{"id":46300,"date":"2023-08-09T09:29:26","date_gmt":"2023-08-09T13:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/news\/opinion-millions-of-americans-can-save-thousands-of-dollars-by-doing-this-one-thing\/"},"modified":"2023-08-09T09:29:28","modified_gmt":"2023-08-09T13:29:28","slug":"opinion-millions-of-americans-can-save-thousands-of-dollars-by-doing-this-one-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/?p=46300","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Millions of Americans can save thousands of dollars by doing this one thing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

More than a decade ago, our family moved from a five-bedroom home in Florida to a two-bedroom apartment in New York City. As much as we tried to downsize in advance of our new life, we just had too much stuff.<\/p>\n

So, we did what millions of Americans do: We put the excess in storage. And then we spent years ignoring the costly reality, racking up thousands of dollars in locker-rental fees as a result.<\/p>\n

\n

Our story has a happy ending, however. Finally, we said, \u201cEnough is enough,\u201d and combed through everything: the bikes we never rode, the baseball cards that had little to no value, the college papers I saved for no purpose other than to remind myself of that undeserved B minus I got for a paper on \u201cBeowulf.\u201d We tossed much of the stuff, sold some of it (I made a whopping $210 on four bins of baseball cards) and found room in our apartment for the rest.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about our pricey storage journey in light of a new report from the Wall Street Journal that chronicles how big the storage industry has become. Among the facts cited: More than one in 10 Americans rent storage space. And they pay $165.55 a month on average for that privilege, which is 20% more than what they paid four years ago.<\/p>\n

Do the math and we\u2019re talking about an industry that rakes in billions of dollars annually \u2014 specifically, $29.2 billion, according to market researcher IBISWorld.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What makes us such a storage-mad nation? In a word, consumerism. Experts cite the fact that ours is a country predicated on the idea you can buy happiness \u2014 in the form of more, well, stuff. A Time magazine story from 2015 summarized the situation:<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren in the U.S. make up 3.1% of the world\u2019s kid population, but U.S. families buy more than 40% of the toys purchased globally. The rise of wholesalers and warehouse supermarkets has packed our pantries and refrigerators with bulk items that often overflow into a second fridge. One-click shopping and same-day delivery have driven purchasing to another level altogether, making conspicuous consumption almost too easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t always like this, of course. The post-World War II era is often cited as the beginning of the \u201cstuff\u201d era: Think the rise of the middle-class, the decent-sized homes they could afford to call home and all those goods they could acquire to put inside those abodes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nobody captured this idea better than the late and legendary comedian George Carlin, who devoted an entire bit to \u201cstuff.\u201d As Carlin points out, if we didn\u2019t have stuff, we wouldn\u2019t really need a house. And if we didn\u2019t have so much stuff, we wouldn\u2019t need to move to a bigger house. And if we didn\u2019t have so much stuff beyond that, we wouldn\u2019t need storage lockers. After all, everyone has to find a place for those imported French toenail clippers that Carlin references at one point.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Carlin made these observations decades ago, but the story continues. Consider how Jim Gaffigan, a modern-day comic sage, has picked up the thread. As he observed in 2017: \u201cI don\u2019t understand the logic of a storage unit. \u2018Hey, you know that ugly stuff we never use? Why don\u2019t we pay a stranger to hold onto it? That way we can cringe every month when we realize this stuff isn\u2019t worth the monthly charge we\u2019re paying.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

How do we break this ridiculous cycle? Experts say it\u2019s all about getting into that storage unit and applying some of the same common-sense rules I applied \u2014 separating your items into \u201ckeep,\u201d \u201csell,\u201d \u201cdonate\u201d and \u201ctoss\u201d piles. And don\u2019t let sentiment get the better of you in your decision-making. As the Simplicity Habit website describes a way to approach this decluttering process: \u201cBe honest with yourself about why you\u2019re hanging onto the storage unit and the stuff in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not that I want to make myself out to be a Marie Kondo-type tidying-up guru. If anything, I see myself as a storage-industry sap: I cringe when I think about the roughly $10,000 I spent on storage for no reason other than I didn\u2019t want to deal with my \u201cstuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s money that could have gone to so many important things \u2014 say, paying for my children\u2019s college expenses instead of taking out more in loans. Or if I really wanted to throw 10 grand out the window, I could have at least enjoyed the European vacation of my dreams instead of preserving my \u201cBeowulf\u201d essay for time immemorial (and even then, my college papers stayed in the \u201ckeep\u201d pile).\u00a0<\/p>\n

But at least I eventually learned my lesson. And as I now eye my increasingly overstuffed closets, I know I must remind myself to declutter every so often, lest I fall into the storage trap once again.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than a decade ago, our family moved from a five-bedroom home in Florida to a two-bedroom apartment in New York City. As much as we tried to downsize in advance of our new life, we just had too much stuff. So, we did what millions of Americans do: We put the excess in storage. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[236],"tags":[83],"class_list":["post-46300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"yoast_head":"\nOpinion: Millions of Americans can save thousands of dollars by doing this one thing | iFintechWorld<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"More than a decade ago, our family moved from a five-bedroom home in Florida to a two-bedroom apartment in New York City. 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