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How to Afford a Pet When It Has Ongoing Medical Issues

February 7, 2022 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

How to Afford a Pet When It Has Ongoing Medical Issues

When our family friend passed away, she left us her six-year-old cat, Miss Kitty. Miss Kitty was a skittish, fearful cat. She is still that way, but she has come to love us, and we, her. However, this cat has cost us a small fortune! We discovered she is prone to urinary crystals, so she has to have special diet cat food that costs approximately $500 a year. She also has dental issues. Just recently, we had to pay $1,600 to have five of her teeth pulled. Owning Miss Kitty has not been a cheap venture. Unfortunately, our experience is not unique. Many loving pet owners discover their pets have health issues that cost a lot of money. If that is your experience, you may wonder how to afford a pet when it has ongoing medical issues.

Ask What Services Are Absolutely Necessary

Often, veterinarians will suggest many services that your pet needs. Feel free to ask the vet which services the animal needs immediately and which you can delay without harming the animal’s health. This strategy can allow you to pay for treatments that are needed now. Then, you can save for the other treatments that aren’t as urgent. When you have money saved, you can get the next treatment.

Ask the Vet about a Payment Plan

Before the vet begins treating your animal, ask if she has a payment plan. Some vets do. Often, vets offer these payment plans with zero percent interest. Our vet did not have a payment plan, but he waived fees like her recheck appointment (saving us $56) and her antibiotics. If your vet knows that money is a concern, she may offer some discounts.

Utilize Care Credit

If your vet doesn’t offer a payment plan, consider using Care Credit. Care Credit is different than a credit card, but you still should use it conservatively. You can get short-term credit with zero percent interest as long as you make the minimum payment on time and have the balance paid off by the end of the promotional period. If you don’t, you’ll be charged interest from the time of the initial charge.

Get Care at a Veterinarian School

How to Afford a Pet When It Has Ongoing Medical Issues

If you have a veterinarian school nearby, inquire about seeking treatment there. While you may worry about the quality of care, experienced vets supervise veterinarian students, so you should feel comfortable having your animal treated there.

In addition, because your animal gives the vets-in-training experience, you’ll likely be charged less than if you went to a vet who already has her degree.

Utilize Chewy.com

If your animal requires special food or medicine, consider using Chewy.com. We buy all of Miss Kitty’s food from Chewy, and they’re a fabulous company. Their prescription food prices are lower than what you’ll get at your vet’s office, and their medicine is cheaper, too.

Find a Way to Make Extra Money

If your animal has a one-time expense such as Miss Kitty needing her teeth extracted, you may be able to make additional money quickly. One woman who had to pay for an emergency visit for her dog donated her plasma for two months to pay off the bill.

Final Thoughts

For many of us, pets are part of our family. If you’re wondering how to afford a pet when it has ongoing medical issues, know that there are places you can go to get cheaper service to afford your pet’s care.

Read More

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MelissaB
MelissaB

Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.

www.momsplans.com/

Filed Under: budget, Pets Tagged With: animal expenses, frugal, pets

Save Money with Buy Nothing Groups

December 20, 2021 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

Save Money with Buy Nothing Groups

Have you joined a Buy Nothing group? You can find these groups on Facebook. Simply enter the name of your town or area and “Buy Nothing.” You likely find a group or two near you. Then, get ready to discover the joy of all the ways you can save money with buy nothing groups!

Save Money with Buy Nothing Groups

You save money in two ways:

Getting Rid of Your Stuff

You can easily get rid of stuff you no longer use with a buy nothing group. Take a picture and list your item in the group. You’ll likely have several takers. All you have to do is place said items outside your home, and the person will come to take them.

Using a buy nothing group to get rid of your stuff saves you gas because you don’t have to drop the items off at a donation center. You can also save on the cost of disposal if you want to get rid of a larger item.

Gaining New Stuff

The true beauty of these groups is when you are in need of items. Buy nothing groups never charge people for the items they’re getting rid of, so if you get an item from the group, you will pay nothing.

Some of the Best Items Our Family Has Received

When my son was in elementary school, he was obsessed with magic. Our local buy nothing group had a magic kit listed, and I got first dibs on it. My son was thrilled with his new-to-him magic kit, which was in excellent condition. About five years later, my daughters needed bicycles. Although it took me a few months, I was able to get both girls bicycles for free from our Buy Nothing group.

