotiating speed humps.
“Try accelerating towards one,” he suggests.
On a deserted side street I do just that, driving at the kind of speed over a “traffic-calming” hump that would rip out the undercarriage of my hatchback. The big-wheeled SUV glides over it. Thus measures implemented to protect pedestrians work very effectively with the cars that do least damage, but are next to useless with the cars that cause most harm.
–> this is one of the essences why I believe driving an SUV is anti-social…

I had an ominous encounter with this marketed anxiety one afternoon a while ago. As I carefully lined up my small hatchback to reverse into a parking space that faced out into a north London street, a great bulbous shiny black thing, like some armour-plated sci-fi machine, drove straight into “my” space and also occupied a couple of feet of the one next to it.
A moment later, an elegantly dressed woman in her 30s climbed down from the vehicle with its bumper wheels and blacked-out windows, and started to walk off. I called out that she’d left me no room to park. Exasperated, she complained that I should have told her when she was in the car, and reluctantly returned to re-park. After five or six attempts, she gave up and got out. She was still impeding the adjacent space, but not by as much.
“Excuse me,” I said, as she stomped off, “can I ask why you have such a big car?”
She looked at me as though I were some mad Unabomber-type, and in a voice quaking with righteous indignation snapped: “Because I’ve got a baby!”
At the time, it seemed an absurd response (it still does), but that woman’s perspective has become a cliche. The problem with building cars for the protection of those within them, however, is that it tends to have a deleterious effect on the protection of those without.
As Murray puts is: “If you’re driving around in a small lightweight vehicle and you have a collision with, say, a Land Rover Defender, it’s going to smash you to bits.”
–> if I come across a badly parked car in Poland, it usually is an SUV. Besides, the delusory sense of protection at the expense of other road users is an example of selfishness I cannot stand.

Even the slow switch to electric cars is an unsatisfying solution. EV design favours SUVs because the elevated seats allow space for the battery pack, but they tend to make electric SUVs even heavier than the petrol versions.
“With bigger vehicles,” says Hannon, “you’ll get less kilowatt/hour efficiency, more material used to build them, bigger battery packs, and there are serious supply chain concerns around precious metals and minerals that go into these vehicles, and questionable ethics associated with how they are mined and processed.”
–> I pointed out more than once electrics cars are a dead-end street, but the claim electric SUVs can combine the human megalomania and the climate protection issues is an enormous lie.

2. Motor emissions could have fallen by over 30% without SUV trend, report says

Emissions from the motor sector could have fallen by more than 30% between 2010 and 2022 if vehicles had stayed the same size, a report has found.
Instead, the size of the average car ballooned as the trend for SUVs took off, meaning the global annual rate of energy intensity reductions – the fall in fuel used – of light-duty vehicles (LDV) averaged 4.2% between 2020 and 2022.
–> this is anything, but surprising…

The authors of the report called for governments to place restrictions on vehicle sizes to reverse the SUV trend.
–> I am sceptical towards pure restrictions and would rather call for heavy sin taxes for such vehicles, predominantly on purchases of new vehicles, less severe on ownership of existing ones, to price in (even excessively) their detriment to the environment.

3. SUVs emit more climate damaging gas than older cars do, study finds
–> this article is behind the paywall, but the message from the heading stands to reason. A 10-year-old small, sparingly used city car will do much less harm to the planet than an SUV used for one-per-car short-distance trips.

