Fuzzy’s Financial Blog

My dog was hit by a car the other day. He is alright now but it was scary. He got out of the house and as I was going after him he ran across a busy street and was hit by a Isuzu Trooper so it was low to the ground and he did a number of flips under the car.

When he was out from under the car he just laid there dazed and I picked him up and hopped into the car and took him to the nearest vet since ours is about thirty minutes away. He was bleeding from his chin but nothing else noticeable.

Well we got him to the vet and he was already starting to act himself again but we took him to get checked anyways. After waiting to hear if there was any major damage we found out the he appeared ok except for the scraped chin and maybe some bruising on his left side. The wanted to run xrays(almost $300) and also keep him for observation overnight($80) and give him pain killers($40) and antibiotics($80) to the tun of $511.64 and included the $27 exam fee.

By the time they gave us the estimate he was already walking around and wanting to jump off the table or jumping on us. We decided to just pay the exam fee and monitor him ourselves and make sure there was no blood in his urine or stool, the vet suggested we use betadine to keep the wound clean. When we got back home we contacted a friend of ours who is a vet’s assistant to ask her advice and she suggested we give him some baby aspirin(Buffered aspirin) for any pain and use some polysporin ointment since she knows how fussy our dog can be sometimes and how betadine works, she also wanted to make it clear that this is just a suggestion and not medical advice. So we went and spent about $25 on baby aspirin and polysporin ointment and used that on him.

We gave him the baby aspirin following this charts advice.
Note: This is not medical advice.
Weight of dog in pounds (or kilograms) Number of tablets each 12 hours mg
8 lbs (3.6 kg) 1/2 baby aspirin or less 40 mg
16 lbs (7.2 kg) 1 baby aspirin 80 mg
32 lbs (14.4 kg) 1/2 adult or 2 baby 160 mg
48 lbs (21.6 kg) 3/4 adult or 3 baby 240 mg
64 lbs (28.8 kg) 1 adult or 4 baby 320 mg
80 lbs (36 kg) 1 1/4 adult or 5 baby 400 mg
96 lbs (43.2 kg) 1 1/2 adult or 6 baby 480 mg

In the past we have given him a benadryl for a bee sting following her advice since we were camping together and his poor chin was so swollen that time.

I am happy to say that it has been almost four days now and he is perfectly fine, unfortunately he still has no fear of the street, and still will try and run out into it if we don’t have him on a leash, which we do keep him on a leash outside of the house. There are some medicines out there that we take over the counter that dogs can take and even some for cats but they are not necessarily the same since some of what are safe for dogs are poisonous to cats.

It was a scary time and I think if we had taken him to our vet I believe she would have given close to the same since she is one of those country vets that has no issue using the less costly alternatives, still probably wanted the xrays but she would understand. I would have prefered to get the xrays and have better confidence myslef but what they want was rediculous.

It is possible you have been looking at your cable bill and wanting to trim the bill down. You then look online and watch a few shows on Hulu and think it would be great if you could watch your Hulu on your tv and just ditch the cable company. Well there are a few ways of doing this.

If you have an Xbox 360 you probably already know you can watch your Netflix online content through it on your tv. But what about Hulu  and if you have a Playstation 3 or Wii what can you do. Aside from getting an HTPC and dealing with all of that there are cheaper and maybe a little easier way. With such programs as Tversity, Boxee, or Playon you can watch Hulu and many other internet tv free providers on your tv. There are also devices like Roku out or coming out that provide watching Netflix on them and an expanding content providers.

Tversity turns your computer into a multimedia server. It is a free program and there is a Pro version which is currently free but you can pay a fee to get a license also if you like the program. Tversity Pro adds the ability to stream Hulu video and alot of other internet media providers to a UPnP capable device such as an XBox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii among other devices. From some testing I found that Tversity streams files on your hard drive seamlessly while the Hulu streaming is a little choppy. Tversity also serves up your audio, video and picture content to these devices if they have the capability.

Playon from Mediamall is similar to Tversity in that it is also a multimedia server. With this program you have a 14 day trial before you have to pay $39.99 for it but if you wait you can catch a $10 discount on it. Hulu streams fairly well and I didn’t see any choppyness, one current bug which many people have reported and I experienced is the Hulu black screen of death as some are calling it when it goes to a black screen as a pause but never recovers and requires restarting the whole video, mediamall says they are working to correct this issue. Through plugins you can add additional content providers and there are currently many out there.

Boxee is a free program to run on your computer and control the different content providers in one application. I have not tried this program yet but it in order to display on your tv you need to hook up your computer to the tv.

I am sure there are more options out there and more extender type devices. Do some shopping around and you should be able to find your best deal for your situation.  I totally believe that through these options you can replace your cable tv as long as you maintain a broadband or high speed internet service.

Shutterfly is offering a free 20 page 8×8 photobook if you use Family Tree on Facebook until November 15th. As long as you have a Facebook account you just need to allow access to family tree. After you have have Family Tree linked to your Facebook account just go here and get the coupon code.

You just have to pay shipping and handling. These are nice little books and I have always admired them. Since I tend to take a ton of digital pictures and never print them out this is a good idea.

Every person in a neighborhood does not need to have a lawnmower or one of those ladders that can get you on top of a three story house so your friends over at Neighborgoods has started a site to help you share tools and stuff. While they do not yet cover every area more are being added.

This is a great way to save money, help out your neighbors and still get things done. Have a circular saw you are willing to lend post it up there, got a ladder post it, need a vacuum do a search. It is a good thing to do and help build a better community, along with allowing you to better network.

