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A funny person once proclaimed that I seem to have the fewest financial worries of anyone he knows, which is highly ironic considering that I’m currently a graduate student in the humanities at a public university, and I’ve been living off fellowships, stipends, GSI wages, and occasional guinea pigging gigs for over five years now. I certainly don’t give the impression of being rich based on my wardrobe, car, home, or other daily extravagances. But I do take pride in the condition of my dogs, and feel secure in the knowledge that I’ve got the necessary savings and/or line of credit that I can throw down if we are ever confronted with an emergency (knock on wood!!).
While budgeting alone is not a sufficient prophylactic against traumatic expenses, it is a surprisingly useful skill that really polarizes my peers; those in my age range either know how to do it conspicuously well, or they’re quietly struggling. In the absence of children, a full-time job, or a “real” house of my own, I fall somewhere inbetween. But I think we at the House of Two Bows are doing all right on behalf of our dogs, in part because there are two of us (with our own bank accounts) to cover all the pet expenses, and also because I do all the pet budgeting. Heh, heh, heh.
I had basically one financial strategy last year — to keep track of what I spent on the pets. Step one is to know what I spend and face the concrete reality of what is necessary, versus what is frivolous. After that, I can prioritize and make adjustments as necessary, or establish a benchmark for how much I should be able to stash away every month.
My primary tool was a pocket planner dedicated to this purpose, as I found it easiest and most accessible to jot things down in pen and ink whenever I made a pet-related purchase. Everything from the $2.49 tub of yogurt to the $200+ vet bill was written down within the day, lest I forget. Then at the end of the month, I sorted items into categories, and wrote those totals on sticky notes which I kept in the book. At minimum, I needed a four-month cycle to get a realistic sense of my average expenses, given the seasonality of vet visits and short-notice blowout sales.
I had established my expense categories beforehand, but I didn’t bother to file everything into appropriate categories until I did my end-of-the-month tally. During the month I would itemize my purchases in some detail (noting, for example, the price per pound of meat). In the end, I could group all of my purchases into the following categories:
- Food
- Treats
- Vet & meds
- Accessories & miscellaneous
Other categories that weren’t incorporated, but might be applicable:
- Training and behavioral consultation
- Pet insurance
- Licensing and memberships (if your local dog park requires an annual fee, for example)
- Grooming
- Dog walking, boarding, and travel
- Unreimbursed rescue and fostering expenses (which is now tax deductible with proper documentation!)
- Puppyhood (for various reasons, first-year puppy expenses deserve a category of their own)
The categories you establish should be big yet clearly demarcated to help you recognize patterns in your spending habits. At the end of the year, this is what mine look like.
Monthly Averages of Pet Things for 2011:
Food costs: $84
Treats: $26
Accessories & miscellany: $15
Veterinary and medical: $122
Total monthly expenses: $247 / month
And broken down by percentage of overall budget:
Food included all essential edibles, from raw meat to kibble, including any dietary supplements that are taken on a daily or seasonal basis.
You know, this figure really isn’t bad for two 20 ~ 30 pound dogs. However, I can see the costs increasing exponentially relative to the size of the dogs! Considering that we used to pay approximately $25 ~ $30 a month for 17.5 pounds of Hill’s Science Diet for just Bowdu (it’s been years since we’ve purchased this brand, so this is just a guess), I feel quite justified in spending a few dollars more per month, per dog. Higher quality food is affordable, relatively speaking — though I understand that time can impose more severe limits on one’s options.
Treats included non-essential edibles. The types of treats here include training treats, edible dental chews, and raw recreational bones.
I don’t think we should be spending this much per month on store-bought treats when we are spending so much on food already. Again, I wonder if making our own snacks would be more economical… However, edible dental chews, which are usually our most expensive treats, seem difficult to replace. I don’t know of homemade recipes that last as long, they don’t seem as satisfying to the pups, or they can be quite messy (like raw bones, for example).
Treats don’t occupy very much of the overall budget, but it can still be a target category for 2012. I’ll have to devise a strategy for cutting back.
Accessories and miscellaneous included non-edible items used directly by the Bows, such as leashes, collars, tags, and clothing.
I don’t expect this category to change very much either, because at this age, the Bows already have most of the everyday items that they need. Occasionally, something will come up requiring a purchase in this category, but for the most part, these are not critical items. Due to Bowdu’s destructive and possessive tendencies, I don’t buy dog toys anymore, though they make welcome gifts. As adult dogs, they have plenty of options to keep them mentally stimulated — tug games with household towels, social visits, hiking and outdoors exploration, etc.
Speaking of exploration, I only counted $10 in gas consumed for the dogs this year, which is no doubt a major underestimation. We also paid a lot of tolls while exploring a wide swath of Bay Area terrain this year. I would not have been compelled to go to many of these places if it was not for the Bows. RJ doesn’t drive, so all gas and tolls were on me and not really part of our shared budget.
Veterinary and medical expenses are exactly as described, including over-the-counter medications.