While keeping in mind an impending climate disaster, I do not tend to favour radical steps, as they bring out human defiance. When people are prohibited from doing something, they are even more tempted to do it. I believe financial penalties (heavy sin taxes) for selfish behaviours work much better. Being told you cannot afford to drive an SUV is a preferable solution to being forbidden to drive an SUV. You can say there still will be a handful of rich men driving embarrassingly chunky vehicles, but they will not constitute 50% of brand-new car sales, as they do now on many markets. SUVs are a product of marketing a useless good. Brushing aside all their drawbacks, they actually lack a major merit carmakers claim they have – space. A Skoda Octavia estate is more capacious in terms of space for passengers and luggage than an average SUV, while its kerb weight (standard petrol engines below 1.5 litre) is between 1.26 and 1.51 tonnes (depending on engine and equipment), some 25% lower than of a typical brand-new SUV. By dint of sheer mass difference, a petrol-fuelled Skoda Octavia estate 1.5 TSI emits (a bit) less CO2 per kilometre than a hybrid Toyota RAV4, with large 2.5-litre engine and kerb weight of 1.91 tonnes. The numbers speak for themselves, but they are sadly unlikely to convince consumers fond of “obese” cars…

Greenwashing

Opening disclaimer: I write it as a driver and a car-owner.

The very term appearing in the title of the post has been coined more than a decade ago, yet I, shame to confess it, ran across it in early December 2019. Back then, while browsing LinkedIn I found a post by my employer’s fleet manager, in which he had boasted of handing over to staff another batch of hybrid Toyotas (to replace petrol-fuelled vehicles manufactured between 2015 and 2017).

Regardless of automobile’s industry’s efforts and despite countless marketing campaigns, there is no such thing an environment-friendly car. You will not circumvent laws of physics, hence the bigger a car, the more energy you need to set it in motion.

Don’t also think if you buy a hybrid or an electric car, you will save the planet. The graphic to the right from the European Parliament’s webpage (I trust if has not been bought off by a lobby of carmakers) dated March 2019 shows the total carbon dioxide emission during a vehicle’s lifetime (sadly, they do not define how the lifetime is calculated). The chart informs that in a country which fully relies on carbon in electricity generation (such as Poland), an electric car is all in all more harmful to the environment than a car with a traditional combustion engine.

If you believe a hybrid car is a remedy, I will let you down. Manufacturing and recycling (but not maintenance) of a car with batteries is more environment-detrimental than of a traditional vehicle. The energy to charge batteries is not delivered from outside, but is generated in a regular combustion engine, which apart from propelling the vehicle must work to charge batteries. This leads to efficiencies during in-town driving when the batteries support the traditional engine when a car accelerates, so a hybrid Corolla consumes between 5 and 6 litres of petrol per 100 kilometres in town. This is 30% less than my car would do, but the consumption figures are comparable to small city cars running on petrol only. The bigger problem is that you should use a car around town as little as possible. On a motorway, at the speed of 140 kmph, the hybrid Corolla consumes over 10 litres per 100 kilometres, some 25% more than my car. The car loses its edge where use of it is justifiable.

Plug-in hybrids and electric cars in Poland rely on electricity generated from coal (with PiS government doing little to accelerate switching into alternative energy sources). Abroad, with more environmental-friendly energy mix, the lifetime carbon footprint is lower than of a traditional vehicle, yet one needs to bear in mind the distribution of the footprint. At the exhaust pipes there are no fumes, but the batteries are produced and will be probably recycled (the problem will grow big in a decade of so when electric and hybrid cars produced today will begin to reach the end of their lives) in other countries where harm to the environment will be concentrated.

Modern traditional cars are not faultless. The automobile industry cares about its profits and passing more and more stringent emission tests. To comply with norms, it comes up with several tricks to declare possibly lowest carbon dioxide emission, the infamous Wieśwagen dieselgate scandal being the most glaring example. Particulate filters, found in every diesel engines manufactured over the last 2 decades, and in most petrol engines produced recently, do retain soot (then turning into ash) before it leaves an exhaust pipe, but as ash accumulates in a filter, it slowly clogs up. The process of self-cleaning the filter consists in burning out ash. A vehicle does it when its engine is warm, at revolutions above 2,000 rpm and at steady, rather high speed. Do you believe emission of harmful particles during the process of burning out ash remnants is low??? Do you believe the ash is burnt out during standardised WLTP measurements?

What can you do to reduce your carbon footprint? Drive less!

