Counting the Cost
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I post a picture and just a few words...a 104 project, if you will.
(as opposed to a 365 project)
Lately, I've been finding papers like these around the house.
They're not school papers.
Nope, they're, "Can Zoe and I afford a hamster?" papers, by Sonia.
She and Zoe could certainly save up enough for the initial cost, but Sonia is bearing in mind the ongoing costs of a hamster, like bedding and food, adding them up for a year, and then dividing them in half to see what each of them would have to pay.
I love how circumspect she is being about this.
Sonia takes after her mom--planning, checking affordability. For some reason looking at little kids' writing and figures warms me almost as much as seeing their photos. You deserve to be proud.
That is really impressive. A lot of adults could learn a thing or two from her foresight and planning.
Such good kids! I don't know any/many who would think of this -
I'm impressed. That's a great skill, and something many adults fail to grasp. Practical math at its best. 🙂
Yes! Somehow those skills are more fun to use when a furry creature is involved. 😉
I would be so proud! What a little budgeter!
Absolutely adorable. Gail Vaz- Oxlade would be very impressed!!
I love how they are making plans. My children had several different kinds of pets growing up. The most fun they had were with guinea pigs. They are great pets. Very social and they are awake during the day. I believe hamsters sleep during the day. They recommend getting two but we had one. My daughter and Pickles were together all they time. One of my favorite pictures is of her when she was about seven and Pickles "our reindeer" at Christmas. He wore reindeer antlers for her, that she made. When we moved from Japan to Italy he came with us. He was part of the family and is sorely missed.
I was also going to suggest guinea pigs. A very budget friendly suggestion is to look on craig'slist, we found our two (bonded pair, both males, had to stay together) and their cage with accessories for $20. Sometimes shelters have them as well. One thing is, they need timothy hay for their teeth. We found a feed store that sells it in 50 bales for the price of one little bag from the pet store. We just love them, they have such great personalities, and they live longer than hamsters.
We had a guinea pig once (and he lived SO long!), but they do need a larger cage than hamsters do, and Sonia and Zoe don't really have enough roo for that. Also, Mr. FG's sister is allergic to them (we discovered this after we bought our first one. Whoops.)
Go, Sonia!
Aww!! This is so incredibly heart-warming and, dare I say, inspiring? Go, Sonia! <3 Thanks for the double-shot of vicarious pride! 😉
They are smart to look into the future costs as well. My son has a guinea pig, so far he has lived a year. Every other month he has to pay to get nails trimmed. The bedding and food alone take half his allowance.
We used to have a guinea pig! I clipped his nails myself, but I did find it to be a somewhat daunting prospect. I was always afraid of clipping too far.
I'm impressed. Clipping dog nails is scary/stressful enough for me, I feel like little guinea pig nails would be even harder!
What smart girlies you have!
Excellent work on their part. Is their costing and income figures reasonable?
Well, I think they're being a little overly generous in figuring out how much bedding and food they'll need. But I would rather have them overestimate than underestimate. Underestimating is a dangerous habit once you get in to real adult life!
I hope so because it looks like they're not including sales tax in their calculations. In my part of the world, that's another ten percent. This could be good way to sneak in another real-life math lesson.
You know the most important part of getting a pet is picking a name.
Sooooo, what's the name?
(I'm just assuming they're getting a hamster given all their foresight. And I have, um, at least 3 future pet names picked out. We're not getting another pet for at least 10 years because our current ones are young.)
Oh gosh, that has been the subject of hot debate between the two of them. Sonia wants to name it something crazy like Yo-Pop and Zoe is less than thrilled with the idea. We shall see what happens...
So cute! You've obviously been setting good examples for them. Keep up the good work.
I am so impressed in your girls ability to look ahead and figure future costs of pets. I love our cat and guinea pig, but I the high cost of food, bedding for the guinea pig and litter for the cat can be a strain on our budget. Bedding is expensive for small pets, bedding from the pet store or Evan WalMart would cost me nearly $20 a month and I can't afford that. Our feed store (I don't know if you are rural enough to have one) sometimes carries a large compressed bag of shaved paper (phone books) which has been the best, most absorbent and odorless bedding we've used. A $12 bag lasted us 6 months with our guinea pig (it would last much longer with hamsters) with frequent bedding changes. The bag looks like the picture on papershavings.com. Our store is currently out so I am using our cross cut shredder on newspapers (nothing shiny) and discarded phone books from my husband's office to make our own, which also works, it just takes a little time.
Wow--this IS impressive, as so many have said...they must have great parents!
Love that about Aldi, just wish they would add High Fructose Corn syrup to that list. It is in too many of their products I would like to buy occasionally like chocolate milk. Won't buy anything with that stuff.
Hi,
Your daughters are a credit to their parents! 🙂 PLEASE don't keep 2 hamsters together in one cage as they will become extremely aggressive and will actually kill one another. When you go to the pet store check them for gang tats and concealed weapons 😉
No, no, they're just planning on getting one to share. 🙂
Add me to the 'very impressed' list. 🙂
Between my sister and I we had every pet in the book growing up (a dog, cat, hamsters, fish, a turtle, budgie birds, bunnies, frogs, and a newt), although Joshua would be disappointed to hear never a reptile.
My small-pet preference is a rabbit (though maybe that's medium-sized?). They can be litter trained, and taught to do tricks. Our rabbits were very much like little cats except they lived most of the time in a cage and just got out around the house or our bedroom for a hour or two a day (with a litter box in the corner). They ate all sorts of dinner scraps and my dad would dry grass for them in the summer (instead of hay). They were a very frugal pet.
Please consider adopting your hamster - sometimes people surrender them to local shelters, and some shelters will call you when they get one if they don't currently have one. Alternatively, you can adopt one that a person is looking to re-home on craigslist or freecycle. So many people (not you!) irresponsibly get hamsters without thinking of the long-term, and then they abandon them. If you adopt, you can save an animal's life and also avoid the horrible breeding industry.
Also, please consider adopting two hamsters (of the same gender so you don't get lots of babies). It's lonely for a hamster to never see its kind again.
Whether or not you can have two together all depends on the breed. Lisey used to have Russian Dwarf hamsters, and those needed companionship. The Teddy Bear hamsters, though, will usually not do well if there's more than one in the cage.
I'm so surprised people abandon hamsters, given their super short lifespan!