How to Nicely Furnish and Decorate Your Apartment for Under $1,000

When you move into a new apartment, you will undoubtedly need or want some items that you didn’t have in your previous apartment. Every apartment has a different layout, different windows, different amounts of storage space, and other subtleties that can invoke the desire to buy something that solves a problem—whether it’s a new couch when you move up from a studio to a one-bedroom, or some area rugs when you move from a place with carpet to one with hardwood floors.

But if you’re a young apartment-dweller who’s at a stage in life where moving frequently is the norm and paychecks are entry-level, it doesn’t make sense to buy expensive furnishings for your new apartment. That doesn’t mean you have to settle for dog-chewed furniture and posters taped to the walls, though. Here are some strategies for keeping the costs of furniture, decorations, and other housewares within your budget while avoiding the bachelor pad look.

First, there’s something you should know about the market for these kinds of items: for the most part, they have a very low resale value. Perhaps this is because many people think that other people’s used couches, beds, drapes, and dishes are contaminated in some way. While there are certainly horror stories of rat-infested sofas out there, most of the used items available for sale will be carefully screened by both you and the store that’s selling them. The low resale value of home goods makes buying them secondhand from thrift stores, garage sales, and eBay a great option. Consider mixing new items with well-cared-for secondhand ones to get the nicest look and the most bang for your buck.

Furniture

• To get the best garage sale furniture, you’ll have to be the dreaded early bird, so plan to set your alarm on Saturday mornings until you find what you need.
• Supplement your garage saling with daily trips to all the local thrift stores to see what’s new. You never know when someone else might drop off your future couch. My $50 Salvation Army like-new La-Z-Boy recliner was a great find that I enjoy to this day.
• Some people might think they have to buy new furniture because they need a store to deliver it to them, but if transporting furniture is an issue, just rent a pickup truck or cargo van for a few hours. Even with the added cost of a vehicle rental, you’ll still come out way ahead over buying your furniture new. If you’re the adventurous type, you can even hire a stranger off Craigslist to move it for you. $50 is a very reasonable offer for a short move of one large item.
• Consider recycling furniture you find in the alley. If you live in an apartment-filled area, you’ll probably encounter a steady stream of abandoned furniture in your alley as tenants move out. Inspect the items carefully and clean them thoroughly with a bug- and germ-killing product. You may want to avoid soft items like couches, rugs, and mattresses altogether as they can harbor bugs. If you want to be more proactive about finding free furniture, get your hands on a pickup truck or cargo van and go on an alley crawl one weekend.

Housewares and Small Appliances

• People are always getting rid of old dishes, silverware, and other kitchen items, which means that you can easily obtain them for free from friends who are moving, parents who have accumulated too many over the years, and thrift shops. If you’re the type who needs a perfect set of matching everything, this strategy won’t work for you, but if you care more about function, a couple of visits to Goodwill will allow you to cheaply accumulate a variety of interesting plates, bowls, glasses, and whatever else you need. Clean them with plenty of soap and very hot water and you’re ready to go.
• Due to their relatively low cost compared to the other things you need for your apartment, things like blenders and toaster ovens aren’t bad candidates for things to buy new from the big box store. It’s hard to say how long the thrift-store one will last, but the new one will come with a warranty.

Décor

Once you’ve got the basics covered, you’ll probably want to personalize your space with some decorations.

• One of the fastest, cheapest, and easiest ways to spruce up a living space is to paint it (check with your landlord first, though—many places don’t allow it). You can paint a room for around $25, including both paint and supplies, as long as you do the work yourself. The most time-consuming part is usually finding the right color—the painting itself is easy.
• If you have ugly floors, get a few inexpensive rugs to add some warmth and color to your rooms.
• If you’re the creative type, use your own photography or artwork and some inexpensive frames to decorate your walls. If you’re not, talk to a friend who is.
• If your apartment doesn’t have adequate overhead lighting, buy inexpensive lamps to brighten your space.
• Replace generic plastic switchplate covers with decorative ones.
• Clean everything thoroughly. Ideally, a new apartment would be clean when you moved in, but depending on the previous occupant, the landlord, and the length of time the unit has sat vacant, it might be pretty dingy. Even an old, cracked countertop looks better when it shines.
• If interior decorating isn’t your strong suit, that’s okay. Just ask some friends whose living spaces you like for suggestions. They’ll be flattered that you asked and probably be happy to give you their input (for free!) on how to decorate your apartment.