Yup, I was painfully aware of every sharp, jagged spike. I’m at a loss for how I can bring these figures down just a little lower, what with local costs of living. Granted, Bowpi had a full dental workup, which should not be an annual occurrence. We also had one unexpected trip to the vet (our regular vet was able to fit us in and we didn’t have to go to the ER, thankfully). Since the probability of “unexpected” visits seems to increase when you don’t expect them, I’m going to count that as a routine occurrence and necessary part of the budget.
At this rate, pet insurance might not be such a bad idea after all… I think we get a couple more years to consider our options before “senior pet” restrictions apply and our Bows are cut off. Anyway, I’ve had plenty of gripes about expensive veterinary care in the past and probably will have plenty more to gripe about in the future. However, this is one category where it does not pay to slack, so I’ll just have to continue monitoring expenses and setting money aside.
… That’s it! This is what I’ve learned about our budget at the House of Two Bows after tracking expenses for a full year. And now that I’m addicted to the process, I’m continuing into 2012. My purpose was to make pet finances just a little more transparent, even if only through anecdotal experience. Though I’ve posted at various times about the figures that other organizations have reported, national or regional averages really don’t map so well onto individual finances. In the end, only you have an idea of what works in your household, in the context of your own income and all your other personal finances.
And hopefully, this demonstration shows that there’s a lot of information to be gleaned from just tracking daily expenses. I don’t expect my charts to be generalizable for every dog or every household. That’s why you have to start recording your own expenses to figure out what applies to your own circumstances.
* This post was submitted for a Blog Carnival on the subject of pet finances, hosted by Life By Pets. It happened January the 28th, so I encourage you to wander over to her blog for a collection of other interesting links.
Losech said:
I’ve enjoyed reading these through the past year. I’m going to try to remember to write down everything I buy for Conker (stealin your idea!) but for this month, since I can count everything I’ve bought him on one hand and remember the prices for each item, it’s going to be very boring.
DesertWindHounds said:
If I tried to do this, it would make my head explode, or drive me to drink, or both. We are already $700 in the hole on vet bills this year, and that is just for one dog.
M.C. said:
I can’t even imagine how you handle finances. Count me naive and slightly disappointed to find that having two dogs really DID mean twice the costs all around… vets don’t cut you much of a deal just for having more than one pet. At least mine don’t, not in any significant way.
But the important figure here might be the average for *each* dog. That’s a reasonable figure to focus on. At this point, it’s a realistic deterrent against adding just one more for me, anyway.
M.C. said:
It’s the “non-boring” months that hurt. =P
And definitely not my idea to start with. This is classic budgeting 101!
Adam Lang said:
Autumn and I have begun this year by starting to budget everything. First step is learning to record every purchase in an iPhone app. (I’m writing one for that purpose, but in the mean time, we aren’t going to wait until mine is ready, so we’re using one I got off the iOS store). It’s a pain in the butt, but it really needs to be done: until and unless one of Autumn’s business ventures (or Dogs of SF’s upcoming t-shirt-and-bumper-sticker store) really takes off, we’re on the low end of the household income spectrum for living in San Francisco.
And I want to own a house in San Francisco. That’s my next life goal. Budgeting is going to be a crucial part of that, if it’s even possible at all.
M.C. said:
Heh, have you seen this? The number I plugged in basically told me we should GTFO of the area if we EVER want to own a home. Yeah, I get serious house envy on a regular basis …
Adam Lang said:
Heh. Well, I hadn’t seen that, but I basically know where things stand.
But I’ve found a few places in San Francisco in my price range, or that should be within the next year or two (if housing prices don’t continue to rise dramatically again in SF, as they have in the last three months or so). Some of them are fixer-uppers, some of them are just kind of small. But I’m pretty handy, and adaptable.
And I really love San Francisco. I really want to stay here (and, of course, it’s where my vocation is best-represented and best paid, too). There are only a few things that could drive me away at this point, and most of them would drive me entirely out of the United States. (I hear Vancouver is pretty nice, and I have dual citizenship. And Autumn is dual with Ireland.)
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shanendoah@life by pets said:
Thanks for mentioning the round up.
I’ve been tracking our expenses (not just pet) for years, but this year I’m making a change. In the past, dog food, most treats, and even flea treatment were considered part of the grocery budget because I bought them at CostCo. This year, I am making myself pull those expenses off the grocery budget and put them in the pet budget where they belong.
My total bills for the last few years have been high, though. We lost one dog at the end of 2009 and put his expenses on Care Credit. We paid them off through 2010. And in early 2011, we lost a second dog. In late 2011, we had a lymphoma scare with our Beagle (turns out to be swollen salivary glands). My vet bills have been through the roof.
I am hoping that in 2012, all of that settles down a bit. (Though we did start the year with our Beagle having to spend the night at the vets on IV fluids due to a stomach bug.)
ting said:
Each time I read one of these posts, I think about how much I need to do it too.
I’m pretty sure that the amount that we spend on toys and treats will equal the amount we spend on their real food. Shio is so spoiled. Emi is starting to understand what spoiled is.
I want to come back as one of my dogs in my next lifetime!
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