How to Make the Most of These Groups

How to Save Money with Buy Nothing Groups
Photo by Anna Kumpan on Unsplash

To make the most of these groups, you need to be flexible. You may want something, but you need to be patient. Sometimes you have to wait weeks or months for someone to list something you need. Also, be flexible with what you need. If you let go of rigidity, you may find what you need. For instance, let’s say you want blue plates. If someone offers up white plates, be flexible enough to take those instead, knowing that your need was met, even if it wasn’t in the exact way you had planned.

Another Bonus

Besides saving money with buy nothing groups, you also reap another benefit. You help keep unused items—either yours or someone else’s—out of landfills! You cut down on consumerism and live the motto of reduce, reuse, and recycle.

One Caveat

If you search for buy nothing groups in your area and don’t find anything, try searching under “freecycle” or “Neighbors helping neighbors.” Another option is to search “Free.” I found several groups in our area under these different terms. Hopefully, you’ll be able to find one.

Final Thoughts

If you haven’t heard of buy nothing groups or you haven’t utilized one before, what are you waiting for? Now is the perfect time to join. You’ll likely be pleased with the items that you need that you can get for free and that you can save money when giving your own items away.

Read More

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MelissaB
MelissaB

Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.

www.momsplans.com/

Filed Under: Consumerism, Frugality, Saving Tagged With: buy nothing, Consumerism, freecycle, frugal

How to Find an Affordable Apartment in a Big City

November 23, 2020 By MelissaB 5 Comments

Affordable Apartment

Moving to a large city from the suburbs or a more rural area can be a big shift. I’m not just talking about a little culture shock, but also a big financial change. I found that out first-hand when I moved to Chicago. One of the biggest challenges when moving to a new area, especially a large city, is finding an affordable apartment.

How to Find an Affordabe Apartment in a Big City

Cities like New York, LA and Chicago have reputations for having pretty expensive apartments. If you’re moving from an area where you get a lot of value for your money, the shift can be pretty intimidating. But with a little know-how and research, you can find some hidden jewels.

Here are some of my top tips for finding an affordable apartment in a big city!

1. Talk to Locals

Before actually making the move, I visited Chicago three times. With every visit, I talked to taxi cab and Uber drivers to learn more about the city and get their advice on the best areas.

What you’ll find in most large cities is that they’re broken down into distinct areas or neighborhoods, each with their own culture and vibe. Your first priority should be to narrow down a specific neighborhood or two you want to move to, then look for apartments.

When you run into people, ask them what neighborhood they live in and get a feel for how expensive it is. You don’t want to downright ask strangers how much they pay for rent, but ask how the area stacks up against other neighborhoods.

If you’re moving for a new job, be sure to talk with your soon-to-be coworkers. This was another good source of information for me. Someone from HR emailed me some of the affordable neighborhoods that I should consider checking out, which was a huge help.

2. Check Apartment Hunting Sites

Sites like Trulia and Zillow are extremely helpful for finding apartments in a new area that fit your budget. I spent countless hours browsing online listings to find apartments that were within the budget I felt comfortable with.

The good thing about these sites is they allow you to filter based on price, amenities location and other options to really help you find what you’re looking for.

Don’t just rely on the national apartment listing sites. I was recommended to check out a local apartment listing site specifically for Chicago. Zillow and Trulia tend to cater to large property management companies, whereas these niche city specific sites cater to individuals.

Often times the apartments you find on these sites are a lot less expensive than the bigger sites because they’re rented out by private owners.

Of course, you can also look at the local Craigslist. This is a good option if you want to save money by renting with a roommate. Getting a roommate will automatically cut your rent in half or even more depending on how many people you live with. Just keep in mind that sharing an apartment with a roommate comes with some potential risks as well.

One downside to Craigslist is that it can easily become a bait-and-switch game. I found that out quickly after calling some listings that had been posted the same day, only to be told “I don’t have that specific unit available anymore but I have some other options I can show you.” Those other options were generally at least a couple hundred dollars more.