Following my own advice, I was able to decorate and furnish my first one-bedroom apartment for about $1,000. That’s not super cheap, but when you think about how a new couch alone can easily cost $1,000, it seems like a pretty good deal.

11 Actions You Can Take To Improve Your Airplane Experience

When we pay so much money for plane tickets, why does the experience have to be so miserable? Well, maybe it doesn’t have to be. While this article won’t tell you how to maintain your sanity in a grounded plane for seven hours, it will give you some ideas for making the best of a relatively ordinary flight.

Get your seat in advance: Book your flight far enough in advance to get a window or aisle seat, whichever you prefer. Then make sure to pick your seat when you book your flight. The best way to do this is to book directly through the airline rather than through a third-party site, which may not transmit your seat preferences to the actual airline (in fact, you may not end up with a seat at all until you arrive at the gate, which will ensure that you have the worst seat on the plane or are at risk for getting bumped).

Before you pick your seats, use Seatguru to get advice on the best and worst seats on a particular plane. Beware that sometimes exit row seats, the seats in front of the exit row, and the seats in the last row don’t recline, and that while you’ll have more legroom, you can’t keep any luggage at your feet in the masthead sections. On the plus side, if you book far enough in advance to get a seat near the front of the plane, you might get lucky and end up with an economy plus (read: extra legroom) seat without even paying extra for it.

Experiment with different airlines: Most airlines are barely distinguishable from one another, and it often seems like you have no choice of airline if you want the cheapest ticket from point A to point B. Some people seem to have better luck with some providers than others, though. Also, there are a few that try to offer something genuinely different (like Southwest, which doesn’t assign seats, or Virgin America, which boasts wider seats, mood lighting, and 110v power at every seat to plug in your electronics in-flight).

Wear headphones from the moment you get on the plane: Whether you are listening to anything or not, headphones will signal to people that you want to be left alone (of course, this tip assumes that you do want to be left alone!). They also help transport you to your own peaceful world, free of those constant intercom announcements and the other obnoxious noises associated with flying.

Redeem some of your miles for an upgrade to business or first class: Nowadays, miles are easier than ever to get with rewards credit cards (and their generous signup bonuses), so you won’t have to feel like you’re sacrificing hard-earned miles when you use them for something that isn’t an actual plane ticket.

Use fare tracking tools like Yapta and Farecast before buying your ticket: The better a deal you’re getting on your flight, the less annoyed you might be about any inconveniences.

Fly at night so you can sleep: People tend to be a lot chattier on daytime flights, not to mention that there’s sunlight coming in through the windows. So if you want some peace and quiet or like to sleep on the plane, choose a flight that departs after dark.

Do things that you are too distracted to do when you’re at home: If you’re the type of person who normally can’t sit still knowing that there’s a house that needs to be cleaned or weeds that need to be pulled, take advantage of being forced to sit still on the airplane and do something you wouldn’t normally be able to relax enough to enjoy, like reading a book.

Book a nonstop flight: Flying directly from point A to point B decreases your chances of having a delayed or canceled flight. Sometimes it costs more, but often it doesn’t, or the price difference is negligible.

Have a drink: Some people think that drinking on the plane is a sure way to make yourself miserable since flying is already dehydrating enough, but other people swear that alcohol helps calm their nerves about flying or lets them pass the time faster by napping through their flight.