Start from reducing to those absolutely necessary around-town journeys, where you can rely on public transport and there because of traffic density, emission per kilometre is the highest and time savings are the lowest.

Cut down (unless absolutely justified by your health) on short-distance trips. Firstly, a cold engine during first seconds after being started up emits multiple time more fumes than after it warms up. Secondly, a vehicle’s wear-and-tear disproportionally accelerates on short distances. Thirdly, walking or cycling is healthier!

If you need to go somewhere by car, try doing this when traffic is sparse. Vehicles cause less air contamination when they are driven at steady speed, without frequent stops and accelerations. Many such trips can be taken over the working week after 8 p.m. or on Saturday mornings when traffic jams are not a plague.

Change the style of driving. Eco-driving is safer and reduces emission by approximately 20% vs. normal driving and by 40% or more in comparison to aggressive (but not making a journey faster) driving. Do it wisely, i.e. do not use the highest gear at too low revolutions and do not upshift too early – this might save fuel in short-time, but will decrease the life or engine and other components.

Look after your car! Production and recycling stand for 20-25% of a vehicle’s lifetime carbon dioxide emission, so keeping your car in good condition as long as possible will be better to environment than replacing it with a new one whose exhaust-located footprint is slightly lower (carmakers will try to persuade this assertion is untrue).

Take passengers or become another driver’s passenger. A passenger car carrying 4 persons emits only 5% more carbon dioxide per passenger than a train (in Poland running on electricity produced from coal).

Closing disclaimer: I have written it all with a sense of sadness. I draw pleasure from driving. Behind the wheel I get relaxed and because I need to focus on driving all worries and kept far away from my mind. Yet I need to see further than the end of my nose and mind the future of the planet more than my personal whims.

Blek srajdej

Why do we, Poles, have to embrace every single idiocy devised by the American capitalism? To quote Leo, for money! There is no better way to induce a slow-witted consumer to spend their money on stuff they (usually) don’t actually need than persuading them they are buying at bargain prices.

Black Friday (hailing from the USA, where it falls right after the Thanksgiving) is rather a novelty in Poland, as a decade ago, or even five years ago if it was celebrated, then by few. In 2018 blek srajdej is all the rage. Upshot: shopping malls chock full of people and online distributors’ websites crashing. I have witnessed stories of people taking a day off to indulge in bargain-hunting shopping and got infuriated by workmates collectively hunting bargains online in the office while I tried to focus on work.

A thrifty consumer with a head screwed-in can easily grow sick of advertisements of countless discounts and sales assaulting them from all angles that make them want to puke, but not make them give in.

The best one can do not to get carried away by the craze is to think what you actually need. I need rest, therefore I had decided to shun shops on Friday. Had done the little shopping in a discount shop on Thursday evening and ate a self-cooked lunch in the office on Friday. On Friday not a single grosz fled my wallet, nor my bank account, nor my credit card. Such was my uncanny way of celebrating the blek srajdej.

To be fair, yesterday I purchased lighting to my flat at bargain prices (and have not found crowds at the shop) and today I am heading to DIY supermarket to buy some kitchen equipment at bargain prices. My excuse is that I need that stuff, not go shopping for kicks.

The trade ban on Sundays has laid bare how badly Poles are addicted to shopping and to what disturbing extent they treat it as pastime activity. While I treat a trip to a shop as a task (go, buy, tick off), most people go there for pleasure to pass time and waste money. This looks like a perfect starting point to a rant on virtues of protestant work ethics whose contradiction is the today’s debt-financed thoughtless consumerism, reaching its peak in pre-Christmas period. Even if indeed it is perfect, I am giving it a rest for a while. Short of time again, but remont moving on – will post some pictures in a week or two.

Wise savings vs. stupid savings.

A few weeks ago I griped about money being a frequent topic of next-to-coffee-machine conversations, while with time I come to think it is quite natural that people share their tricks how to spend less money, after all this is what a rational homo economicus does. But one can be thrifty which is commonly positive as a virtue and one can be a skin-flint, which is perceived as a shortcoming.

