Category — News

After writing last week’s post on rethinking priorities in life I started to look more at my own life, and I started thinking a lot more on how I spend my time. I’ve decided to slow it down a lot with the blog, and I’m considering a twice a week posting schedule to see how that goes. One post will be a review of a book that I read, the other will be from the usual suspects of personal finance, investing, and productivity.

Instead of taking one or two hours out of my day to work on the blog I plan on spending more time with working on my photography hobby and learning more for my ‘real’ job. I still enjoy writing for the blog, but I’m starting to realize that posting everyday lessens the quality of what I write. It also makes writing feel more like a job, and not like the fun hobby that I originally wanted it to be. It’s also been tough for me to find time to workout, and I’m starting to feel like the person I see in the mirror is not me.

So if you’ve been coming by and reading expect to see fewer posts going forward. As always I am open to suggestions on posts, and if anyone has finance questions they want answered please send them my way and I will help as much as I can.

Rich

Yesterday we took one of our cats to the vet because she has been wheezing like she had a hairball that wouldn’t come up. It started about 3 months ago, and we didn’t think much of it at first. We switched her over to a hairball control food, which helped a little at first, but not much. Long story short, she actually has cat asthma.

Unfortunately, and I feel terrible about this, she has an infection in her lungs since we let it go too long. So on top of spending money on the asthma medication, we are now spending money on antibiotics to cure her infection. Overall we spent over $300 yesterday on the exam fees, x-ray fees, and medication. In two weeks we will spend another $200 to have her x-rayed again to see if the infection is gone and to see if her lungs look better.

So in the course of two weeks we will have spent over $500 on our cat. I really hope she gets well enough that we don’t need to continue with the asthma medication. On the other hand, after hearing from friends and family with dogs, $500 seems fairly cheap for a problem.

If you’re thinking about getting an animal remember that they can get expensive when things go wrong. I love our cats, but I have to admit that when we got them I didn’t ever think about spending more than $100 on them at a time for vaccinations or a routine check up. But the happiness that they bring is completely worth it.

The New York Times is reporting that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be taken over by the U.S. government. This is huge news because now the government is responsible for billions of dollars of bad mortgage debt. There is only two ways to pay of that debt: raise taxes or print more money. Neither of these options is good for you.

For further reading check out Barry Ritholtz’s analysis over at The Big Picture. Now is the time to start paying very close attention to what the government does.