(The following is a transcription from a video Linda and I recorded. Please excuse any typos or errors.)
My wife Linda and I just celebrated our 15 year anniversary.
It was also Father’s Day and so what I decided to do, or I guess we kind of mutually decided, is that we would rent a Tesla Model S Performance Series (which is the fastest production car in the world).
I’m not somebody who’s actually driven many fast cars. I have always wanted to drive fast cars. Just to feel the speed, in which is kind of a guy thing. But I just never really have had the opportunity.
Right now I have a Jeep, which is basically the slowest car on the road.
So I thought this would be a fun thing to experience. And there’s a couple reasons why. Before I get into these reasons, you can see us discuss our experience here:
I love Tesla. We’ve actually been Tesla shareholders for a long time. And I’ve always thought “I can’t wait to get my hands on one of those.” So, our decision to rent the Tesla was super fun and we were both really excited when we decided you in renting one.
We have a treat for you! At the end of the above video, you’ll see actual footage of us going from zero to 60 miles an hour in 2.5 seconds. Be sure to check that out!
Valuing Experience Rather Than Things
I think one of the main reasons that I wanted to do this. It’s the same reason that we like traveling and going on vacation, and just getting out. We value experiences more than things.
I realized this more and more, the older I get. I’ll buy something, it’ll provide me a certain amount of joy for a certain amount of time. And then, it just becomes something collecting dust on the shelves.
Whereas something like this, driving in the fastest car in the world is something I will never forget. The experience of that was just really unique. And, it wasn’t that expensive to experience this. And so that was really attractive to me. It’s the same way with traveling to a place you’ve never been before. It creates an experience that you’ll be able to hang onto for the rest of your life.
This was really interesting to us too, because it’s easy to believe that I can only drive this super fast car if I have enough money to buy it. And it just dawned on us, we could rent this awesome car and have that experience without the price tag (and the bill for the insurance and whatever else that entails). We could still have this experience for one day. And I feel it’s probably more memorable because it was just a one day experience. Whereas if we owned it, the newness and the excitement just kind of wears off over time.
Celebrating Milestones
We also believe in celebrating things. And I think we’re pretty good at that. This is something Linda has helped me with more and more. Because, I tend towards the saving side. Like, how can I save for retirement? How can I save towards our financial goals?
Whereas she’s much better at celebrating, enjoying the moment, enjoying the milestones. Linda has helped me grow in that aspect. And I think it’s really important and it actually helps you maintain progress towards our financial goals.
Chasing Your Financial Goals
That’s something that we’re always recommending to people. As you’re chasing your financial goal, whatever that is (i.e. paying off debt or paying off a car or paying off your house, etc.), have milestones in place for you to celebrate. And in this case it wasn’t a financial milestone, but it was 15 years of marriage. With having little kids, we weren’t able to go to Paris or anything so it’s like. So we figured, let’s have some fun, let’s rent that Tesla for the day.
And it was a lot of fun. We talked about what to do the day we had the rental. I asked Linda what she wanted to do. And she thought it would be fun to just drive around for the day. We made a few stops along the way, but we did spend a good amount of time just enjoying it.
The Cost Of Renting A Tesla
One of the things that people have been asking me is, “Well, how much does this cost?” And I’ll tell you how much it costs and how we did it and where you can do it yourself.
First off, we rented this car for about $150 for the entire day (I was pretty excited about this price). I thought that was a pretty good deal. Especially considering this car costs over a $100,000 to buy. I think it starts at $90,000, the one we drove was probably $110,000 for this actual car. And so that was pretty fun. I had a friend who was asking me if renting this made me want to buy one. If I was like now really into it. And it’s actually kind of the opposite. because I’m not a super big car guy. I’m the type of guy who’s only concerned about getting from A to B. Whatever’s going to get me there will work, and I tend to buy used vehicles to save money.
I have some friends who are hardcore car guys. And if they would get taste of driving this Tesla, they’d be like, “I have to have this car.” But in my case, it’s like this was really fun. I loved it. But it convinced me even more that I don’t need it. And that I don’t want to spend a $100,000 on a vehicle.
Mind you, this is coming from a guy who drove a 14 year old car that he bought for a $1,000 and then sold for a $1,000. A to B is my biggest concern.
Where We Rented The Tesla
Now if you want to do this, I’m going to tell you exactly where we did it. We rented it on a website called Turo.
We actually created another review video about them that you can check out, but basically it is like Airbnb for cars. You can rent cars from other people own them. And so you can often find cars that you can’t find at any kind of rental company or anything like that. Like a Tesla.
Depending on what city you live in, there’s probably somebody renting out a Tesla Model S and possibly even this high performance one (it’s the P100D for anybody who wants to find the exact one). It was so fast. It was ridiculous.
Performance Modes
There’s four different performance modes: a chill mode, sport mode and the ludicrous and ludicrous plus. I drove on the sport mode on the way home and that was by far the fastest car I’ve ever driven. I wanted to try out the ludicrous mode and see how that is. So we hopped on the highway. There was no one around, so we could see what this car can do. Linda said her stomach was in her throat when we tried it and whoa. Wow… it was dang that’s fast!
That car was so fast. Linda said that “I could not even understand how fast it was going. My brain was not catching up with the speed of the car! At one point, when you gunned it, I remember looking at the speedometer and then looking to the road and it felt like a movie in slow motion where I was like. That’s how I felt moving my head. I’ve never experienced anything like that.”
How I Describe My Experience
I’ve driven one or two other cars that were kind of fast, but nothing even close to this. My one gearhead, motorhead friend, he said that, how do he describe it?
It’s faster than falling. You’re going faster than falling and yeah that’s how I would describe it. It was insane. Yeah, that pretty much sums up our experience with the Tesla P100D!
Let us know down in the comments, what car we should rent next for our next anniversary… that would also be a fun experience for us. Or if you’ve driven this car, let us know your thoughts as well.
We’d also love to hear what you do to celebrate the small victories, as well as the big victories.
But, that’s all for today. Be blessed. Be blessing.
