July 9, 2011
We’re now in Month Two of Doggledom. I’m like a proud mama who can’t stop bragging on her child, even though he’s odd and slightly bratty.
He doesn’t bark, except twice at mailmen, and one muted w–oof! at PiC the other night when he was sooo excited about … I think … getting mocked about being excited? That last was the first time I’d ever heard him bark. Excitement for all!
He hangs out with us all the time, quietly, and mostly in a silly half-needy, half-but-it’s-ok-if-you-ignore-me kind of way. Underfoot as close as you can get, but mutually ignoring.
He loves to follow an inch behind you when you’re trying to Swiffer; double points if he manages to predict the direction you were going to turn and gets in the way. He’s really good at this game.
We discovered there are actually two treats he really enjoys, out of all the treats that we’ve offered, so much so that he’s now showing emotion beyond the staid ear perks and ear-downing of happy. He also gets very very conflicted when offered the choice between a walk and the treat.
Doggle’s thought process (Lots of running around involved): Treat? Walk? Treat? Walk? Treat ON walk? No? Finish treat, then walk? No? Walk now? Treat ON walk? No again? Walk now now? *drops treat* Auuughhhh nooooo don’t leave me I’m coo-mm–in–gg!!
Unfortunately, he’s not just camera-shy, he’s kind of camera-angry. Camera-resentful? Takes after his mom that way. If he sees the camera come out, he walks away from you with an eye pip cocked.
How dare you? his gait says. He hears a click that might be a camera? Head snaps up, eyes gleam with a balefulness that makes you apologize before you’ve even hidden the evidence. Because you want to hide the evidence.But at the same time, he’s the gentlest, most tolerant soul I’ve seen for an older dog with a hidden past.Children of all ages and sizes don’t faze him, car rides of any length don’t either, any multiplicity of other dogs make him cheerful. Strangers will use him as a training tool for their puppies. Seriously. We’ll be eating outdoors somewhere, and someone will use the fact that he’s completely calm and unmoved to train their yapping, flippy-outty, over-excited baby dogs to “calm,” “sit,” “it’s ok,” right in front of him.
You know he doesn’t actually necessarily love it when I bear-hug him, but he lets me anyway. (He would prefer it if I’d stop, probably. Not gonna happen.) He’s definitely got some Happy Place in his head and he’s a perma-resident.
After regaling my oldest friends with stories of his depression during our weekend without PiC, his clear designation of PiC as the alpha or his favorite, doesn’t like my walks so will go to PiC if I hold the leash, one of them asked: How does it feel to be rejected by your own dog? *snicker*
Better ask PiC how it feels to be Doggle’s BESTEST FRIEND EVAR. He didn’t think there was a possibility that the Doggle would choose him!
He’s a love, though, and comes to me for quiet company.
Word to the wise: The dental chews from Costco reek to high heaven. But Doggle, who again, barely showed registered emotion on a normal scale for the past year and then some about anything was ecstatic about them. He’s even now voluntarily sitting at random times, possibly hoping for a treat. Or a walk. We can’t tell, but it’s pretty funny. There’s hope this old dog is learning us new tricks yet. 😉
Ed Note: I forgot to mention, you know how I know he likes me? Even if PiC is his favorite? He lets me alligator face him. 🙂 You know. Put my hands under his chin and push up so he has the fattest-looking alligatorey, beestung face ever. He just squidges his eyes shut and goes with it. Love. This. Guy!
June 11, 2011
I feel like we’ve had our Doggle for ages. In reality, it’s only been a few weeks so it’s a good time to see for the best to start counting up the first month costs to see the damages in stark bleeding red. Just in case anyone was under any illusions about how “fun” and “exciting” and “easy” it would be to adopt a pet. 😉
Our tab started at $290 from the gate, and that was before any creature comforts for our new beloved beastie.
With that in mind, and my off the cuff refusal to spend $500 in the first month of dog ownership, my (insane) quest was to gather all the most needed things on the list for under $100 since we still had to visit the vet, he had some meds to continue, and a license to obtain.
