mish mash

I have a whole mess of financial thoughts running through my head today.

First, Molly is sick today. Actually, she's been sick since about Wednesday, but this morning it started to get worse instead of better. I took my child to the doctor like any good mother, only she's not covered by my health insurance. $255 later, we had blood drawn, a shot, meds, and new food to take home. I had to put that on our joint Chase card since this is the paycheck where the mortgage comes out and we're going to Disney next week.

Speaking of Disney, I managed to put aside $300 to take with me. We leave Wednesday night and come back Monday afternoon. Saturday will be taken up with race day, so I'm hoping that other than food, my expenses will be minimal and I'll be able to come back with some of that money.

Yesterday, I received an email that my job is not continuing my health plan in 2013. Next month I have to decide whether to jump onto the hubs plan or to take the other plan that's offered. I'm leaning towards the former right now, but it'll depend on what kind of coverage they'll offer for my post-op doctor visits and physical therapy when I get knee surgery later this year. It's very frustrating decision to have to make. I'll admit I had a "poor poor Kathy" mindset last night, but I'm getting over it.

It's not all bad news, though. I've been very good at documenting my spending this month and I think I've managed to reduce spending - not by much - but a little. I was able to stick to a budget when buying a bridal shower gift last week and spent less than I usually would. I even went to Home Goods yesterday with some co-workers and didn't see anything I wanted to buy! That's huge.

Any news with my readers - who's got big weekend plans? We're having people over for the Jets / 49ers game on Sunday since the tickets were too expensive for us to actually go.

Count Wagula

Everyone has a few categories in their life where they spend a lot of money. For some, it's shoes, for others, sports gear, and for most, it's their child(ren). Meet my child:

molly on howl-o-ween

Some days she's 35 pounds of terror. Most days she's 35 pounds of joy. But sometimes, I look into her cute little face and see this:

no, she's not giving me that money

I spent $382.18 on Molly in January 2012. A good chunk of that ($250 to be exact) was for obedience classes. Molly graduated from a basic class at Lucky's Bed & Biscuit in 2011, but was still lacking in the obedience department (ie: she never listened to us). On the recommendation of a co-worker, we enrolled in a six week program at Hanlon's K9. It has been wonderful. Molly isn't quite where we want her to be, but she is definitely a much better dog than she was six weeks ago.

Now it's time for us to move onto the Novice class which means forking over more money. This time it's a bit more expensive ($275) but we also get more classes (10 as opposed to 6). Here is a great example about how subjective wants and needs can be. Obedience training is a little bit of a want and a need. I feel like it's money well spent because we have a better behaved dog; However, I understand that we could probably do without the classes and continue working at home for another month or two. Another factor to consider is the added travel time - the class is near my work, so that is an added day's worth of gas and tolls. I'm sure you've all seen the price of gas recently.

We decided to wait a few weeks before enrolling her in the Novice class. I will be helping a friend out at his restaurant on St. Patrick's Day so we'll use some of that money towards her "education". We have free passes towards the school's daycare facility so we'll rely on that to keep the exercises fresh in her mind.

Without receipts, I'm not really sure what the other $132.18 was spent on. I know I bought food once ($35.00) and rawhides on two occasions (@$9.99 each), but other than that, I don't know. I'll have to add "keep receipts" to my rules.

But as my friend Patty once said "it's still cheaper than a child."

How much do you spend on your pet(s)?

Day Six Spent: $0.00
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Day Six Saved: $0.00