In many aspects of life humans can seek way to cut down on their spending, however each cost-cutting must be wise, i.e. not to cause us troubles, or incur additional expenses in the future. People pursue savings on nearly every step, hence below I share what I believe makes sense and what can make us regret.

Property purchase.

Wise savings:

- waiting for some time for an opportunity to arise (does not apply when prices are soaring), instead of buying in haste,

- handling the process without a property agent, whose value added is debatable,

- striking a decent trade-off between expectations towards a dwelling and budget for the purchase.

Stupid savings:

- looking out for a “slightly” worse location, where prices are more acceptable and then bleating about troublesome commuting, lack of infrastructure, etc.,

- finding a property whose location or layout or technical state or other features fall short of our expectations – the upshot is being fucked up every day by the dwelling – nevertheless in the era of expensive flats, limited creditworthiness, some concessions must be made.

Car and its usage

Firstly, think seriously whether you actually really need a car. Below a certain mileage fixed costs are high enough to justify switching to hire or car sharing or taking a taxi.

Secondly, reduce the number of vehicles in your household. I believe in Warsaw with decent public transport, one car is fair enough to be shared between spouses (and if necessary with their adult children).

Wise savings:

- buying a brand-new car (a compact one is fairly enough for 2+2 family) of mass-market brand once in 10-15 years (after that any vehicle will require high maintenance outlays on account of old age) and looking after it properly,

- investing in a garage, which is not just a convenience, but markedly reduces a vehicle’s wear and tear,

- repairing a car with spare parts produced by renowned manufacturers of aftermarket parts.

Stupid savings:

- having the car serviced by non-qualified mechanics and using cheap or second-hand spare parts – poorly looked after car will pay back with poor service,

- neglecting the regular maintenance or shrugging off defects (don’t play with safety, life and health are priceless),

- buying a used car at a bargain price – usually results in loads of money going down the drain for repairs.

Purchases of durable goods

Wise savings:

- think of number of functions of a device you actually need and you would actually make use of. Buy something which will be up to the mark, not above it

Stupid savings:

- buying stuff of poor quality whose reliability could be questionable. Far better to pay more once for a device which should serve you longer. Unfortunately you never know how quickly a defect occurs.

Everyday shopping

Wise savings:

- looking out for bargains,

- keeping up with leaflets of your nearby supermarkets,

- stocking up on goods which can be stored when they are sold up cheaply.

Stupid savings:

- buying food and other stuff of poorer quality at the expense of lower price.

Buying clothes, footwear, etc.

Wise savings:

- looking out for sales, bargains, etc,

- switching towards less known brands, for which you don’t have to pay for a tag (Polish shoes of broadly unknown brands do not get behind all-the-rage brands in terms of style and quality),

Stupid savings:

- buying shoddy things which will wear down quickly (I leave out here the matter of style) – you will pay several times for a few items which would be outlived be one high-quality item.

Travelling and holidaying

Wise savings:

- if I mention once again “looking out for bargains”, the post would get boring,

- go in low season if you can, if you are not constrained by school holidays or course of business within your company, June and September are great months for summer holidays.

Stupid savings:

- skimping on stuff that impinges your comfort – holidays after all are about rest, so standard of your accommodation and its location and other stuff should matter.

Though I am not yet involved in it, conceptually I have begun to advocate the economy of sharing. Economically, it pays off to rent an infrequently used item, instead of buying it.

And for the very ending, think twice whether you actually need what you want to buy. Maybe for some reasons it will not come in useful, maybe you can just borrow it.

A farewell to old, good Nokia :(

1 December 2014 will go down in the history (of this blog) as the day when my Nokia 3110 Classic gave up the ghost. I bought the handset on 25 March 2008 and for six years and eights months it had served me almost beyond reproach. Much more reliable and much more durable than mobile phones produced these days, the Nokia would keep me company and had not been spared endurance tests. Over those years the Nokia survived being dropped several times (and went unharmed), withstood lying exposed to strong sunlight in temperatures exceeding +40C and unlike other phones remained totally indifferent when used in below –20C frost.

