My advice to you is to keep your real estate footprint as small as possible if you are leasing. You are paying someone else a guaranteed rent regardless of what you take in and you are committed for years. I wouldn't even rent a storage unit on a monthly basis. And why are you giving away $300 worth of scrap each month? You can't put that in a pickup truck to your local scrap yard for cash? With that scrap money saved over two years you will have enough for a down payment on an acre of land and you can dump whatever scrap you want on it. Pay yourself rather than some landlord. It is always tempting to go big before you are ready. But you need a reserve of funds in order to avoid going bust. And don't think someone else can't do what you are doing - because they can very easily.