Monthly Update

Pay off car loan - 73.7% (Up 1.1%)
Pay off student loan - 12.9% (Up .5%)
E-fund 2 - 57.9% (Down 2.4%)

I'm officially back to making full payments on the student loan. I had paid several months ahead a few years ago and recently I've been making half payments and letting it "catch up." I'm sad to be making slower progress on the car loan but it feels good to be making headway on the student loan finally. E-fund 2 for a refresher is the back-up emergency fund which I have in more volatile stock funds, that's why there's a decline.

Overall not too bad. Credit card got put to use again this month for a couple more vet bills and some supplies for my handy man. I think we are done with projects for awhile and the pup's current skin issues trial will go on for almost 2 more months so we should be free of vet visits next month (crossing my fingers).

Oh, in my last post I mentioned it would be nice to have a dehydrator. Well I ordered one from Amazon yesterday. Between the free shipping and a gift certificate I got with my rewards from MyPoints, I got a dehydrator with the jerky kit for less than $15. Woohoo! I've been looking up fruit leather recipes in anticipation of it's arrival. If you aren't familiar with MyPoints, you basically tell them what kind of ads you would like to see in your email and then when you click through the links you get points. When you have enough you choose your reward, in the form of a gift card. They have many options. My activity usually amounts to maybe $25 per year. No jack pot but a nice way to treat myself. Also good for the online shopper. If you start there and then go to the website, you can earn points based on the $$ you spend.

Inexpensive, Healthy Dog Treats

We are on step 4 of ruling out causes for my pup's skin problems. Step 4 in my vet's method is a hypoallergenic diet. This goes on for a couple of months and you are expected to stop all treats, rawhides, pig's ears, table scraps, etc. Yikes. The new dog food mainly consists of fish and potatoes. I set out to find treats and pretty much all I found was expensive salmon sticks ($5.89 for a few sticks my dog would wipe out in a minute flat) or dried sweet potato. But there is good news, these are treats I can make in my own kitchen! The sweet potato is easy. Thoroughly clean the sweet potato, nuke it on low power for several minutes until it starts to soften. Cut them up and either place in a food dehydrator or in the oven at about 250 degrees for a couple to a few hours depending how big you make them. Super simple, no chemicals, fake coloring, etc. The salmon I won't be trying. While it is easy, I've been warned that it is a very stinky process to dehydrate fish. I don't have a dehydrator so I can't really do this any other place than my oven. If her issue is truly food allergies, I'll run out and buy a dehydrator lickety split. I may do that anyway because there are good options even if your dog doesn't need special foods. You can dehydrate pretty much any lower fat meat. Find whatever's on sale and go to it - lean beef, chicken, turkey, venison.. Bonus points if you can use something hormone and antibiotic free!

Monthly Update

Pay off car loan - 72.6% (Up 2.6%)
Pay off student loan - 12.4% (Same)
E-fund 2 - 62.3% (Unsure, forgot to record last month)

It was kind of a rough month this month. I'm not quite sure what happened. I can pinpoint a few things. I bought a piano and my piano fund was about $100 short. My disability insurance came due. I knew that was coming but sort of forgot about it. We started trying to find a diagnosis for my pup's skin problems. My "handy man" became available and I bought a few fixtures for my house. That all amounts to about $650 or so in one month. I know in many parts of the world that's chump change but in my world that's almost a whole mortgage payment :) Fortunately this month I got a refund on my escrow account of a little over $300. That will help. I may have to snitch from the e-fund though and I made minimum payment on the car loan that's on a CC at 1.9%.

For a little good news I thought it would be good to check out my wealth accumulation progress. I'm at about 27% of my desired wealth. Last time I checked many months ago I believe it was in the neighborhood of 14%. Now I have a birthday soon so if I had already had the birthday it would be down to 26%. Interesting, eh?

Pet Food

Are you ever astounded at what kind of garbage they throw in a bag and call premium pet food? And charge premium price for? For some reason I just can't get over it. I think all of my friends and family have heard this gripe before so I thought I would share it with you.

I recently started taking in foster cats from the shelter and they send home Science Diet to get you started. If you're familiar with pet foods, Science Diet has long been touted as veterinarian recommended and all that jazz. Well if you check the ingredients, the first two are by products (chicken beaks, feet, etc. that can't be fed to humans) and corn. Last I heard cats were carnivores and they didn't eat junk like that. Now for pricing.

Science Diet - 4 lbs for $12.49

A cheaper alternative?

Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul - 6 lbs for $10.95!