In the last two months the phone began to give first warning signs of the forthcoming end of its service. It crashed after being switched on and I had to wait some ten minutes before the phone returned to life, from time to time it also tended to lose network coverage and I had to shake it to help aerial catch the signal again. Despite those flaws I admit to have been too attached to the phone to think of replacing it with a less obsolete one. I am not fond of gadgets and the Nokia offered me everything I expect from a phone…

Then the fateful day came. On Monday evening I hooked in the phone to charge it up and after two hours I noticed it did not draw electricity from the charger. I grabbed the phone, but it did not react when I pressed any button. I called my number from the company phone, but it turned out my number was unavailable. I took off and put in the battery and turned it on again, waited until ten minutes when the phone is not responsive elapsed. The phone reacted only to numerical keys and had its menu accessible via navigation keys. I took the opportunity to recover all the notes I kept in it. Pressing menu and dialling keys resulted in the phone crashing for good. I tried to work out whether it was not the SIM card and sought many causes of the breakdown, but eventually gave up. Life of the phone naturally came to an end. Unexpectedly and swiftly, the Nokia let me down once, but properly.

Corpo smartphone unfortunately does not offer dual-SIM functionality, so I had to resort to the only unused handset I have in my drawer, namely Sony CMD-J70, “vintage” 2001. In 2007 I urged my friend not to throw out the phone his just then departed mother had used for six years and for seven years it has served as substitute phone when my parents’ phones (both low-end Nokias) were under warranty repairs or to me as a second phone, before I moved my number to Play. Sony had been idle for many months, so the battery perked up after some ten minutes since being plugged in to the charger. I have used the phone for six days and although the handset offers excellent quality of calls, writing messages on it (it traces back to times when T9 dictionaries were unknown) is a veritable nuisance and the phone does not read messages sent from newer traditional phones (oddly enough those sent from smartphones come through).

My first choice on what to buy was Sony Xperia E Black. At first glance it was not the newest model (it premiered in March 2013), but reasonably priced, seemingly durable and with lots of functionalities. The other day in the office it turned out my team-mate has that model and he complains about it. He handed me the handset and allowed to play with it for a while. When I took it into hand and saw how crappy devices it indeed was and then ran a thorough search on its quality on forums, I cancelled my order placed in the Internet shop I use to buy consumer electronics. I always choose cash payment when I pick up ordered stuff in collection point, so the resignation did not involve claiming back money, yet it has left me without a decent, normal phone (it lacks keypad locking feature which means it can initiate a call while kept in a pocket!) before a three-day business trip.

Actually reading Internet forums on handsets (one should make allowances for their contents, since many of the grumbles are written by people with exorbitant expectations) prompted me to revise my needs and expectations towards the new phone. I use the corpo smartphone, but actually am not fond of it, nor impressed by it. The corpo-phone has some limitations in scope of usage (restrictions on multimedia messages, downloading applications, private e-mails and social media), but apart from it I can have 1GB monthly data transfer to use up when I need to check something or to read some news or article and has built-in, though slow, GPS. I will gladly make do without a touchscreen and prefer a traditional QWERTY keyboard. I will appreciate reliable and durable, decently assembled phone with solid battery. It does not have to be fancy, I do not need it to swank about, it has to serve me well and meet my modest needs.

Finally I have made up my mind for Nokia Asha 302. The model was released in February 2012 and for this reason is not readily available in every bigger shop with consumer electronics, but garners excellent opinions from its users. Nokia Asha 302 was also the main company phone back at the Employer (I did not have one on account of not being eligible for company phone) and my colleagues, counting out those who expected too much, were satisfied with it. The only problem with it is that it takes some trouble to purchase it. I learnt it was available in Nokia shop in Żoliborz, but yesterday I could not afford to spend two hours to drive there to pick it up in person. Tomorrow I will check out whether any of the other two Nokia shops, in Śródmieście and in Ursynów, has any Asha 302 in stock. I sincerely hope they have some and price does not diverge from 248 PLN (superb price-quality trade-off) I was quoted by the Żoliborz outpost.