Board last: Why rush to get in line when your plane arrives? The sooner you board, the more time you’ll spend sitting in those 17-inch seats. If you wait until final boarding, you’ll avoid the cattle call, spend less time waiting in line, and spend less time on the plane.

Board early: On the other hand, if you have significant carryon luggage, you might prefer to board early, lines and all, to make sure you have room for your luggage. If you get stuck storing your luggage in a bin behind the row where you’re seated, you’ll be the last person off the plane.

Those who fly frequently usually have an airplane system all figured out, but if your system is broken or you aren’t such a savvy flyer, these tips might make your next few hours on an airplane more enjoyable.

6 Ways to Minimize Shipping Costs and Maximize Your Profits

If you’re like me and you sell pretty much anything you don’t use anymore on eBay, then you do a lot of shipping. I hate to eat into my profit margin by paying for shipping supplies, though, so over the years I’ve found ways to minimize their cost. Whether you’re shipping things for your small business, online sales, or cross-country birthdays, these tips will help you keep your shipping costs as low as possible.

Purchase a digital scale to make sure you can weigh your items as accurately as possible. This way, you won’t overspend on postage and you won’t have orders returned to you for insufficient postage. Digital scales are expensive at office supply stores, but you can find a wide variety of scales at different price points on eBay.

Skip the post office: Who wants to waste time and gas money or deal with the hassle of going to the post office? The USPS will pick up your shipment from your door for free as long as you have at least one Priority or Express mail item in your shipment and no single package weighs more than 70 pounds. The only catch is that you have to schedule the pickup a day ahead of time. And if your mailman doesn’t care, you can even ignore the Priority/Express item rule.

Don’t buy stamps from Stamps.com: Stamps.com, an online service that allows you to print all classes of postage from your computer, can be a great service, but they charge a premium for pretty much everything. Just to use their basic service costs $15.99 a month, plus whatever postage fees you incur. One of the items they sell are their proprietary stamps (Net Stamps), with the idea that you can weigh your letter and only print exactly the amount of postage you need instead of, say, wasting an extra 41 cent stamp when you only need ten more cents of postage.

However, when you combine the Stamps.com monthly subscription fee with the fee of $3.99 for 125 stamp labels, you probably aren’t going to come out ahead. If you purchase a digital scale and a variety of stamp denominations, you can simply use the free USPS Postage Rate Calculator to avoid putting excessive postage on your mail. You can purchase stamps online from the USPS in denominations such as 1 cent, 10 cents, 1 dollar, and more.

Buy old stamps from eBay: If you want to save even more money on postage, you can buy older stamps in a hodgepodge of denominations from eBay. I haven’t done this myself yet, but I understand that you can save around 10% on stamps with this method. Plus, you’ll always have the right combination of stamps for your mail. To avoid headaches, keep in mind that items over 13 ounces that bear stamps (as opposed to a shipping label) cannot be placed in mailboxes or given to your mail carrier. They must be taken to a post office.

Use free online tools instead of paid subscription services: Instead of spending $15.99 a month on a subscription to Stamps.com, use the USPS’s Click ‘n’ Ship service to print Priority and Express mail postage. As long as you know the weight of your item, you can easily print a shipping label for it right from the USPS website with no fee.

Use PayPal for media mail and parcel post shipments: If you don’t want to pay for a Stamps.com subscription and you can only use USPS Click-n-Ship for Priority and Express mail, how do you cheaply and conveniently ship media mail and parcel post packages? If the item weighs less than 13 ounces, go ahead and put stamps on it. If your package weighs more than 13 ounces, ask a friend or relative with a PayPal account to send a penny to your PayPal account and mark the payment as being for “goods.” When you receive the payment, PayPal will take the penny for its service fee, but then you’ll be able to print a shipping label through your PayPal account. You don’t even have to use the name or address of the person who sent you the penny on your shipping label—you can change it online.