3. Walk Around the Neighborhood

Affordable Apartment
Photo by Alicja Podstolska on Unsplash

Once you’ve decided on a specific neighborhood, don’t do all your research online. Hit the pavement and go walking around. Although you might think everyone lists their apartments for rent online, it’s not uncommon for condo owners or old school landlords to just put a “for rent” sign outside their building.

In larger cities, there’s so much foot traffic that just putting a “for rent” sign outside saves landlords the time and fees that come along with listing their property online. You can often find steals with these types of rentals because the landlord isn’t doing a ton of competitive research on what everyone else is charging. They’re just charging what they think they should, which is generally less than market value.

On one of my visits to Chicago, I walked around the main area I was interested in and noticed a lot of for rent signs. So when I went back home, I contacted a few of them to schedule a tour for my next visit.

4. Be Open to Compromise

There are probably some must-haves on your apartment checklist, but if you’re on a budget you have to be willing to compromise. Before moving, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get the same value and amenities I got from my previous apartment so I just accepted it.

I recommend making a list of must-haves and a separate list of things that would be good to have, but you could live without. For instance, an in-unit washer/dryer could be a must-have, but a community gym might be something that you could live without.

In most cases, the cost for all those extra amenities comes out in the costs of added fees or higher rent. You might be surprised by how quickly your needs can change once you see how much more the rent is for an apartment with a pool, doorman and business center.

The key is to compromise, not sacrifice.

5. Consider Living Further From Downtown

The closer you live to the downtown area, the higher your rent will be. When I first started looking, I thought about how great it would be to live close to the downtown area, but I quickly changed my mind after seeing how much the rent was.

Affordable Apartment
Photo by Sawyer Bengtson on Unsplash

My main reasoning for wanting to live closer to downtown was to make my work commute shorter. But it’s well worth spending an extra 10-20 minutes on the train to save hundreds of dollars on rent each month.

Do research and find neighborhoods a little further out that still provide a lot of the amenities you’d get downtown like restaurants, fun activities and shops.

6. Get a Broker

I’ll be honest. I didn’t even know that rental brokers were a thing until I started looking for an apartment in the city. After all my research, I eventually decided to use a broker to find my apartment.

Rental brokers are like real estate agents for renters. You tell them your budget, amenities you’d like and the areas/neighborhoods you’re interested in, and they’ll find a place for you. They’ll even drive you around to the different apartments, which is super convenient when you’re searching in the city. Some will charge you a commission, and others get paid from the property management companies they work with.

In larger cities, there are tons of options available, and there is no single location to see them all. Using a broker makes your search a lot easier and quicker.

7. Look for Up-And-Coming Neighborhoods

This tip saved me a lot of money. When you’re moving to a big city, there’s a lot of temptation to move to one of the trendy, established neighborhoods. However, consider choosing an up-and-coming neighborhood that isn’t quite as well known.  You can get a lot more bang for your buck.

A lot of people associate up-and-coming neighborhoods with being dangerous. However, that’s not necessarily the case. Often times these are neighborhoods that weren’t the most well kept in the past, but over time new homeowners and businesses start to move in to revitalize the area.

The period of time right before a neighborhood becomes mainstream and trendy is the perfect time to rent because you’ll be able to snag a great location before the prices inevitably go up.

Find up-and-coming neighborhoods by talking to people like I mentioned earlier, or just searching Google. There are plenty of blogs that are on top of what’s going on in the city.  They usually put together lists of burgeoning neighborhoods to look out for.

One thing to keep in mind is you always want to make sure you’re moving to a safe neighborhood. While up-and-coming areas aren’t ripe with crime, they are still developing. I used Walk Score to look at the safety rating for the neighborhood I moved into before signing the lease. It’s a great way to check how crime in the neighborhood compares to the rest of the city.

Saving money is great, but you don’t want to risk your safety to save a couple bucks.

Final Thoughts

Putting all these tips into action will allow you get a great apartment in a large city without needing to live off Ramen noodles and bologna.

Read More

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Do We Inflict Peer Pressure on Ourselves?

MelissaB
MelissaB

Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.

www.momsplans.com/

Filed Under: Frugality, Saving, ShareMe Tagged With: affordable apartment, apartment, frugal

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