We were lucky that he’s generally so low maintenance in the daily-occupation department. He hasn’t been a toy-loving pup, he’s uniformly ignored them at his foster mum’s for the past several months and other dog companionship isn’t terribly important to him either. I don’t have to feel guilty that he’s not getting a sibling any time soon! Turns out, dog stuff has gotten much more expensive since I last shopped for it.
The list of Stuff:
1. A bed: he squished the life out of a gifted bed with all his huffy-puffy flopping (see below) so he needed a secondary.
2. 2 1 leashes (I normally keep a backup and he’s still learning leash manners so we may eventually own 2. Will just buy one for now). $20, plus tax
3. A secondary collar for training, $21, plus tax
4. Food, $30
5. A car hammock, the interim solution instead of a new car. $40, plus tax
6. Food and water bowls. $30, elevated bowls as he’s an older, taller dog
7. Shampoo
8. Comb & Brush. $19
9. A tie down $18
Total: $250
That’s a pretty spectacular fail on the budgeting front. Economizing on the really little things, we don’t actually need a second leash – he’s a puller but not out of control. He had a grooming right before we picked him up so I opted out of buying shampoo, I’ll be brushing him out regularly and since PiC really doesn’t want his fur stopping up the drains (he’s got some mega-thick fur that clumps) and we don’t have a yard, we’ll be bathing him at the local Pet Food Expresses. Oh. Yes.
Baths: $45 for 4.
By the by, my pricematching reveals that Amazon is failing spectacularly where it was once brilliant at undercutting the B&M retailers on many of these items.
His visit to the vet included an exam, baseline bloodwork because of some previous history, medications, vaccinations, treatment and came out to: $250.
Three weeks in, and we’ve clocked $835 on the dog cost meter. We still have licensing to go but that won’t be more than $36. If PiC was unconvinced before about my setting the emergency and maintenance fund at a $5,000 minimum, he’s come over now. I’m about to kick that up to $10,000 at this rate!
Because this guy is older, and has had at least one questionable bit of medical history, he’s more prone to the age-related illnesses. The visit was only up about $80 due to the medical history and not really an age thing, though, any dog with Of course, we are already ridiculously attached to him, and it makes sense to set aside a huge e-fund for him. I’m not willing to make serious medical decisions based solely on finances.
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As to the Doggle himself, he’s been a hoot. He’s been with us visiting family and friends, north and south, and he’s been coming out of his shell with each step. The lucky fella was gifted a bed and bag of goodies on his first day home by our fellow dog loving blogger friends and he’s slowly deciding that chewies are good times. But already he’s getting curfewed – no chewies after 10 pm.
He’s trying to train us, particularly his Alpha human, that packs must always travel together and therefore bedtime is the same for everyone. Safety issue, perhaps?
He’ll go stare at PiC, wagging his tail slowly, a grin on his face, turn and pace to bed, whoomp into his bed. Wait fifteen seconds to see if it worked. PiC doesn’t appear? Repeat. Over and over and over … and over. Night after night, he tries to wheedle PiC to conformity. This tactic literally smooshes the stuffing out of his beds. (And does not work as PiC is not trainable.)
It’s entertaining because he doesn’t whine, bark, growl or otherwise vocalize frustration. Just whoomps wherever he’s making his stand. He’s pretty great all around, truth be told, mostly quiet, though almost puppy-like on occasion when he catches a scent or sees a smaller dog he’d really like to meet. Good with strangers, people or canine, he’s like a cat during the day, hanging out while we work and morphs back to a goofy dog, loping over pleased as punch to see us when we come home at night. He was definitely not a fan of the air dryer when we bathed him and probably not so much of being washed in loads of soapy water for fifteen minutes either but he still let us do our thing without making any real fuss.
I’ve been evil ear lady since he came home, and though he almost matches me pound for pound, I can basically – under protest – clean and medicate his ear solo. We wrassle, but I still get the job done between an iron grip and a strategically broken up Pupperoni stick.