It can take a while to adjust to a different way of mailing things, but once you get used to it, I think you’ll agree with me that the savings in time and money are worth the effort.

Eight Less Commonly Mentioned Benefits of Home Ownership

You’ve already heard that owning a home can be a great way to build wealth and financial security and that there’s this mysterious thing called “pride of ownership” that makes it enjoyable to mow your lawn even when it’s 100 degrees outside. But the seemingly small benefits of living in a house that’s all yours instead of renting a hole in a box that belongs to someone else can actually have a bigger impact on your quality of life than you might expect.

Storage space: When you rent an apartment or condo, the only storage space you’re likely to have is whatever closet space is in the unit. Some apartments have supplemental storage, but you can’t count on it, and where it does exist, the storage conditions may be poor (a basement prone to flooding) and the security may be minimal (a wire cage with a padlock). When you own a house, not only is it probably going to be bigger than the place you were renting (600-square-foot apartments are a lot more common than 600-square-foot houses), automatically giving you more room for your stuff, but you can also put things in the attic, the garage, and the backyard. You can even buy a shed for your backyard to create additional storage space if you exhaust your other options.

Neighborhood quietness: As a homeowner, there are fewer people living on my entire block than there were in my former apartment building (which was also surrounded by other similarly high-density dwellings). Setting aside the obvious benefit of no longer sharing your walls, floors, or ceilings with neighbors when you own a house, with fewer people around, period, you generally get less noise. Of course, to accomplish this, you’ll have to buy a house in an area that is zoned only for single-family residential.

Pet options: Renting severely restricts your options for pet ownership. Either you can’t have one at all, it can only be a certain type, it has to be under a certain weight, you can only have one, you have to pay an extra deposit for it, or you have to pay a monthly “pet rent” for it. When you own a house, not only do you have near complete control of your property, you also have more space for animals to roam. The only restrictions on pet ownership you’ll face as a homeowner relate to city ordinances and your neighborhood norms (so if it’s your dream to raise chickens, do the research before you buy). And, unlike moving from one apartment to another, where finding a pet-friendly place is always a hassle, an owner-occupied house is almost always pet-friendly.

Control over repairs: When you live in someone else’s property, you’re at their mercy as to when repairs get completed. If this Friday is a bad day to have your toilet fixed because it’s your first vacation day in six months and you don’t want to wake up at 8:00 to deal with a plumber, your landlord probably doesn’t care. But if it’s your house, you can schedule the repair for a time that’s convenient for you. You also have the option of having someone else redo the repair if the first repairman botches the job, whereas in an apartment, your dishwasher will probably be spraying water all over your counter for as long as you live there if the building owner’s usual maintenance crew can’t fix it.

A short walk to the washing machine: Unless you live in a luxury apartment, doing laundry probably involves trudging your heavy laundry bag and detergent down at least one flight of stairs only to find out that all the washing machines are occupied. When you own a house, your washing machine will always be available — no more doing five loads of laundry at 9:00 on a Tuesday night. And no more hunting in the couch cushions for quarters or worrying about people stealing your clothes and having strangers see your underwear (unless you want them to, of course). You’ll also have the option of line-drying your clothes outdoors in the backyard, which is good for both the environment and your wallet. Many rental agreements prohibit fresh-air clothes drying, considering it to be “low-class” or “an eyesore.”

Fewer noise complaints from the neighbors: Need to assemble 10 bookcases from Ikea in a single afternoon? No problem. Do all the hammering in your house with the doors and windows closed and no one else is likely to hear it. But even if you do it outside, the neighbors probably won’t complain — after all, there are days when they need to make loud home improvements, too, and they’ll want you to return the favor of not minding their noise.

Not having to move: As long as you pay your taxes and your mortgage (and eminent domain doesn’t rear its ugly head), no one will ever tape a note to your door telling you that you have to move. What’s more, if your needs change, you won’t necessarily have to move when you own the place where you live. Instead, you can adapt it to suit you. You can add on another bedroom, screen in the patio, or turn the garage into a gym. There’s a certain sense of peace that comes with knowing you can lay your head in the same spot every night for as long as you want.

