How Pets Can Help You Save Money

My husband and I have a full household with two dogs and two cats, and while we love them to bits, the reality is they do cost money. An important decision to make before you adopt a pet is if you can afford the food, toys, vet bills, licensing fees and any unforeseen expenses due to things like a medical problem.  While it is very important to make sure you can afford the expenses that come with being a pet owner, I would like to share some of the ways that our pets actually help us reduce some of our expenses, here is how:

Exercise: Our dogs keep us on our toes! They also hold us responsible for making sure we all get enough exercise.  As affectionate and loving as our dogs are, they do not care if we had a long day at work or if we are tired; they just want to go for a run.  We don't have a treadmill or a gym membership because we don't need them.  Instead of buying a gym membership, driving to the gym using gas and hanging out with a bunch of sweaty strangers (can you tell the gym is not in my top ten favourite places to be?), my husband and I get to relax with a nice walk and it also give us time to talk!  Treadmill: $800 - $1000, Gym membership: $30 a month, two dog leashes: $20.  I'm sure you can see how it's a bargain!  For those days that are too cold/snowy/rainy for long walk, we have lots of fun playing with toys in the house.  Since the cats aren't too big on the outdoors walk, we opt to play with them indoors as well.

Eating at home: Our dogs and cats all eat and go to the bathroom.  The cats, being the independent species they are, don't really care how often we come home as long as we are there when they need their food and water filled and their litter boxes cleaned.  The dogs on the other hand have to wait for us to get home from work before they get supper and get let outside to do their business. This means either my husband or I always have to come straight home after work to take care of them.  Even though I say that eating out is by far our worst habit, it at least gives us the time to think about what we are having for dinner.  There is no "we aren't going home after work so let's just grab something".  This has actually helped us to reduce our eating out by a lot over the last couple of years!  Our biggest down fall down is we grab food when we are out for other things, such as groceries.

Heating: This may seem like a really silly point, but I still feel it's important.  There is no better way to go to bed then when you get into bed and it's nice and warm because the cat or dog was just laying there. It sounds silly, but I think fellow pet owners will agree with me.  My cat knows just when to come lie on my lap, or occasionally on my chest in the middle of the night.  He keeps me warm! My animals are the reason I don't own an electric blanket.  Have you ever noticed how much warmer a cold night is when there is a dog curled up to you in bed?

In the summer, we like to spend lots of time outside with the dogs.  We are not inside so we rarely turn on the air conditioning.  We have a kiddie pool in the back yard to help our dogs keep cool, and occasionally we stick our feet in to cool down. Not having the air conditioning on is the big one though, that saves a lot!

Vacation: Sometimes pets are added expenses to vacations, whether you're boarding them or flying with them.  We try and plan a vacation, like camping, where we can take our dogs with us.  If you're doing this you have to be careful as it's not fair to leave your dog in a hot car while you're in an air conditioned restaurant. Make sure you do your research ahead of time where dogs are allowed to be.

If you cannot take your dog with you, why not start a pet sitting circle?  If you have a couple of close friends that have animals, perhaps you can take turns looking after each others. We did this with a friend of ours who would bring his dog and stay at our house while we were away.  It gave the dogs a chance to play and him a chance to be without roommates for awhile. Then when he went away, he left his dog at our house.  Our dogs were getting lots of exercise and play dates, and it wasn't costing us anything.

Inspiration for a Second Income: I have met many people over the last few years who have taken their love for their animals to a whole new level.  They let the opportunities of having a pet create a part time income for them; whether it's dog walking, sitting or training.  Perhaps you have a special toy you make,  accessories you sew, or a recipe for a special pet treat you sell online.  Maybe you even have a blog to share your stories and tips about your furry friends. Whatever it is, there are lots of opportunities to let your pet inspire you financially.

These are a few of the ways that our pets have helped or inspired us to save money.  More importantly, the love they give outweighs their expenses.  Coming home to a pet can quickly turn around a bad day. They always seem to know when you're feeling down, and are there in a heart beat to cheer you up.       

Credit: (Photo)

How I Budget

Over the last two years I have redone our budget about a dozen different times trying to find a practical one that works for us.  In October, I found my magical budget system!  For the first time we've been able to stick to our budget and make it really work for us.

Why did all the other ones not work?

Problem Budget #1: Spend Now, Save Later
From the title I'm sure you have an idea why this didn't work for us.  This "budget" was the earliest theory I used, I earned an income, paid my bills, bought my food, gas and entertainment and would save what was left.  Problem was, there was nothing left at the end. If the money was there, it usually got spent. Strange concept??

