Image by Andrew J. Cosgriff

If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.
— Vicki Robin

From the Things that Should Not Be department — Self Storage! What a fantastic idea!

When you’ve loaded up on so much unnecessary crap that you can’t even fit it all in your house, and you can’t afford a bigger house to store it all, because, you know, you’re up to your eyeballs in debt from buying all that crap, you can spend even more money renting out a glorified tin shack to store it all! That way you can get back to your patriotic duty of racking up more debt by accumulating even more crap!

Self Storage is a booming industry in this country. A few fun facts from SelfStorage.org, an industry trade group:

• One in ten U.S. households now rent at least one storage unit.
• Of the roughly 58,500 self storage facilities world-wide, approximately 49,000 are in the U.S.
• The industry reports revenues of over $22 billion per year.
• There are over 2.3 billion square feet of self storage in this country. Just to put this in perspective:
  • That’s enough to cover the entire island of Manhattan with crap, three times over.
  • It’s more than enough room for every man, woman, and child in the country to stand in a storage unit, all at the same time (assuming you moved out all those mountains of crap, first).

Yes, I know there are at least a few legitimate uses for storage. Military deployments overseas come to mind, for example. (According to SelfStorage.org, they account for about 4% of total units in use.)

Moving is another potentially reasonable justification, but here you’re starting to get on shakier ground. If you need to stow all of your stuff for a month or two while you’re house hunting in a new city, ok, fine. But if you’re storing piles of crap indefinitely because you downsized your residence — paying to store crap you can’t possibly need in a climate controlled facility, you might as well light your money on fire. At least that would put less carbon in the atmosphere than air-conditioning the lawn furniture you can’t use because you’ve moved into a condo, and the wardrobe you can’t fit into any more because you’ve gained 40 pounds.

Give it up. It’s only stuff.

Image by Sean Owen

If you go into Dollar Tree and spend $100, you might be a redneck.
— Overheard in Dollar Tree

I love Dollar Tree. There, I said it. Despite some of the reservations I have, at the end of the day, I absolutely love it.

The place is like methadone for recovering consumerists, of which I certainly am one. If you ever get an uncontrollable shopping itch, run for the nearest Dollar Tree and go nuts. They’ve got all kinds of wacky stuff, and you can just about O.D. on impulse buying in there, without doing any serious harm to your bottom line ¹.

It’s also a great place for a lot of everyday basics. Here are just a few of the things I’ve found there for $1. I think you’d be silly to pay more for any of these elsewhere:

• Glasses
• Batteries
• Detergent
• Dish Soap
• Aluminum Foil
• Peroxide
• Bleach
• Holiday Decorations and Christmas Ornaments
• Wrapping Paper
• Thermometers
• Razors
• Various cables (coax, ethernet, even HDMI)
• Tape Measures

I personally find many of the consumable items they carry, like detergent and soap, indistinguishable from their counterparts at traditional outlets, which can cost up to 10x as much, or even more in some cases. So I am happy to get them on the cheap. (They’re indistinguishable to me, at any rate. If you’re a dish soap connoisseur, feel free to buy yours elsewhere with my blessing.)

Of course Dollar Tree also carries a lot of second-rate crap from China, destined for the landfill. Then again, much of the stuff you’ll find in more “upscale” establishments is also landfill-bound crap from China, only with better branding and a bigger price tag. So who am I to judge?

Still, much like the former junkie furtively leaving the methadone clinic, once you’ve started down the road to financial enlightenment, it can feel slightly dirty walking out of the place with lots of crap you know you don’t really need, even if it was dirt cheap. And of course both the environmentalist and the frugality enthusiast in me take issue with cheap stuff that doesn’t last ². So it’s best not to go overboard.

But Rome wasn’t built in a day. If you’re going to give in to temptation, might as well keep the damage to a minimum, and for that, Dollar Tree is your friend.

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.
— Benjamin Franklin

Do you know how much that slick iPhone in your pocket is really costing you? You might be surprised to learn that it will run you thousands of dollars over its lifetime. That’s a serious drain on your finances.

Once you get bitten by the smartphone bug, though, it’s hard to go back. Trust me, I sympathize. I could get lost in my own living room, so I’d never find my way anywhere without the gps my phone provides. Plus it helps me make productive use of my commute time. I ride the subway, and can never get a seat, so using a laptop isn’t practical, but I can get a head start on the day’s emails with my phone on the way in. (Of course I’d never waste my precious time on something silly like playing games. Cough.)

So can you have your cake and eat it, too? Can you cut down your cell phone bill significantly while still enjoying all those smartphone goodies? Possibly. [Click to continue…]

The creditor hath a better memory than the debtor.
— James Howell

There are those who claim that credit cards are a pure, unadulterated evil. No matter how iron-clad your personal discipline and willpower may be, these people claim, it doesn’t matter. It is simply impossible to use credit cards responsibly.

My response: Horse Hockey. [Click to continue…]

Image by Singopore Sports

Be not simply good; be good for something.
— Thoreau

You hear it everywhere — from the Internet, self-help books, well-meaning friends, teachers, TED talks and TV shows — there seems to be no escape from the mantra: Do what you love, and the money will follow. Follow your dreams. Live your passion.

As with most conventional wisdom, this bit of “advice” is best viewed with suspicion. That goes double for the sort of narcissistic claptrap that feeds people’s fantasies of having whatever they want, on their own terms, without giving a moment’s thought to the needs or desires of others. That sort of mindset may sell lots of books and tickets to seminars, but does it lead to success? [Click to continue…]