The freedom to choose: In an apartment, you might only have one option for extra television channels, and it’s probably cable. When you own a house, you’re limited only by the service providers that serve your area — not by restrictions on modifying the building. If you want to install a satellite dish or a special box on the exterior of your house, you probably can. Your phone service options might also improve in a house. For example, an apartment might necessitate a land line if you want the ability to buzz in friends and takeout delivery people from your fourth-floor abode, but in a house, you might be able to rely entirely on Internet-based phone service, which generally provides more calling options for less money.

Don’t underestimate the benefits of owning a house — they’re more than just financial. In fact, even when owning a house isn’t better for your bank account than renting, you may find that the emotional and lifestyle benefits are worth it.

9 Actions You Can Take to Survive the Airport

Sometimes it seems like a minor miracle if you can make it from the airport doors to your seat on the plane without being searched, patted down, waiting in an exorbitantly long line, having your gate changed, being charged a fee, or a host of other annoyances. There are many things at the airport that are beyond your control, but taking charge of the things you can do to create a non-aggravating experience may help. These 12 tips will show you how to do just that.

Arrive early: It sounds so obvious, but many people don’t do it, putting themselves through unnecessary stress. Arriving at the airport early starts long before you get in the car, though. It involves packing ahead of time, taking care of anything you need to do at home well before you leave, and thinking about what kind of weather and traffic you’ll likely encounter on the drive and at what time you need to leave the house to get to the airport early under those conditions. Then, if you’re a slowpoke and you need to leave the house at noon, plan to leave at 11 and you might actually make it out the door by noon.

When you get to the airport early, it won’t matter if the woman in front of you in the security checkpoint line takes 10 minutes and 5 of those plastic tubs to get out her laptop, take off her knee-high leather boots, remove her gigantic coat, find all the liquids in her bag, shove them in an airport-provided quart Ziploc, and explain to the screening agent that she can’t put her Chihuahua on the conveyor belt. With an ample time cushion, you can be amused instead of angered by these sort of delays if they arise, and avoid all the stress of possibly missing your flight.

Think small: Make sure your carry-on luggage is small enough that you won’t get hassled about it and that you can easily lift it in and out of the overhead bin. It’s a gigantic pain to have to repack or check your carry-on after you get to the airport because airline employees or security staff won’t let you through with your luggage. It’s also a gigantic pain to drop your suitcase on your head when you’re trying to get it in and out of the airplane storage bins (and a lawsuit waiting to happen if you drop it on someone else’s).

Don’t check luggage: You can shorten your total travel time by an hour if you don’t have to wait in line to check in luggage and hang around by the conveyor belt after your flight. You also won’t have to worry about your luggage getting lost, and you’ll have a lot less weight to carry. If I can travel to Europe in winter for 10 days with three pairs of shoes and not check a bag, you can leave the giant wheeled suitcase at home, too. If you simply must have a large amount of luggage, check out FedEx’s door-to-door luggage service. With the prices airlines charge for checked luggage these days, FedEx’s fees might make sense.

Check in online: It’s not always possible when you’re on vacation, but whenever you can, you should check in online and print your boarding pass before you leave for the airport. Not all airports have automated check-in kiosks, so you can really save yourself some time and hassle by being able to go straight to security. If you’re the type who loses things easily, you can print several copies of your boarding pass at home and put them in different places in your luggage so you’ll have one when you need it.

Familiarize yourself with the rules: Read FAA regulations and baggage restrictions ahead of time to make sure you don’t get any nasty surprises at the airport. The rules about things like baggage weight seem to change so frequently these days that you might want to review the rules again before each trip. When you’re in compliance, you won’t have to deal with getting your luggage searched, getting things confiscated, paying unwanted fees, or having to check baggage you wanted to carry on–or feeling any of the stress and anger that can come with these events.

