No Debt Plan

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(Photo by MShades)

The pet industry is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States. We really like to take care of our pets.

Of course, we got a puppy two Saturdays ago. We have incurred expenses as you might expect — adoption fee, collar, leash, food and water bowls, food, toys… the list goes on and on.

We were in PetSmart the other day looking at dog food. The Humane Society gave us a 5 lb. bag of Science Diet for Puppies, which they recommended. We found the location of the Science Diet and did some investigation. Just like you might check the per ounce cost at the grocery store, we did the same thing with the dog food.

The per pound cost of dog food

This is what we found:

Small bag, 5 lbs.: $11

Big bag, 40 lbs.: $40

Woah… wait a second. Do the math. The small bag is $2.20 per pound. That’s practically chuck round ground beef! The big bag is only $1 per pound.

There is a significant bulk discount to buying the bigger bag. If you buy the smaller bag you pay a 120% premium. I could understand charging a little bit more for the smaller bag, but 120% seems a bit over the top.

Long story short, if you have a pet make sure you’re checking the per pound or per ounce cost of the food. Compare it to other bags from the same brand. I would imagine that generally the more you buy, the cheaper the food is.

When our free small bag runs out, we’ll definitely be getting a big bag of the dog food.

I didn’t get a chance to write anything up for Saturday or Sunday. I think that’s the first time in a while where I haven’t had a post ready to go. I don’t think I’ve ever gone two days in a row. My apologizes. Hopefully you can forgive me…

Holy cow we got a dog!

Yup, Saturday we set out to do the following things:

• buy some car tools from Harbor Freight
• visit the humane society
• go to a local discount home decoration store
• go to Lowe’s to buy garage storage and perhaps some patio furniture

Here’s what we ended up getting done on Saturday:

• adopting Maggie from the Birmingham Humane Society

What can I say? She stole our hearts…

Why We Got Her

It’s been in the cards for quite some time that we would get a dog of some sort at the beginning of summer. My wife is a teacher and will have all summer to train the new addition to the family. I had a cat growing up, and her parents still have the family dog. We’ve been wanting to have a companion for quite some time, but managed to push it off until the summer of this year.

Dogs are Expensive

As Free Money Finance consistently tells his readers, having a pet is not only a serious emotional and time commitment — they’re expensive too. I completely agree. The cost of owning a dog on average is $1,200 or so per year.

We went into this with eyes open… an understanding of the cost and time required of us to take care of any dog we adopted. We have the money available, we have built up two months worth of an emergency fund, and “dog expenses” is an actual category in our budget. We felt not only emotionally ready, but financially ready too.

How It Happened

We got to the Humane Society around 11 Saturday morning. We looked at two dogs. The first was a one year old Shepard mix named Camey that was very, very timid. The adoption counselor said she hadn’t been abused, but was just very nervous and probably not good for a home with kids. She said she would warm up.

The second was this little furball named Lima Bean. She was also very shy and kind of skitish, but also very cute. Of course, this is a puppy. Not many puppies lack the cute factor. We spent some time with her, left to discuss the options, and ended up deciding on Lima Bean. We signed the paperwork and went home to puppy-proof the house as well as get the leash and collar we had already purchased (Tennessee Vols garb, no doubt) before coming back to get her. We walked out with her at 4pm, ready to face a new adventure.

To be frank, we thought the name Lima Bean sucked. So Lima Bean is now known as Maggie. Maggie is a Labrador Retriever mix… they thought mixed with Shepard. Only time will tell. She will get big, and we have a relatively small yard without a fence. We have made a commitment to exercising her twice daily, rain, snow, or shine. It is a monumental task, and we understand she won’t be a puppy forever. She is likely to get very large. It should be fun.

So! That’s the big news for us. Regularly scheduled programming comes back tomorrow. Too tired from