Problem Budget #2: The Monthly Budget
The first several times I did a budget, I did a monthly budget.  It was the kind you get as a free template and you put in your income and then you put in your expenses and it tells you how much money you have left over or how much you you've spent over.  Some of them, like Gail Vaz-Oxlade's Budget Template, even tell you if you are spending the "right" amount in each category. The problem for me was the numbers never added up. I finally realized that because we get paid bi-weekly and pay our car payments and mortgage also come out biweekly, it didn't add to to a monthly payment, some months we'd make 3 payments instead of 2 and some months we would get paid 3 times.

Problem Budget #3: The Cash
When I put us on a fairly strict budget, I decided to do what I had read about over and over again and I started to use a cash budget.  On payday we would go to the bank and pull out our money and put it into envelopes to use for the next week. The problem with the cash really boiled down to we were too used to using debt and having a joint account.  I liked to use debit, I didn't have to keep receipts because I was able to view all of my transactions online.  The second thing we found was some weeks, like Thanksgiving, we spent more on food, and other weeks we spent more on things like gas for our vehicles - we were able to "steal" from other jars, but that made it even harder to keep track of what we were spending where.  If you lost a receipt, you really didn't know. The third and biggest problem was that it wasn't convenient. My hubby would stop on the way home for milk or something small, would forget to take the cash or would end up stopping unexpectedly. We also could only take $20's out of the ATM so it made us have to budget our envelopes in 20's, which for some categories didn't seem to work out to well. Lastly we were missing out on the points we got with our debit and credit cards! Needless to say, the cash system only latest two or three weeks in our house.

So here is my big secret after all these attempts, my magical budget system consists of a spreadsheet. Just a spreadsheet, I didn't even use a template because none of them worked for us. I use a spreadsheet that is broken down into weeks, the first day of the week is pay day.   This is an example of how it looks:

We chose to do it by week because since I started a new job in October, hubby and I get paid opposite weeks, which is really really nice to budget with! I use each week to put in my income and my bills, savings and debt repayment.  Even though I "schedule" my payments all through the week, I always come home pay day and go through the weeks budget and pay anything that needs to be paid right away.  I also should mention, things like our mortgage, car loan and savings are set up to come out automatically on pay day. Once a line is completed, I use strikethrough to cross it off. Once everything is paid, and savings is saved, the balance is our weekly money.

We've stopped setting weekly limits on how much to spend on fuel, food and entertainment.  Our rule is if we have $100 left over, we can spend it on anything (mutually agreeable of course, I wouldn't go empty our bank account on a pair of shoes).  If we spend all the money eating out, then we don't get to buy gas, if we spend the money on new clothes, then we don't get to eat for a week.  This way, when the money is gone it's gone, but we don't have to worry about counting pennies. This budget plan is set up so we have all our bills paid, savings saved in 10 minutes and then we don't have to worry about it.

Right now, my budget is laid out until April, which is when hubby will be going to school so it will change a bit. So far it is working really well but we may make some more changes along the way as things in our life change.

7 Ways We Avoid Eating Out

November wasn't such a great month, but trust me - it is A LOT better than where we were a year ago as far as eating out.  I decided I would right this article to share ways we avoid eating out and as a reminder for myself as well.

1. The biggest help is my hubby.  He gets home before me, selects something from the freezer, pops it in a pan or the microwave and by the time I get home supper is either ready or very close to being ready.  This helps me because when I get home, its already done, I have no choice.  I love that because I was always the queen of persuasion and usually was the one to convince hubby we should go out to grab something or sit down and relax, now I don't get that chance.
2. Premake dinner from what is on sale.  I like to buy lots of one thing that is on sale or is a really good deal in a bigger quantity, make it into dinners and freeze it.  You are saving money twice here, once with the sale and once by not eating out!  Really, if you are making lasagna - what is the difference between making one or several?  I use those disposable metal take out containers for lasagnas, they can go right into the oven from the freezer.  I also use freezer bags and freeze my chili and soups flat, makes it super easy to stack and store.  I love the glass pyrex containers but I save them to take lunches in because they are too expensive (and I have too few) to get stuck in the freezer for months.
3. Buy pre packaged kits when they are on sale - you can get some really good deals for really easy meals this way.  For example, taco kits were on sale for $3.47 and they had a $6 off cheese coupon on them (when you buy the cheese and another kit).  So I bought one, then I went back and got the cheese that was on sale for $5.99 for free when I purchased another taco kit for $3.47. The taco kits are in my cupboard and I used the cheese to make and freeze lasagnas.
4. Precook meats.  Meat always seems to take the longest of anything to cook.  It's also the least fun because you can't sample it while it's cooking.  I precook my chicken breasts and my ground beef.  I can chop the chicken or add it to a premade meal like lasagna.  I also buy the large quanitites of ground beef from Costco and I cook the whole thing, cool it and freeze it in a freezer bag.  It stays crumbled when frozen so it's easy just to grab what you need (instead of a solid block of raw frozen ground beef!) and it only takes a few minutes to heat up.  Tacos in half the time.
5. Pick a meal plan.  The thing I stress the most about meal planning is pick what works the best for your family.  Our schedules change weekly, and to be honest sometimes you come home and just don't want to cook!  Hubby and I just kind of talk about dinners we will have the following week as we shop.  It gives us ideas but nothing is set in stone.  
6. Emergency Meals.  One of our biggest excuses was we have to run to *insert any place here*, lets just grab something on the way.  Well we now have emergency meals that really take 10 minutes or less to make and eat - fast food at home!  Now the lets just grab something excuse works at home.  Items on our emergency meal lists include: instant noodles, frozen dinners/lunches (store bought and home made), canned soups, granola bars, nuts, and depending on the day, sandwiches from what we have in the fridge.  These emergency lunches are great for the mornings you wake up late.
7. Find good excuses!  We all have excuse for why we eat out - it's easy, convenient, I don't have time, I'm tired, I don't feel like cooking. (For all of these excuses, refer to tip #6!)  Our excuse is our dogs. No matter what we do in a day, we have to go home and let the dogs outside to go to the bathroom! This means no matter what we need to go home.  So our excuse turned from let's grab something from a fast food place, to we have to go home so we might as well just grab something there.