Pack wisely: Pack your carry-on liquids properly ahead of time so you don’t have to worry about it at the airport, and put them in an easy-to-access part of your bag because you’ll have to put them in a bin separately to go through security. The same goes for anything else that has to be checked at the airport, like your driver’s license, the boarding pass you printed at home, and your laptop.

Get tips specific to your trip: Flyertalk’s bulletin boards are a great source of specific tips for flying. You can learn things like how to rack up frequent flyer miles, the pros and cons of specific airlines, how the airport you’re connecting through is laid out, where to recharge your laptop, which airplanes have the most legroom, and how to reduce your travel costs.

Dress appropriately: Wearing drawstring or elastic-waist pants will ease your trip through security and make sitting in that cramped seat in coach a little more comfortable. Don’t you feel undignified taking your belt on and off in public (especially if it is, in fact, holding up your pants) or getting patted down because you set off the metal detector? Plus, there are already so many things to worry about that you might as well cut down on the number of issues you have to deal with. If you need to look nice when you arrive at your destination, just change in the bathroom’s handicapped stall after you land. Also, wear shoes that are easy to take on and off, and make sure you’re wearing socks so you don’t have to go barefoot on the grimy airport floor.

Don’t wait at your gate: There’s no need to start being annoyed by the people on your flight before you’re even on the plane. Also, while your departure area will probably be cramped with everyone else waiting for your flight, there will often be plentiful seating at a nearby gate, allowing you to enjoy a few minutes of personal space and quiet instead of sitting on the floor next to some overly-energetic kids because there are no seats left in your gate area. Just make sure to pay close attention to the time, because you usually can’t hear the boarding announcements for your flight if you’re sitting at the wrong gate.

Try some of these ideas, if not all of them, the next time you fly, and the airport gods just might smile down on you.

Product Review: iRobot 110 Dirt Dog Workshop Robot

I recently treated myself to something I'd been wanting forever: a Roomba. Ever since I saw it on Gilmore Girls three years ago, in fact, I have longed to have a robot clean my floors. The least expensive model I could find was the iRobot 110 Dirt Dog Workshop Robot, a model that is designed to clean workshops and garages. While I wanted it to clean my house, not a workshop, the reviews on Amazon suggested that it would do a fine job on my hardwood floors.

The problem was this: even when I cleaned my floors thoroughly, they still felt dirty underfoot. If you've ever walked barefoot across a hardwood floor that wasn't perfectly clean, you know that icky feeling of dirt and grit sticking to your feet. Also, hardwood floors show dirt a lot more than carpet, and I didn't like spending an hour a week cleaning my floors. Enter the Dirt Dog, which could clean my floors for me and, hopefully, get them cleaner than I could.

The product is not a vacuum, but a sweeper. If you've ever seen a street cleaning truck, the design is similar. A little brush spins out of the side, sweeping dirt underneath the Roomba, where another brush sweeps the dirt into the dust bin.

Roombas come in a wide variety of price points. This was the cheapest model at the time of my purchase, and is priced at $158 as of this writing. At the time I purchased it, the price had mysteriously dropped to $99--I got lucky. Maybe I stumbed across a Gold Box deal without realizing it. I also had an Amazon gift certificate left over from last December's CoinStar promotion, so I was able to get it for around $50--quite a steal.

The product works as well as I'd hoped--I've never had such clean floors, and I can happily walk across them barefoot. With the new kittens, there is more cat fur, tracked cat litter, and bits of carpet torn off of cat scratching posts than ever and the floor needs to be cleaned twice a week now instead of once.

The downsides are these:
-It is very noisy. I prefer to not be in the room while it's running.
-The battery lasts for two hours. This is long enough to clean maybe 600 SF, but not long enough to clean my whole house.
-It takes much longer to clean a room than I would. And watching it can drive you crazy, as it appears to have no rhyme or reason to its cleaning pattern.
-It bumps into things harder than I expected.
-It's not very tall (maybe 3 to 4 inches), but is too tall to fit under my couch.