The thoughts on the phone could be put into broader perspective of critical assessment of unbridled consumerism and how most people relish on fancy stuff. Hard to deny, pursuit of only newer and more swanky goods also underlies economic growth and gives jobs to people, but when staring into the screen of the posh smartphone, it is important not to lose sight of other people…

Meg - the first decade gone by

Some two weeks ago I was scoffed at, by my somewhat older female workmates, for sticking to my almost six-years-old, always reliable, Nokia 3110 Classic and not upgrading to an all-the-rage smartphone / iPhone or whatever else a modern corpo-lemming needs to swank. I refuted their half-jocose, half-serious remarks with a question how long their previous devices worked before packing up. Unsurprisingly, one said her previous smartphone had cracked after hitting table surface after being dropped from the height of 20 centimetres, the other’s iPhone had broken down after a few months from purchase, helpless technicians hadn’t known how to fix it and eventually she’d had it replaced under warranty with another shitty iPhone which even doesn’t have a removable battery. Since early 2008 when I purchased my Nokia, it has never let me down. A few times over that time it crashed and I had to turn it off and on, a few times it lost signal and needed a restart, but except for those minor incidents, the handset worked like a clockwork and nothing seems to indicate its end is near. Of course given its age it can conk out any time, but if it happens, I’ll have a justification to buy a better device, probably a low-end smartphone.

The other story is that they also asked me how I can live without access to internet in my mobile phone. Well, the real life is offline and may it stay so. I don’t keep track of the ever-accelerating world and don’t follow my friends on facebook incessantly and don’t miss it. It’s simply healthier not to be in a debilitating state of continuous partial attention… Is it something worth missing out on?

How I’ve used my phone and why I’ve not upgraded to a state-of-the-art device is the essence of my policy towards consumer durables. I generally:

- buy only brand new stuff,

- choose items of good quality, with as many features as I need to have (why paying for gadgets I won’t use?),

- take care of the stuff so that they serve me longer than their built-in obsolescence,

- get rid of them and replace with new when their wear and tear justifies it.

Such should be also the way of handling probably the most expensive consumer durable – a car…

As a matter of principle I wouldn’t buy a used car. Supply of used cars in Poland is limited by low number of sold new cars (many of which serve as company cars which doesn’t bring a good testimony of their condition after a few years of use), so used cars come to Poland from its western neighbours. Given how much I heard and read of crooks trading in used cars, I’d never buy one. Well-maintained used cars are:

- either not for sale, because due to price homogeneity market values them almost at the par with their rickety counterparts, hence owners to well-maintained cars have no motivation to sell them,

- if they are sold, the new owner will be someone from family or friends of an old car owner or a car trader, which brings about negative selection…

With a brand new car you get the producer’s warranty, new technologies and clean history of the vehicle. It does depreciate over the first years rapidly, but why should you care if you plan to keep that car going for 10 – 15 years? You use the car properly, have it serviced at regular intervals, parts which wear out and engine oil are changed when due and the car should serve you for 10 – 15 years. Then comes the moment when each, even the best car, becomes less reliable or simply requires more money sunk to keep it going. Even if repairs are not expensive, you need to take the trouble to find a cheaper spare part, pick it up and have it replaced. So after all there comes the moment to part company with the old car without regrets and buy a brand new car that should serve you years. Provided in the era of built-on obsolescence the newly produced car are that durable... Time will tell…

The reason why I write it all is that today is the 10th anniversary of the day when my car was purchased. As a young driver I’ve been in the luck of having my first car neither purely brand-new (not recommendable for beginners behind the wheel), nor purely used. My parents signed it over to me two years ago when my father decided he wanted a new car. Probably hadn’t it been for my need (a proper word, maybe I should write ‘whim’) to have a car, he would’ve driven it for some time more, but given the circumstances, the choice was obvious…

After 10 years the car still looks well and holds up well. Engine and transmission are in superb condition, bodywork and some of auxiliary elements signify their wear and tear (although there is no trace of rust!). To the right – snapped on 18 June 2013 after a wash and some polishing ;) Maybe not like driven out of showroom, but as for a decade-old vehicle, looks splendidly.

