One of the many mysteries in the world is why people will pay well over $100 per month to store items that are barely worth that amount. What am I talking about? Well, public storage units, of course. Public Storage is a booming business! It never ceases to amaze me to see what people store in these units. I’m not talking about the person who rents a storage unit for a month or two while they are in the process of moving etc, I’m referring to the long term holders of these units. What on earth is in there that’s worth $1200 per year to keep it there? In many cases, I’d be willing to bet, not much. The business case for whether to store these things is simple: Value of stuff/monthly rent=Number of months before you are wasting your money What would I do? Well, thanks for asking. I would sell all of these things and pocket the money. If I don’t have room for it where I live, then I just don’t have room for it. If you are able to store all of these items in a public storage unit away from your home, that probably means that you don’t use it much and don’t need it. Every now and then I hear about someone going to a public storage auction. Units that are behind on their rent are normally sold to the highest bidder after a certain amount of time. The potential bidder gets to open the door and look around inside (You can’t go in the unit. You just get to look from the door). Some people make quite a good living by bidding on these auctions and then selling the contents on Ebay. Well, why did people have these storage units in the first place, if they were just going to let the contents go to auction? In a lot of cases, I’d bet it’s just poor money management. So, will I ever go bid on one of these units? Nope. I’m chicken. With my luck I’d bid on a unit like this: http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=133241 or this: http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/lv-crime/2001/apr/10 or this: http://www.abc4.com/local_news/local_headlines/story.aspx?content So, in a mad world like this, what should someone do? Well, I’d recommend buying stock in some of the publicly held public storage companies, and if you’ve got lots of money, maybe you should just build one yourself. If you choose to build one, please hurry. There are a lot of people out there just dying to pay you to store their stuff.
Filed under: Spending