It’s been a huge change working our lives around his needs. His routine is our new routine, he has to go out twice a day because we have no yard, and we are learning how to live with a new family member whose needs we have to plan around. But to be perfectly honest, he’s been well worth it. Even if we do Swiffer three times a day now. 😉
April 9, 2011
A couple days ago, FB revived interest in my earlier post, Generational Poverty, when she wrote her own thoughts on her motivation to save.
The latest commenter, Layla, asked some practical questions that I simply had to answer in a post.
And I can’t imagine doing what you did during school. Did you fail any classes because you chose sleep over school? When did you have time to shower? Didn’t you go crazy with no time to yourself to tidy up or get yourself organized?
1. I didn’t precisely actively choose sleep over school.
My conscious priorities were school, then work, then sleep. However, I would only take the minimum number of courses per quarter full time (12 units = 3 classes) because I could do that, plus a couple summer quarters and still graduate on time in order to make sure I could also work at least 20 to 40 hours of overtime every week. That meant I was only sleeping 2-4 hours per night, depending.
An average day: up at 7 or as late as I could get up and get dressed, brush my teeth, grab my bag and get out to the car in five minutes. I was a 15 minute drive to school and a quick run to my 8 am class.
My school schedule was either a Mon/Wed/Fri block of 8a-12p days, followed by a scheduled workday (1pm – 10 pm, and stay as late as they needed me). I’d squeeze in a quick nap and make lunch for my mom (she was ill for a time) if I could in the 12-1 hour. Those quarters, I’d also be working Tues/Thurs/Sat/Sun.
During quarters when school was scheduled Tues/Thurs 8-5pm, I might have had those evenings off, and work the rest of the days of the week. I studied between classes, during work breaks, and during other classes if they were boring.
I never failed any classes, but as far as being a straight-A student went, I failed at that. The schedule on paper was perfect but I was one tired puppy all the time and the grades reflected that. I brought home a handful of Bs with my As and that was pretty disappointing considering I was slaving away for my own education.
Funny Story: I did always fall asleep in my philosophy class. And I did definitely only get a B in that class. And I didn’t know until after graduation but because I always sat at the back, behind one of my friends, he used to sell me out all the time to the professor. He’d move so the professor could see me conked out. Meanie.
2. I always showered after work no matter what time I got home – 11 pm, 12 am, 2 am. After an 8, 10, 12 hour shift, following after a day at school, you must shower. Even if you’re mostly asleep, forget if you have or haven’t shampooed and end up shampooing three times and conditioning none. (Happened many times.) But I mastered the five minute shower.
3. Go crazy? Well, not for lack of organization – I lived and breathed organization being straight out of high school so that wasn’t any cause for concern – I knew how to structure my life into a highly productive, totally efficient schedule so I did it and it felt comfortable in the sense that everything kept turning like clockwork.
I still lived the academic schedule so I always knew when I had to do that next set of planning. My time wasn’t my own. But we were all students – my entire cohort was, so that was normal.
You know … I honestly can’t even remember much other frustration. I don’t even remember if I was all that upset by my life being dominated by this grind, other than being annoyed by people who got in my way telling me not to do it. Friends who didn’t understand why I was working so hard or all the time, who wanted me to just get out and play; I can remember being aggravated by their lack of understanding. I needed to make a living to pay the bills and the simplistic outlook on life because they didn’t have any responsibilities didn’t jive with my moral compass and vision. But that was just grit in daily life.
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I knew why I was doing what I was doing and that was more than enough for me. And at that time, my family was still intact. I had a strong reason to believe it was all worth it. I was doing it for my family that I loved and that loved me. There was no grey area.
Ed Note: At this time, I was working to pay for:
1. Tuition and books
2. My parents’ debt, in $10k chunks
3. Household bills, I was starting to take over paying the rent and utilities because my parents weren’t making enough to pay the bills anymore.