The car:

- has never had a collision on the road, although has scratches and one repaired dent after too close meeting with objects other than other vehicles,

- has never broken down on the road to the extent it had to be towed away to a garage on a trailer and never has it failed to start,

- has always been serviced by Renault dealership’s garage (a bit more expensive, but as long as you prove you know the onions and keep tabs on mechanics, they won’t rip you off) and most of the time parked in a garage,

- when I was behind the wheel endured temperatures (thermometer readings) from –24C (cold start, not just driving out of garage into such temperature) to +36C and tomorrow the latter record stands a chance of being tomorrow, when heat wave that has come over Poland is about to reach its zenith),

- over 10 years had 6 breakdowns of auxiliary elements (in a French car inevitable), out of which 3 over the 3rd year of usage and 2 over the last year (total cost of unplanned repairs over the last year: slightly less than 500 PLN) and 2 minor breakdowns of engine / transmission – related elements (cost of repair below 1,000 PLN each time),

- at the moment has a mileage of 59,693 kilometres.

The odometer reading is the effect of simply using the car only when necessary. As I counted, the car had 13 longer trips (> 100 kilometres to a destination) which contributed to some 10,000 kilometres of mileage, the rest driven near Warsaw. My general principles are:

- if the distance to cover is too short to let the engine heat up, there’s no point in starting it – engine and other elements wear out most before working temperatures is reached (for the same reason I don’t understand why people cherish low-mileage car from someone who used it only on short distances – what’s the percentage of mileage driven with warm engine?),

- in Warsaw, unless justified, the car should be left by the nearest underground station and then public transport should be taken,

- when weather permits and I don’t go to work, I use a bicycle…

The plan now is to use the car as long as it is reliable. Given its age, frequent breakdowns may begin to plague before long, but I hope to enjoy at least two years of problem-free usage. And then – option one is another car for years, but preferable is the second option – a company car. Even if I had to pay for petrol from my own pocket, it would spare me depreciation, servicing, repairs, insurance and other car-related expenses, which at the end of the day are… money down the drain.

Lean times...

How come during the first wave of the crisis (I still assume economic misery lasting since 2008 would only ease, not cease) Poland was a “green island” on the map of Europe, while these days, although Polish economy does not, and predictably will not, contract, there are several CEE countries that outpace Poland in terms of GDP growth. How come? In my view there are two factors that contribute to relative frailty of the Polish economy. First is the strength of the Polish currency, the other is dwindling consumer confidence.

The former can be easily quantified and its impact on growth can be explicated with referring to currency regimes. Currencies of countries severely hit by the economic woes in late 2008 and 2009 were pegged to EUR (Baltic States), or these countries had just adopted the single currency (Slovakia). Polish zloty was then allowed to float and speculators betting against our currency sold it off  to levels which considerably boosted competitiveness of Polish exports and decreased demand on foreign products. Today PLN is fairly valued against other currencies and so Poland cannot fully benefit from advantages of cheap domestic currency.

The latter is less measurable (although you can always work out several indices or ratios to quantify optimism among consumers or entrepreneurs), it is more about collective state of mind and expectations. In 2009 Poles would rush to the shops as if economic slowdown was just a newspaper headline. Retail sales were rising, not soaring, but most Poles stayed optimistic about the future.

