Friday, January 23, 1998
Stuff! Stuff! (and
Returns)
by David M. Grimm
([email protected])
In a recent Fribble, Wendy B G wrote about all the stuff we accumulate. In fact, it is probably fair to say that the older we get the more we stuff we tend to have.
Where I grew up in Missouri, most people end up putting their extra stuff in the basement. I now live in Texas, though, where we do not have basements. Because many people have more stuff than they have room for and recognizing that basements do not exist here, the self-storage rental business is booming.
About five years ago, I decided that we simply did not have room for all our stuff, and that we needed to rent a storage room at a local self-storage warehouse. The current going rate for an average 10-foot by 10-foot storage room is $45 per month. I mentioned the plans to my Dad, who tactfully suggested that he had a better idea. You see, my Dad was a Fool before Fool was cool.
One of the main problems with self-storage rental units is that once you start paying you end up paying forever unless you move to a larger house or decide to part with your precious stuff. My Dad knew that $45 per month is $540 per year. (Yes, I know, that does not qualify him as a Fool, but keep reading.) More importantly, he knew that if I invested that $540 per year for 30 years at the 1971 to 1996 Dow 30 compound annual growth rate of 13.3% I would have over $190,000. And if I could invest that same $540 per year for 30 years at the 1971 to 1996 Foolish Four compound annual growth rate of 22.91% I would have over $1.4 million!
If you are renting a self-storage unit to keep your stuff in, consider whether it is really worth big bucks over 30 years. If it is not, ditch the self-storage unit and do what my Dad and I did; buy about $100 worth of lumber and build a storage loft in your garage. It may be worth over a million dollars to you.
Have
a similar tale?
Talk about it in the Fribble Message Folder!
[Did you know that you can pen a Fribble, yourself? We welcome submissions from readers. Just click here and read "What's a Fribble?".]