March 23, 2011
My part of Tax Season came and went with surprisingly little fanfare, after a fashion.
I used a free code for TurboTax to file my federal tax return online after finding out that there were several complications with my family’s information that has effectively left me out in the cold. I was hugely frustrated, enough so that I couldn’t even really talk about it.
It will cost a substantial refund but there is nothing to be done about it and dwelling on the lost saving or buying power does no one any good.
March 9th and 12th welcomed early, modest, refunds from both federal and state, and that whopping $700 will go toward the wedding and insurance payments, by halves.
Nothing like the lovely mistake Stacking Pennies made but survivable.
February 21, 2011
The question of motivational staying power was raised on Twitter. @add_vodka asked:
@RevancheGS @GrlRedBalloon @serendipity85 How do you keep motivated to make sure you don’t give up?
My gut response felt too flippant to say aloud. It wasn’t meant to be but I could see how, for people who don’t know me well or haven’t read this blog, could hear it as a dismissal of their very real issue. So I dug deeper. I asked PiC how to explain how I stay motivated because it’s not something I think about. And in the asking, I realized my answer, in large part.
My short answer was: Generational Poverty. I’m never going back and neither are my parents.
My long answer? In my matriarchial line, I need to break the cycle of poorness. You see, as much as I carry my patriarchal grandmother in my spine, I carry my mother in my soul.
Mom grew up, impoverished, in the depths of rural Vietnam. Her father was a schoolteacher who earned just enough to feed his family for a number of years, but not much better than that. I expect they married too young, had her – the first – too young; had too many children, period. Month to month, their family stretched a single small sack of rice bought on credit against the next month’s paycheck. They ate rice porridge, supplemented by some fish if the kids could catch any, flavored with nuoc nam (fish sauce) if they couldn’t. She was cooking, cleaning and raising her three younger siblings by the age of 8, and more kids were always on the way. There was love and support from her grandparents but nothing in the way of money.
As the oldest, she was expected to fend for herself. Needed a new pair of pants? She had to raise a chicken, sell the eggs, and save the money long enough to buy cloth and sew it herself. The same went for school supplies, or any other needs. Not wants, needs. But, if a sibling needed something before she could make her clothes, she had to give it up for him or her. The family was utterly poor, and she was expected to bear the heaviest burden. The burden wasn’t just in taking care of herself far too early, it was to provide for her siblings, and that lasted well into adulthood. While she shouldered it without question, she was bound and determined never to struggle at that level again.
Fast forward about forty years, she’d worked herself to the bone running two small businesses with my dad only to find her health declining, her son a mess, and no trace left of what was meant to be our family fortune. A modest fortune it would have been, but sufficient to buy a home, send two kids to college, and keep my parents through their retirement. Business hadn’t been awful but life happens, as it does, and she found herself both in the same place she’d sworn never to be again, the place she said we would never be exposed to, this time without the ability to bootstrap her way out of it as she had always done. Her parents and siblings were fine, but in the process, she had sacrificed herself.
It tore my heart to see her struggling, helpless, against the twin depredations of disease and remembered and oncoming poverty. The first preceded the other, as is so often the case with many stories of financial ruin, but not by much. It wasn’t just the disease. It was the combination of family illnesses, debts, and lack of informed financial planning that meant she couldn’t simply seek treatment and recuperate. Financial instability added anxiety and depression to the toxic mix of medical conditions complicating her health.
Had they planned for the future better, had they saved more carefully instead of taking care of her myriad family to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, had they been more cognizant of all the emergencies that could and would arise: all the if onlys, we should haves, they could haves intertwined and spiraled into the mom I know now.
Personally, I never want to go back to my college days. Working 80-100 hour weeks, school 40 hours a week, sleeping a few hours a night, and still slaving over a checkbook scraping the pennies together at the end of every pay period, under a tiny lamp light. That was miserable. But memories of personal misery fade.
The memories of my mom and all she’s sacrificed for me. The memories of how hard she worked, how determined she was to lift herself and her family out of their dirt-grubbing poverty. Those ghosts are in my marrow, my tissue, the air I breathe.