Now, Chicken Soup isn't the cream of the crop. You may be able to find a higher quality food depending who you ask. It IS free of by-products and corn and the first two ingredients are chicken and chicken meal. How cool is that? To re-cap -

Science Diet - $3.12/lb mostly by-products and corn
Chicken Soup - $1.83/lb no by-products or corn

To throw another brand into the mix, we can look at Nutro Natural Choice. This is what my cat currently eats. However, they recently "improved" the formula and now the first two ingredients are chicken meal and corn. I honestly can't remember the old formula but I doubt I would have bought it in the first place if corn was the second ingredient. And pricing? 7 lbs for $21.99!!

Nutro Natural - $3.14/lb with lots of corn, but no by-products

These are pet store prices on Science Diet and Nutro and I know you could find them cheaper if you buy them at a feed store, as I did with the Chicken Soup. But Chicken Soup will still be cheapear (and still be a higher quality food for your beloved cat). Needless to say, I'm switching my cat to Chicken Soup as we speak.

I've yet to do a compare on dog food regarding pricing. I know which brand I'll be getting for her next, though. And again I suspect it will be cheaper than what I'm currently buying.

One of the interesting theories I've read is that quality pet food companies get bought out and the new owners tend to switch to crappy ingredients and raise the prices. This is a double whammy and I believe this was the case with both Science Diet and Nutro. Hopefully it doesn't happen to Chicken Soup.

If you can't find Chicken Soup in your area (tends not to be sold by the big box stores), use their store locator or check out another option like Blue Buffalo. Blue Buffalo is still cheaper than Nutro Natural and is also free of by products and corn.

No affiliation with either of the brands I recommended. I just hate to buy expensive crap if I can spend the same amount of money for a higher quality item, you know?

New Rules for Money Market Accounts

I had to laugh when I read the Kiplinger's article on the new rules for money market funds. You can find the full article here. You see, the one money market fund I participate in, American Funds Money Market Fund, hasn't paid out a dime of interest since July of last year. They're struggling to hold the value of my dollars apparently. I know not every fund has taken their returns to zero, but they're probably close. Bankrate tells me the average money market account is giving out .79% right now. But I tend to have a bias for American Funds, my humble opinion only of course. Plus it is a super-easy to access portion of my emergency fund. When my 32 year old, oops, going on 33 now, water heater finally kicks the bucket, I'll be able to whip out my checkbook and write a check to the plumber.

Anyway, the new rules are written to protect us but in the end they'll take away another .1% of our return. The rules in a nutshell require increased liquidity, better disclosures, and higher quality. If I wanted a super safe spot for my money I would have put it in an FDIC insured savings account. I think the benefits of most money market funds are enough to overcome the small risk that your dollar might turn into 99 cents for a short period. I tend to be a firm believer that if you're going to put your money somewhere, it's your responsibility to understand where you're putting it. If you need help, hire an adviser. I must have missed the news on the money market crisis that ruined everyone's life.

Monthly Update

I'm doing my monthly update a little early. I don't foresee anything changing in the next 3 days besides the usual stock market swagger.

Pay off car loan - 70% (Up 3.4%)
Pay off student loan - 12.4% (Down .1%)
E-fund 2 - % (Up 2.9%)

Unfortunately I'm still treading water on the student loan while I work on the car loan but I'm making good progress. 9 short months to go..

Not reflected here is my employer's yearly gift into our 401k. It came this month and it always excites me. Kinda like something for nothing.. On the flipside I tend to wonder how many more years we will have this policy..

Car Loan

Have I mentioned how super excited I am to be on track to pay off the car by the end of 2010? It's like giving myself a $300/month raise. It will probably be the only raise I get this year. My mind is drifting ahead to how I want to allocate that money. So far I know I want $100 to go to my Roth IRA. I also intend to use $100 to use on house projects. I'm not sure how I want to use the last $100. Part of me wants to bolster my cash-equivalent savings and the other part says I'm already contributing the Roth so why bother. Maybe it will be split between the Roth and the house improvement fund.

Offhand here are some of the things I know I would like to accomplish-
New windows
Refinish hardwood floor in the office
New kitchen countertop
Carpet the upstairs
Grade soil around house
Replace two fans
Cabinet for the bathroom
Table for the living room
Tile tub surround
Replace parts of sidewalk
Replace parts of driveway
Replace back stairs
Siding and gutters on the garage and maybe a small window
Fence
Kitchen cabinets/remodel - someday

As you can see, no shortage of ideas, and probably some are missing. And always I'm torn between handling the things that are more important to me or handling the things that will improve the value of the home/look good to a future buyer. Fortunately many overlap.

Also I bit the bullet and bought a refrigerator to replace my ailing unit. Unfortunately I dipped into the piano fund when I spent more than I originally planned. I think the piano will wait until fall, because I'll be busy outside this summer and hopefully by then my workplace will be on more firm ground. Maybe I will have replaced the $ I used on the refrigerator too.