I got to thinking about the clothes I wear the other day. I don’t really pay to much attention to the clothes I wear since to me it doesn’t matter to much. I do try and make sure I don’t wear clothes with holes, or ones that are just loud. I barely remember going shopping for pants a few months ago when a business was going out of sale, what I can’t remember is the last time I went shopping for something other than pants in the last 8 years. Well what shirts do I wear?

I would say abut 80% of the shirts I wear I have gotten for free. They are either promotional shirts for one company or another, or shirts I got from work for one milestone or another. 2-3% are shirts I have that are still in relatively good condition from high school some 13-14 years ago kindof amazing to me. The rest are shirts I either bought over 8 years ago or have recieved as presents from family and friends for christmas or birthdays.

Pants are a different story I seem to buy about 1-2 pairs a year, I normally try to get good quality pants but that gut of mine seems to be expanding a little bit each year. A few of these have been presents but I primarily buy my pants.

Socks and underwear I tend to buy a package about once a year. I still have many socks that I have had for years, and the same goes for my boxers.

I think you can say I am a really frugal person when it comes to clothing, what I do buy I tend to buy on sale and decent quality. And what I don’t buy I got for free.

If you have a job that pays you biweekly it can be interesting paying bills. If you have bad habits like I used to have where one paycheck I would pay certain bills and the next paycheck I would pay the others and then forget which ones you paid the week previously there are things you can do to correct it. Using my banks free bill paying service I setup all of my bills in it, at first I tried to create how I had been doing it manually before hand and then I realised I was paying more out one payday then the other payday. Which may not seem bad but I would spend the extra money before the next payday when I would need it.

Now what I do is pay half of each bill each payday. This doesn’t sound like it would do much but it does help even out the expenditures and then I know for sure what is left in the account is excess to be used for things as groceries and gas. One thing you will want to make sure of is that you are paying the proper amounts. You will also get about an extra months payment made each year since 26 paydays equate into 13 paired payments.

It is nice knowing I have each of my bills paid biweekly, I do suggest rechecking the amount owed at least quarterly, especially for those bills that are based on usage. When I set up all of mine I rounded up to the next dollar, and on some I actually set it to $5 over each pay period, which is great for making sure the bills is paid but also leads to having money basically sitting at the payees bank accounts and not yours. I recently went through and checked to make sure I had everything current and found on some accounts I had a full months payment and then some as credit, and on another they sent me a letter to stop sending in payments and that they would tell me when to start sending payments again since I wound up paying a years worth of service in credit how did that happen you may wonder is well it was a bill I got bimonthly and I had accidentally set it up to pay the full amount biweekly.

If you have debt that you are paying off and it is et to a yearly schedule this will get you and extra months payment made each year, and with the changes in laws that have come out relatively recentlyfor most debt types this means an extra months payment torwards the principal directly instead of interest like companies used to do if you didn’t designate. 

One nice thing about this is after it has been established for awhile and if you have credits, not necessarily a good thing, and you need some extra money one pay period you could set the bank to skip a payment to those payess that you have at least one pay period amount of credit ahead and use that extra money for what you need.

What is a CD Ladder? No, it is not one of the shelves for compact discs. A CD Ladder is a number of CD’s (Certificate of deposits) that are spaced out over a period of time to capture better interest and provide a realitively safe investment. Generally with a CD you can get a better rate of return then if you just parked the money in a savings account, what you lose is the liquidity of a savings account. With a CD you are giving your money to the bank for a specified amount of time and earning a specified amount of interest on the money, allowing banks to lend your money. If you withdraw funds early from a CD you pay a penalty, but you can still access the money if needed.

Now with a CD ladder you are attempting to capture the higher interest rates and also maintain some liquidity of your funds. This is just another tool for your quest for income streams.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could play the stock market without putting up a single penny and still make money off of it? Well you can with UpDown and Wall Street Survivor. Both allow you to play the fantasy stock market accounts, both have contests to win real money, and both allow you to make some real money. With UpDown it is real cash that gets paid out once you make so much and is earned based on your portfolios performance.  Wall Street Survivor gives you loyalty points for doing different things from logging in and making trades to writing articles, collect enough loyalty points and you can trade the points in for amazon.com gift cards.

So can you play games and still make money, sure you can, just don’t expect to get rich fast. To really have a chance of winning at these you need to have a good knowledge of the stock market and the time to make day trades. But these are also really good learning tools since they are based off of the stock market and you don’t have to invest any money to play around with the stocks.

While perusing the internet looking for alternate investment ideas I came across Agrinuity. With their program and a minimum investment of $100,000 you can be the owner of a piece of farmland. Agrinuity will manage the property for 10 years making sure it has a proper tenant and that the tenant abides by the land management agreements of the lease. While this is not for everyone or someone just starting out it is an idea for an additional investment.

You are in effect buying yourself a piece of farmland and letting someone else farm it for you as you lease it to them. From looking over their site it seems that you would get about a possible 5% return on the investment. You do lose liquidity of the money but you also gain an annual income from the property. You can also take out loans against the property if you need to.

So if you want another investment to help round out your portfolio and you have the minimum investment amount required this may be for you.

Ever wonder what your financial IQ may be? Sure you have these plans but overall how do you rate? You should check out Bills IQ and take the quiz. I did and found that it is a good basis to start from. You can take it and it will tell you tips to help improve your score in the future. These tips are in line with what I have been talking about through out these blogs.

A haiku for you about Bills IQ.

All my old debt,
Nobody seems to want it,
Help from Bills IQ.

They seem to advocate monitoring your credit report so that it is easier to see any potential identity theft. They also have suggestions to improve your credit score talking about what is used in the calculations.

One thing I do not agree with is the advice to use a debt management group to help get your debt under control. I find most of these programs do not work efficiently, sure they can get the amounts lowered along with the rates but then they charge you fees.