The Joyful Intersection of Organization and Finance [Episode 337]

I have an extended family member who has been keeping a bunch of stuff in a storage unit for 10 years, some assets that she would love to put into use and actually have them be able to generate some cash flow for her, but she just has never found the right place, person, partner to do that with.

But she's been keeping these things in a storage unit she's had to pay for month after month for 10 years and the costs have ranged from about 170 to 190 over these 10 years per month and it just kind of broke my heart as i was like watching her talk about this she's like i put so much money into keeping these things i want to get them out doing something so we're working on finding the right partner for her now now that i know this is kind of a need she has but i actually just ran the numbers quickly in excel and just just calc them out but if she's paid over the past 10 years about $21,000 for the storage unit over those 10 years, if it were invested, if that storage unit were just cleared out and they were placed somewhere else, like maybe a friend or someone who has extra space to store these things, it's not a ton of space, but if she had invested that money, cleaned out the storage unit, invested that money, over 10 years kind of growing at the S&P 500 rate, it would have grown to $44,000.

So

more than double the money.

And

it hurts your heart.

Yeah.

And she could have that at her disposal to do other things, whatever she wanted with it.

But then if she'd let that just sit alone, no more paying into it, no more investing, it would have grown to $155,000 in 20 years.

And way more if she would have put that money monthly, those additional 10 years.

So you can just see the power of compounding and just being able to offset clearing out spaces that are just cluttered up, things that are costing us money that doesn't need to be spent, and investing and putting that money to work in a good way really can transform our space, our peace of mind, but also our financial situation.

Just hearing those numbers is quite astonishing, I think, a little bit.

And it really touches my heart.

And I think about our community here at Learn to Become.

I know that this family member of yours is not alone.

She's not the only one who's spending money on a storage unit for a good reason.

Right.

No one is spending money on a storage unit just because they like to shell out money.

There are things in there that really matter.

There's maybe sentimental items.

There's maybe potential items they could use for a business.

For sure.

I mean, it took effort or time or something to get those items in the first place.

But

if there are ways to motivate ourselves to take the step to go through it, know how to go through it, to process, filter through, streamline... get rid of, sell, donate, a bunch of stuff that we have in these units, these places, things like that, that are not only taking away our money, but cluttering up our lives and our minds and our hearts.