Thank you for you well wishes. I AM doing well. Yes, Mishka was my guardian angel here on earth and I know he is still keeping an eye on me. He was such a bossy and nosy dog. He passed away from old age when I was in hospital – something that still makes me cry. He was napping on the floor beside the couch where my husband was napping but only one of them woke up. My husband said that he must have felt his job was done.

We keep his memory alive with a memorial fund. We have fewer animals now than we have ever had but we still budget the same amount for pet food as before. Every month from the pet fund we set aside $5 for the Canadian Cancer Society in Mishka’s name. Note of interest. Revenue Canada did not accepted our charitable donation receipt with his name on it. What? A dog can’t donate just because he has no income? We also set aside $1 a month in remembrance for each of our pets who has passed away and that money we donate to the local humane society. Kind of a “pay it forward” idea.

You be well too!

Have you ever considered making pet clothes with your sewing skills? My friend from Texas has just started doing this and can’t keep up. She made some “scarves” for her 2 dogs that she embroidered with the logo of the local hockey team and where ever she walked her dogs people stopped her and wanted to know where she bought the scarves. So she decided to make them and sell them. In fact despite the fact that we were already in a recession last December one of the few industries that increased their sales over Christmas was for pet accessories.

Wish I had a horse. In fact if we ever win the lottery I intend to have 1000 and set up a therapy riding school for handicapped kids. I used to go with a friend of mine and her daughter. Apparently even just sitting on a horse uses all your muscles and especially uses combinations of muscles. Not to mention it is FUN.

This was our big mistake. We spent over 2 years paying off our debts very, very, aggressively. It was hard but our luck held until the day we paid off our last debt and on the way home our van broke down. Since we had no emergency savings we had to put the repairs back onto a credit card. Bummer. Turned our elation into a real downer and made us feel we would never really get ahead. It also – fortunately – made us realize the importance of emergency savings. Better to have some cash then keep on paying interest to credit cards. You never know when something will happen and if you depend on your credit cards or line of credit as your emergency fund you will never be truly debt free.

In retrospect we should have taken a little longer to pay off our debts and put some money aside for emergencies. Our attitude has always been to think of savings as not that important. In fact we never did anything about it and even when we thought about it savings was the last thing we ever considered doing with our money. We were sillies who always thought we could depend on our credit and the bank of Mom and Pop. And boy did we pay. Literally tens of thousands in interest. Today we put 10% of our earnings into savings. But you can start with less as long as you start.

As for tweaking budgets. I am a terrific tweaker. I set up a “distribution” sheet on excel and with every pay I distribute the money as needed. Takes me only minutes and I can move it around when needed.

I check Gail’s blogs every day and now find myself postponing Friday in order that I have something to read on Saturdays. I’ve never had a budget, have debt and am working at things one step at a time. I have a ton of questions, but will work my way up to asking them. I have removed my cc’s from my wallet and have been living on cash only this past week.

I’m glad to hear that you all tweak your budgets. If they were in stone, I’d be in trouble. Thanks for all your comments. I”m learning. Slowly but surely.

Here’s a question….. do I still work on saving some money even with the debt to pay off? I’m guessing the answer is “yes”, but I feel guilty for having some cash put aside in a savings account when I have creditors to pay.

Thanks for everything. I’ll keep reading. Donna

but please know, that i am in no way passing judgement on the matter.
i still want to cook with you gail.