WHAT’S ON TAP THIS WEEK?

I’m in the middle of a very busy stretch of life these days, some of it planned & some of it not!  Here’s a few QuickHits to give you an idea of what’s on my mind, and what I plan on blogging about this week.  Take a look and enjoy!

Pet Insurance

As I wrote about last week, one of my dogs swallowed an entire sock, had to have surgery to remove it, and may force the use of our emergency fund this week.  While I was at the vet spending my future kids’ college fund to save my dog’s life, I picked up some brochures on pet insurance.

So to briefly continue my pet-related theme here at MyMoneyMinute, I’d like to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of purchasing pet insurance vs. self-insuring through these times of calamity with our furry loved ones.  I guess that’s the beauty of blogging — you never know what life will throw at you (or in this case, what it will swallow).  So you get to adapt with me in these quick changes in life!  A scripted life would be quite boring anyway, wouldn’t it?

Happy Birthday to Me!

Wednesday is a landmark day in the MyMoneyMinute household, as I hit the big 3-0.  That’s right, I’ll be turning 30!  I’m sure I’ll provide some obvious self-reflection on that day, and somehow I’ll shoehorn in something that’s money-themed with it.  This may fall under the “and all that implies” part of MyMoneyMinute.  We’ll see.

Vacation to Mexico

It has been quite a while since we have been able to take a vacation that didn’t involve flying home to see family.  Don’t get me wrong, I love our families, but it will be nice for the two of us to just get away and recharge the batteries without any other responsibilities or obligations.  We’re flying off to Riviera Maya, near Cancun, on Saturday!  Four nights of all-inclusive resort bliss.  Expect a vacation-related post this week.

New Edition on Website — Find Cheap Gas!

All right, I guess I’m misleading you a bit here.  I am not interviewing New Edition, the pop group from the ’80s.  But I do have a new addition to my website.  Available on the tabs at the top of my page is a link that allows you to search for the lowest gas prices in your area, courtesy of gasbuddy.com! I’ll probably post a QuickHit on this later in the week, but feel free to navigate over and see where the lowest gas prices are in your city.

That’s about it for now.  I’m looking forward to this week’s batch of posts.  Here’s hoping it all goes according to schedule!

Photos by:

COmfH & Toots Fontaine

What's On Tap Energy, Gas, Pets, Travel, Vacation

Pet Emergency

Odie, a 2 year-old runt of a mutt, is our youngest of three dogs.  Earlier this week, he began to refuse food and not hold it down when he did manage to eat a bit.  Tuesday’s trip to the vet resulted in a few prescriptions, but not any diagnosis of the problem.

Yesterday, with Odie still rarely eating, and having dropped about 5 of his 33 pounds, we took a 2nd trip to the vet.  Bloodwork was done that eliminated pancreatitis.  Then, after two x-rays, they found an obstruction in his intestine.  The vet said it was probably a hard piece of plastic, or possibly a piece of metal.  Odie had swallowed the object, it had traveled through the stomach, but was lodged in the intestine on the way out.  The only way to retrieve the obstruction was to perform a surgery called a gastrotomy.

Odie’s gastrotomy surgery was yesterday afternoon.  The vet said it went well.  Oh, and the obstruction blocking his intestine?  A SOCK.  Not a hard plastic, not a piece of metal, a SOCK; apparently one that’s 12-18 inches long too!  I guess our lovable mutt skipped over the smaller ankle socks and went straight for the quality threads.

Odie is staying the night at the vet, resting comfortably, and we hope he makes a speedy recovery without any complications.

Life Happens

All this stress with Odie reminds me that life happens, and we can’t control when we will have emergencies.  Kids break arms, cars break down, and funerals happen three states away.

While we can’t prevent emergencies, we can do our part to plan for them.  WHEN (not IF) emergencies will happen, we need to be prepared.  An adequate Emergency Fund has 3 to 6 month’s worth of your household expenses.  We all know this is a down economy and we’re battling through a recession.  But even if you don’t yet have an adequately-funded Emergency Fund, anything is better than nothing!  It’s never too late to start — do what you can to put aside some money to help WHEN the bad times strike.  This will help you avoid credit card debt or medical bills, which drag you down with monthly payments.

Diversifying our Emergency Portfolio

Luckily in our situation, we have a few options to help cover the costs of Odie’s sock surgery:

• Any extra money remaining at the end of the month that would have been applied to our debt snowball.
• A line-item in our monthly budget for our dogs’ medical care.  Any remaining balance each month carries over to the next (kind of like cell phone “rollover” minutes), which helps us build a dog medical fund for annual check-ups and emergencies like this one.
• Stopping our debt snowball payment for a month and applying it to our vet bill.
• A $1,000 “baby” Emergency Fund.

Do you have a crazy pet story?

What options do you use to prevent debt accumulation when emergencies happen?

Pets, emergency fund baby emergency fund, Budget, debt snowball, emergency fund, Pets