>sixteen people contribute €100 each;

yeah sure everyone has 100€ to spend on friends, at least once a month.

What kind of reality does he live in ?

Terr_ a day ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, at the core it suggests each person lends €1600 (~$1850 USD) distributed in an unofficial and impromptu way, hoping to get it all back as a home-improvement good. That has some implications like:

1. You have ~15 friends and you all have houses.

2. All of you can confidently allocate €1600 this year towards one major component of the upgrade, and believe you will benefit from it in the next ~15 years.

3. All the friends make enough money that they're confident anything going wrong with €1600 loans/debts won't cause pain or problems in the friendship.

How rich do you need to be for the mentality of that last one? AFAICT that's ~3% of yearly salary (pre-tax) in Germany.

Personally, I do not want my friend group to be tangled up in a financing scheme, and if I wanted a financing scheme I wouldn't do something half-assed that could explode into acrimony if anyone chooses (or is forced by circumstance) to exit having contributed without receiving or vice-versa.

I could understand friends having good-years helping out ones having bad-years ("banqueting" [0]) but what's being proposed really doesn't map to that.

[0] https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...

▲

atombender a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And everyone lives in a house that they own, apparently.

▲

Terr_ a day ago | parent | next [-]

And everyone makes enough money that something going wrong with their €1600 payment/expectation isn't going to ruin relationships.

It might not actually be "buy one-another new cars" territory, it's closer to that than paying for your friend's coffee or buying an appetizer for the whole table.

▲

hobo123 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Why can't renters plug a battery into their socket, too? As long as the electric house grid is rated for the specified power (might not be the case on some countries, or in extremely old homes).

	▲	atombender a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I'm not an expert. But a Tesla Powerwall type battery is a big thing to install for a renter, is it not? I would argue it's more than installing, say, a washer or window AC; probably more like installing a wall heat pump? You would certainly need the owner's permission, and investing in the kind of adaptations needed might not be something most renters are interested in when it's not their own place. A battery has to be integrated into the whole electrical feed, and a responsible owner might insist that this is a permanent installation and something you can just take with you when you leave. Or if you do, undoing the install will be similarly costly. And who knows if your next place will allow you to install a battery as well. I don't think you can realistically install it in an apartment, due to fire regulations, and it needs a lot of space. Personally, I live in a 74 m2 apartment, and there's simply no room anywhere. Wiring is another matter; electricity comes through shared risers I don't control.
	▲	delusional a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I'm not an expert here, but I don't think you're supposed to backfeed electricity into your panel while you're connected to the grid. Doing something like this (historically at-home solar) you'd need a way to disconnect from the grid physically, at least if you wanted to reuse your home wiring. Now, you could use the battery as a pass through power source, but then you'd have to change all the wiring in your home.

▲

Hugsbox a day ago | parent | prev [-]

You're getting downvoted, but for real this is so disconnected from what I'd say is feasible for most people. I and most of the people I know live squarely paycheck to paycheck, I can't afford to buy my friends birthday presents at all, let alone set aside that much per month just to put batteries in other peoples' houses. This feels like one of those things where the author doesn't grasp the privilege he lives with.

▲

Majestic121 a day ago | parent | next [-]

Surely not for _most_ people, but for people on Hacker News, in the correct age range to have a house, putting 100e aside really does not seem out of whack.

Maybe the author is privileged and it's fine, it's not because you personally can't afford any gift that the author is disconnected, he might not just be talking to everyone on earth.

	▲	Johnny555 a day ago \| parent [-]
		I think the people that can easily put aside €100 for the birthdays of a dozen or more friends could also just pay the €1600 and buy the battery for themselves outright without having to wait for a birthday "surprise"

▲

Symbiote a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even where people probably could afford it I think spending €100 on a birthday gift would be excessive. It would be showing off.

▲

Tepix a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Do they even have houses?

	▲	ssl-3 a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Does having a home inherently change disposable income?
	▲	Hugsbox a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		In some cases yes, and they're not doing much better than I am.