So when someone asks me about my motivation, about how I keep going, how do I not give up, the simplest answer is: I don’t know how.
When I took over for her, it began as a fight for survival. Now, it’s fully ingrained. The responsibilities and emergencies will only grow in greater proportion with time. I have my parents to take care of. I have myself to take care of. I may have future generations to educate and support for some time. And the only way to do it is very careful and diligent financial planning. That’s how my motivation is sustained.
It’s a very different answer, I think, than the one that @add_vodka was looking for, which was more practical stuff, so I saved this longer answer for the blog.
The more practical simple answer is, of course, to set goals and align your goals to your values. But there’s value in knowing why you’d want to do any of that in the first place. The Great Big Why of it, if you will.
Thanks to AddVodka, Serendipity and Red for starting the conversation!
{————Carnivals————}
My thanks …..
to Ben at moneysmartlife for hosting this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance and for picking my post Parents: The top bread slice to be an Editor’s Pick! Be sure to submit to next week’s Carnival.
August 1, 2010
Katamari Accounting: I think it’s time to roll as many accounts into one as possible.
- 1. The Retirement Funds are now spawning a 4th account due to the rollover I initiated a couple days ago. Let’s make that one Roth and one “massive” IRA.
- 2. The e-fund is spread across CDs, and savings accounts in two different banks. I’d like to have two big honkin’ CDs: One is already a $15K 5-year term CD, the other might well encompass the rest of the cash as well as the soon-to-mature Prosperish Loan.
- 3. Pin Money, Moving and School just can’t make up their minds what they really want to be so they should just become Parental Medical Funds.
Financial Planning: Once I reorganize my finances, I need to help a friend structure some investments from an inheritance. We’re talking multiples of what I have personally, but not so much more I couldn’t create a cohesive plan.
Progress: It’s been a niggling thing in the back of my head that I haven’t been paying my fair share OR saving. This month’s increase, even after I paid a great deal of credit card bills off, is both surprising and puzzling. I’ve now redirected a small chunk of the direct deposit, previously all toward the expense account, to actual savings starting this month. Which brings me to ….
Urges and Splurges: In the spirit of absolute honesty, seeing my number go up when I don’t have a specific account that looks like it’s going begging makes me want want want. But ……..
Spending: As usual, binging and purging. By which I mean, I don’t get nice new clothes, underthings, hair ties, new phone, new anything that’s not strictly necessary so that I can spend several thousand dollars on my parents. They have both woefully neglected their dental care and I had no idea how bad it was until recently. I knew my dad needed dentures soon but just found out that many of his teeth are bad and so are Mom’s. I estimate that the costs will start around $10,000 for basic care.
Freelancing: If I want any extras in my life, I’m gonna have to work for it! Time to go hunting for more work.
Reality Check: Beyond that, in less than five years, I’m sure that Mom will need more assistance than Dad can provide. Heck, in two years, she could require a full scale assisted living situation and I don’t have anything near enough saved for that. Looking above, a whole $107K looks like a really tidy start until you realize that I may soon have to spend $60K/year on assisted living for my parent(s). Then I’m nowhere near ready for the future.
July 28, 2010
I’m barely mentally unpacked from San Diego Comic Con, and I’m looking up another itinerary to go back down to SoCal. I haven’t been *home* since May but this is another quick round trip. Possibly even a same day trip.
In a couple months, we’ll be memorializing the passing of my dear friend’s beloved father. We lost him exactly midway between my birthday and his – we were four days apart and he always joked that I was four days older than him. Growing up, I hated my birthdays because they were always strangely lonely, now I don’t know how to feel about it.
Every year that passes and takes with it another loved one makes every memory and tradition that much more poignant.
I’m considering using my Southwest award tickets for this trip. Between the recent vacation spending, the purchase of tickets for next year’s vacation, the upcoming dental expenses for both my parents, it behooves me to stop bleeding cash.