These days confidence is shrinking. Consumer feel much more insecure about the future and their salaries in real terms have dropped, while basic costs of living keep going up. Whenever we spend more to meet our basic needs (dwelling maintenance, food) and our income does not rise, we are forced to save on something else. And so we cut back expenses on culture, entertainment, going out, holidays, cars, etc. Plus when we feel insecure about the future, especially about the terms of our employment, we tend to put aside money for a rainy day. This is all visible around…

Just over the recent week Gazeta Wyborcza published two pieces on this trend. The first says fear of being fired is worse than joblessness. From the economic point of view it is better to have the job, than to be out on the limb, but from psychological point of view, the former state, combined with insecurity about tomorrow appears more crippling. Once you are jobless, your situation seems controllable. When, just like me, you have a job, but at the back of your head you have the thought that each day you go to work might be your last day there (I’m still better off because I have a generous severance pay guaranteed!), it is much more crippling emotionally. How can you plan anything? How can you decide to take out a loan if your repayment capacity might be jeopardised? How can you spend more, if a natural reaction in such situation is building a cash buffer? A human needs some stability, while today’s economy cannot offer it.

The second article dwells on general trend on the labour market – employment is falling, salary hikes are frozen, employees hold down the job, and, fearing of losing the job, expend less. This has severe implications for the total economy and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: consumers spend less, aggregate demand falls, producers put out less, needs fewer staff, lay off, those laid-off buy less and so the vicious circle keeps turning. Private consumption is the propeller of GDP and drop in it, compounded by limitations in offsetting it by other components of GDP (private investment, government spending, net exports), is quickly reflected in economic growth statistics. Also the current disinflation, despite its unsustainable character (1.7% y/y inflation in January was caused by temporarily cheaper fuels and drop in natural gas rates for households – do not cut interest rates so rashly!), is also the aftermath of lower consumer spending.

Skimping on every step is not just a figment of panicking journalists’ imagination. I can see it around, but not everyone is cutting down on splurging money. Fewer people buy coffee in the morning in our canteen (5 PLN per mug each day, giving it up leaves 100 PLN in your pocket each month), more prepare instant coffee, paid by the employer. I find it harder to find company for a lunch, as more people bring food from home. If they decide to eat out, they prefer our subsidised canteen to more expensive eateries in the vicinity of our office. Prices above 15 PLN for main course (without a soup) are prohibitive for Poles all ranking among 5% best-earning ones. Many decide to eat only a soup… They see merits of shoes bought in Deichmann or CCC, when choosing their holiday destinations, they seek cheaper places. Polish countryside is again an option, with agro-tourism being far less costly than mountain or seaside posh resorts. If abroad, Bulgaria, Hungary and Albania are all the rage, offering much cheaper accommodation that Mediterranean countries. Colleagues who have returned from winter holidays say lodgings and borrowing skis are much cheaper and despite this there are fewer tourists. Zakopane was all desolated as prices of rooms and in restaurants were far too steep (50 PLN for a lunch for one person is a daylight robbery indeed!). Going to a cinema – not more often than once a month, to a theatre – once in a quarter – restraints on spending on culture are quite typical. Car or public transport – the latter quite often wins. Traffic density and number of cars covered by snow for an extended period are respectively: lower and higher this winter. Traffic jams are not as bad as they use to be... No wonder if many people have given up on their cars.

Maybe what are just observing is just the farewell to credit-fuelled growth and onset of era of frugality. Number of new mortgages granted by banks in 2013 might be record-low, this will surely have implications for the property market, i.e. accelerate process of adjusting prices to purchasing power of buyers. There is one more time bomb ticking and I have not heard anyone’s concern about it in Poland – there is a property bubble swelling in Switzerland and the country’s central bank might be likely to raise interest rates. This might in turn hit mortgage debtors in Poland with their liabilities denominated in CHF, as amount of monthly instalment is much more sensitive to interest rate than to exchange rate. I am not envisaging spectacular bankruptcies of distressed borrowers, bad debts will not soar. Instead “home-owners” will be bending over backwards to make ends meet and avoid foreclosures even harder and this will also decrease private consumption.

The upbeat part of the post is, again, that property prices should be heading down…