Archives for August 2005

Back in June we adopted a dog, James, from the Humane Society. Although I thought about it, I decided not to post about the costs of owning a dog until his costs broke the $1,000 barrier. I’ve never had a dog before, and I wanted to keep an open mind towards the dog and not sweat it since my wife really wanted one bad as she has had dogs all her life. I’m sure the dog lovers out there understand. But almost three months later, I like the dog a lot, and we seem to have gotten over the large initial expeditures. I’ve been tracking our pet expenses using MS Money, but haven’t actually looked at the breakdown until now.

Here are the initial costs for getting our dog (1st month):
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In our efforts to budget properly, we’ve started to see how much eating out costs when friends and relatives visit, and started to cook a lot more at home when it’s just us. So I’ve been doing a lot of shopping at the grocery store, and trying to use Couponing as much as possible. One major hurdle I’ve come across is deciding at what price something is worth stocking up for.

So thanks to a 1-Click Install by Dreamhost and many hours last night futzing with it, I have created a PricesWiki for groceries. If you aren’t familiar with Wikipedia, it’s an encyclopedia written collaboratively by everyone on the internet. It’s like a big shared chalkboard that anyone can write on and/or erase. Thus, PricesWiki is supposed to be a place where everyone can help decide what a good price for something is. For example, at http://prices.mymoneyblog.com/Butter you can see what a good price for butter might be. Disagree? Change it or add your own opinion. No need to log in, just click on ‘edit’ and go for it. I encourage everyone to check it out and contribute something!
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