That being said, overall I'm very happy with it:
-I don't have to do anything but move it to the room I want cleaned and press the clean button. In between, I sometimes have to clean the brushes, empty the dust bin, and plug it into the charger. That's it.
-It doesn't seem to be damaging anything, yet, though the bumping does make a gal worry.
-In particular, it seems to be gentle enough to not scratch my floors, which was one of my main concerns.
-My floors have never been so clean.
-It's very thorough. It doesn't miss a single spot, except the ones it can't get to. It's a little over a foot wide, so it can't fit into spaces narrower than that. However, it cleans under my bed a lot easier than I can.

I do wonder if a different model would be quieter, but I don't think it's worth the extra expense to find out. The iRobot Roomba® Silver is more widely available and costs $200 (I did see it on sale at Target once for, I think, $130). There's also the red model, iRobot Roomba 410 Intelligent Floorvac Robotic Vacuum Cleaner, which is currently $150--now more expensive than the Dirt Dog, but at the time of my purchase, significantly more. If you have the extra money, it may be worth trying a higher-end model to see if it's quieter or doesn't bump into things as hard, but if your main concern is function, I think the iRobot 110 Dirt Dog Workshop Robot is just fine.

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Post by Amy Fontinelle

The Cost of Pet Ownership: Adding Two New Kittens to Our Home

My boyfriend and I recently adopted two kittens from a local kitten rescue organization. They take in kittens and cats that have been abandoned by their owners or that are strays (including some that are found by animal control, which frequently kills the animals it finds because there are just so many). Then they get the animals spayed or neutered, vaccinated, and find loving homes for as many as possible.

While it's possible to get a kitten for free initially by getting it from someone whose cat has had kittens or from someone who found kittens, it ends up being more expensive in the long run because the kittens need several vaccinations, a deworming pill, and spaying or neutering.

Not only do all of these things cost more money than the rescue agency charges for the kitten, it also takes time to make all those trips to the vet. And, very young kittens need intense care, including bottle feeding several times a day, which most people don't have the time or knowledge to handle. What's more, we already had two adult cats and didn't want to risk exposing them to any diseases by bringing cats of questionable health into the household. By going through the rescue organization, we knew we were getting cats that didn't have feline leukemia virus or any other preventable illnesses and supporting people who do good things (as opposed to professional cat breeders--why breed cats when there are already so many out there that thousands are euthanized every year because there aren't enough people to take them all in?).

The adoption fee was $95 per kitten, but since one of us itemizes deductions on our tax return now that we have a mortgage and the adoption fee is technically considered a donation to a non-profit organization, the real cost is only around $60 per kitten. We will also have to pay for one more vaccine per kitten, and our litter and food costs will be about $25 a month. Also, we think one of the kittens needs to see a vet, which will probably cost us at least $100 in the near future, plus there is the cost of a second litter box and, eventually, two more cat carriers. While it's unlikely that we would ever take all four cats somewhere at once, we want to make sure we have the ability to pack them all up and go in case of an emergency.

Assuming the new kittens live 15 to 20 years, since they will be indoor-only cats, the lifetime cost of owning them in terms of litter and food alone will be between $2250 and $3000 per cat. That sounds like a lot when you add it up, doesn't it? Neither of us has ever had an elderly cat before, so we're not sure what medical expenses might be involved when they get older, and of course, there is always the chance that an expensive medical procedure could become necessary even before they are old. Since we already have two cats, we are now actually spending a minimum of $50 a month to have pets.

It does sound like a lot, but as most people who have pets (or children, for that matter) will tell you, the cost is really beside the point. Is the company, affection, and joy of having these animals worth $1.67 a day to me? You bet!

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Post by Amy Fontinelle