Accountability and Responsibility

There is a piece of land near my home that I’ve eyed for years. By looking at the tax maps and growth changes that have occured over 20 years, I’ve always thought it would be a great location for something in the future. I always wondered what big restauranteur or commercial property developer would jump on the land. I was shocked to see it is going to become yet another self-storage facility, the 5th or 6th one to be built in the last 5 years.

Self storage is, to me, one of the most obvious signs that someone is heading in the direction of financial problems. I attempted to use self-storage once: after 3 months of paying the fees I realized it was better to sell everything on eBay than store it. If I needed to use something I sold, it was cheaper to rent than it was to store. In the years since I tried self-storage, I haven’t needed one item that I was storing. Not once.

What is it that has captivated society to needing more and more self storage? What are we buying that we can’t use right now in our lives, but that we might need some day? Cheap Asian clothes? Cheap electronics? Furniture? Our houses are getting bigger and bigger, so it must just mean that we’re addicted to buying but not addicted to using what we buy.

When my friend moved from Milwaukee to Houston 2 months ago, he had to hit 5 self-storage facilities to move all the stuff that he and his wife had stored. 5 facilities! They averaged US$50 per month in rental costs, which comes to US$3000 a year down the toilet. Before taxes we’re looking at over US$4000 per year of income ($2 per hour wages) down the toilet. It just made no sense.

I asked him about it — “What are you storing that you need so bad?” After fumbling through some words to try to explain what they had, he ended up saying “We don’t know, but we know we’ll need something!” If you store it for 10 years and don’t use it, there is nothing that you couldn’t buy for the US$30,000 (plus interest) he wasted on storage. He could even build a wing on his house cheaper. Then again, this friend used two full moving trucks to move all his belongings, and I know his garage and basement were top to bottom filled with unnecessary junk. How someone can move their junk is beyond me, that’s what garage sales and yard sales are for.

If you’re using self-storage, analyze if it is worth it. See why you can’t store it at home, and if you’re overloaded at home and at storage, confirm that you’re actually using everything you’re putting in the closets. If you need incentive to work through your stored junk, take the doors off the closets and empty all your drawers. Force yourself to sell, give away or junk anything that you don’t use at least once a season. If you can’t recall the last time you used something, why are you spending the money paying the mortgage or rent to store the item? If you’re keeping it for memory’s sake, consider cutting back on your endless boxes of memories and just keep a few items. I have a few friends who live in the past because they can’t get rid of anything — they’re losing their futures by hanging on too tightly.

Don’t become a self-storage addict; the financial concerns are just the tip of the iceberg. Too much junk = too much clutter = too much stress. Feel like you life’s a mess? Look in the closet, and look in the closets that aren’t even in your own home. You might be surprised.

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I’ve never been a big coupon clipper — neither were my parents when they were growing up. In the past few months, though, I’ve been trying to find a way to save some cash without making the coupon-hunting time be a waste of money. I know people who spend 10 hours a week to save US$15, and for me US$1.50 per hour is not worth my time.

When coupon-clipping has saved me the most has generally been in large purchases. I especially like preferred customer cards — Best Buy’s offers 3% cash back and we use it on all our purchases (and any family member who doesn’t belong to the program). Over a year we’ll get back almost US$500 in gift certificates based on all the purchases we convert from people we know.

Yet lately we’re trying a new idea. Many times during the week we’ll find ourselves unsure of exactly what to do. Since I now work primarily out of my home, getting out of the house more regularly is important. For a while, though, getting out of the house has been expensive as we’d go “window” shopping (spending money on things we didn’t need) or go to a restaurant (when we could have eaten at home). Now our new coupon-hunting time spent at home does double duty — it also helps us plan what we’ll do in the days and weeks ahead.

I picked up a simple little filing sleeve made of plastic. It has 15 8×5″ x 5″ sleeves and cost about US$7 at the office supply store. I labeled each file sleeve with a day of the week, starting on Sunday and going through the second Saturday. Using a dry erase marker I’ll also write the actual date next to each day of the week — planning for 2 weeks ahead or so.

When we sit down and spend our 1 hour a week or so looking through all the coupon mailers and online site coupons that we found, we plan our schedule around the savings. We find numerous restaurant coupons (up to 40% off sometimes) and a crazy amount of grocery coupons. We also find car maintenance coupons, travel and entertainment coupons, and the rest. We just dump the coupon right into the file on the particular day we plan on using it, and we’re set. Sometimes we’ll throw in coupons we’re only partially interested in — just in case we might find an hour or two free and want to head out of the house.

We’ve been following this trial for 3 weeks now and I am surprised at how much we’ve saved above our budget — almost US$170 in 3 weeks. We’ve prioritized certain days as “Go to this town” day, and we even prioritize each day’s coupons in the order of need: groceries and things that need chilling are put at the end of that particular file. For restaurants, if we don’t use a particular coupon on a given day, we can move it to another day as long as the coupon isn’t expired.

Coupon expiration is usually ignored by most retailers and restaurants, but this filing system also allows us to toss coupons that we know we can’t use, and when we come across them, we don’t have to even look if they’re still valid.

While we’re still working out the bugs — and finding new features — this system is working great for us and I can’t wait to see how much time and money we end up saving by combining two of our trickiest acts into one, with both acts helping one another. By managing your schedule and your coupons into one process, you’ll likely see even more savings than doing just one or the other, or both separately.

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