Viola - little changes we have made in order to cut down our eating out.  We still have a ways to go but I think we are doing a pretty good job!

Reducing Our Cable/Internet/Phone Bill

We have had our home phone, internet and cable through one provider since 2008.  The phone company we choose was just introducing cable at that time and in the beginning it didn't always run smoothly (understatement of the year). We stuck it out because it was better financially for us to have it bundled.

Recently, they sent us a noticed saying they were discontinuing the lower tier service and was a mandatory free upgrade. This was a bit of a nuisance to have the cable guy come out to our house as we worked full time and it was hard to take time off (especially at that time of year).  We made arrangements and my hubby took a day off of work for the cable guy to come out.  It was a day of lost wages, but we really weren't that behind - I mean we were getting a free cable upgrade - right?

Wrong!  When I got my next bill it was almost $40 more!  That is a lot of a "mandatory free upgrade"!  I called to ask and they said the hardware was the "free upgrade" but we had to pay for the upgraded service - talk about misleading! As they discontinued our previous cable, we basically had a choice of pay it or don't have cable (oh and then we wouldn't have a bundle so our other rates would go up too....).

Hubby and I mulled over what to do.  We decided since we were never watching tv and we both have cell phones, we would cancel our home phone and cable.  I was a little nervous about cancelling the home phone, not sure why - we rarely use it.

Hubby called up the provider to cancel and instead they offering up a really good rate less than half and what we were paying!  We decided to keep phone internet and cable after all.

That one phone call is saving us $1000 a year over what they wanted us to pay after the upgrade!

Now only if the mobile company would do the same thing.....

Sale Items to Watch for: October

Its October and where I live that means the first snow fall, Canadian Thanksgiving, and, of course, Halloween! With these come an opportunity to find some awesome sale prices and to stock on up things. So what things should you look for this month?

1.  Yams

Yams are a traditional thanksgiving food so naturally they are on sale in time for Thanksgiving.  Usually they can be found for good prices 2 weeks before to 1 week after Thanksgiving.  Yams are one of my favourite foods so I like to use this opportunity to buy them and freeze enough to last through the next several months.

2. Turkey

Another Thanksgiving favourite, turkeys are on sale.  If you have room in your freezer grab an extra one.  They are great for making tons of dinners you can freeze, such as Turkey Pot Pie and Turkey Soup.  Don't have extra room?  Don't worry - they will be on sale again around Christmas.

3. Pumpkin

Doesn't matter if you buy it fresh or canned, both are usually on sale. I like to use canned pumpkin in pies, cheese cake and muffins.  The canned variety last a long time so you can buy what you would use in the next year or so.  One word of advice (from experience) is label your containers in your fridge - otherwise another family member could mistake it for sweet potatoes!

4. Cranberries

What is turkey without cranberries?  Whether you buy fresh cranberries or canned, both are on sale.  Fresh cranberries can be dried or used in many recipes.  I love cranberry sauce on turkey sandwiches.

5. Stuffing

If you like stove top stuffing, this is another thing to pick up. It makes an easy side any time of the year.  

These are several items to consider stocking up on now.  Remember little savings add up - 50 cents off a pound of turkey is 10 dollars off a 20 pound turkey! Make sure not to buy more than you can use before it goes bad.  Spend some time planning what you are going to use each thing for and when you are going to use them.  No sense buying 20 pounds of yams if they are going to sit and go bad in your fridge.

Watch for other sale items as well - apples are commonly on sale this time of year but that depends where you live. Try your local farmers market.

Happy Thanksgiving!