Filed under → The Storage Unit Test
You rented an apartment for your stuff.
Some units earn their rent. Three months between houses. Tools that pay you. A parent’s house you cannot face yet. This is about the other kind, the one you took for a season and have now had for two years. Put yours in and find the month the rent passed the stuff.
The unit
Rent versus stuff
Where you land in five years
Three ways out of the same unit, sixty months forward. What you have invested, plus what the stuff is still worth, minus the rent it took to get there. The order never changes. Only the size of the hole.
What the unit costs you
$0
How to actually get out
Step 01
Open the door and photograph every wall
You cannot make a decision about a box you cannot remember. Most people find a couch they already replaced, a crib nobody needs, and four boxes not opened since the move.
Step 02
Sell the ten biggest things this Saturday
Not everything. The ten items worth the most. A treadmill, a dining set, a snowblower and the bikes usually cover three months of rent on their own, and the truck shows up free because the buyer drives it.
Step 03
Point the rent at an index fund the same day
Same autopay, same date, different account. If the money stays in checking it is gone by Thursday. That one move is the entire top row on this page.
The math, in the open
Your rent is held flat, which is generous. Storage is sold on a teaser rate and then raised. The dollar figure on this page never goes up, so every number here is the best case. If your unit went from $99 to $148 in the second year, the real hole is bigger than what you are looking at.
Include the insurance in the rent dial. Most facilities require a tenant policy and sell you one at the counter for $10 to $15 a month. It is rent. So are the late fees and the lock.
The value is your number, and that is the point. The page does not guess what your things are worth, and it does not apply a haircut to what you type. You said it, so the whole page runs on it. Worth knowing anyway: household goods sold used on Marketplace or at a yard sale usually fetch a lot less than the owner expects, so if anything this is generous to the unit too.
Where the curve comes from. Your figure is anchored at today, not at day one, and the line is projected backwards from there, because the stuff was worth more when the door first closed. That is what makes the crossing land where it does.
The contents keep losing value while they sit. Everything inside drops 12% a year in this model, which is mild. Styles date, electronics stop being supported, particle board swells, and a unit that is not climate controlled can turn a mattress or a photo album into a loss. Nothing in here gets more valuable except the antiques nobody actually has.
The five year comparison. Investments grow at 10% a year, the long run average for a broad US stock index before inflation, compounded monthly. Proceeds from selling go in on day one. The rent goes in monthly. Real returns are lumpy and the next five years could be worse.
Not counted, and all of it points the same way. Taxes, the gas and the Saturdays, the mileage on the truck, and the fact that a facility can auction the contents once you fall about two months behind. Also not counted: what you originally paid for any of it. That money is spent either way and it is not a reason to keep spending more.
When the unit is the right call. A genuine gap between houses, a deployment, inventory that produces income, tools that pay for themselves, or a parent’s estate you are not ready to sort. Those are months, not years. The test is simple: name the date it ends. If you cannot, this page is about you.
Show me the numbers
Year by year, from the day the door closed.
| Year | Rent paid | Stuff worth | Under by |
|---|