Adventures of Albus!

I am so pumped for the weather to get better because that means oh-so-many more walks with everyone's favorite little monster. Last year, they opened a new pedestrian bridge that connected my house with the Marietta Square, it's a quick little almost a mile walk down to all of our favorite places. If you follow me on instagram you'll know that we basically live at the Glover Park Brewery. 

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My mom makes fun of me, because she says I have a diaper bag for when we go on our little walks. It's true though, I have this cute little kavu bag that I bought a few years ago for when we went on hiking adventures, but now it's my go to when we're walking for fun too. I can pack a couple of bags of treats, a spare roll of poop bags, my wallet, a house key, and whatever other things I need to take with me on the walk. I haven't bought a bag of treats since I signed Albus up for the BarkBox - since he gets two full sized bags of treats in the box, that's usually how many bags we need to get through a month. 

I also have a post saved in my drafts about whether or not I'm sure my dog needed a certain kind of collar. Albus used to have one of the prong collars, because it was the only thing that gave me full control over him AND allowed for an even correction. He's always been stronger than me and we were really concerned about his safety and my rotator cuff... I used to get VERY defensive about it to the people who felt like they knew better than me and my trainer. I can't imagine what it's like to be the mom of a human child if so many people feel like they can comment on what's up with my pup.

We had worked with the trainer and had developed a plan to move from that back to the harness, and that's what we're slowly transitioning to now! Albus has finally learned not to drag me and will almost stay within the leash's length of me. We've literally been working on this for almost his entire life. We use the Pet-Safe Easy Walk harness which works great. It's a little too big on him, but the smaller size was too small. I know he's almost three, but I figure he'll probably grow into it. 

Since the last Albus post, we have taught him to bark when you say "Albus, say GO DAWGS!" which is my favorite trick and I show EVERYONE we meet that trick. He also has a doggy fitbit. I'm serious. We switched to Banfield for vet services and they're doing some kind of case study with the people at Whistle Labs -- they gave it to us for free as long as we keep up with our annual appointments and Albus wears it on his collar every day. It's actually a really cool little tracker, I can tell that making sure he hits his "activity" goal makes him better behaved. This isn't even a sales pitch and that link to Whistle is just a link to their website, it's just a cool thing that we have to play with now. I don't know if I would have ever bough my dog a fitness tracker, but now I'm glad I have one. haha

So, if you're not following along, you can follow Albus on his very own instagram account (still waiting for the day he starts getting free food and bandannas...) He's a very social little guy who thinks he's the bouncer for any place we go. "You must pet the pup before entering this place" We will be going on so many more adventures this summer, so stay tuned! Do you have any funny puppy stories? Please tell me all of your funny puppy stories (heavy on the destructive or not letting you sleep through the night phases because I have puppy fever right now.)

What I Read in February

Check it out. I'm two-for-two on monthly book recaps! February was a shorter month with warmer weather, but that didn't stop me from being a little bookworm.

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FIRST UP! I absolutely finished China Rich Girlfriend at the beginning of the month. It was told a little differently than Crazy Rich Asians, but I loved it too. It was just as good as the first book, which I had expected but you never know with sequels. It brings in new characters and new adventures and drama. I highly recommend this series if you're late to the bandwagon like I was. 

That brings me to book number two for February: Rich People Problems -- this one took me a little longer to get into, but again I was all in. I felt defensive of Nick when Eddie was creating drama, and genuinely invested in the outcome of the story. Halfway through this, I would have told you it was my least favorite of the three, but there were so many twists and turns I didn't see coming, that when I got to the last third of the book, I literally couldn't put it down. One of those "staying up way past my bedtime to finish" reads. Again, I highly recommend this series.

I vastly over estimated how many books I would finish this month, I knew last month was setting me up for disappointment. Right now I'm working on Katherine because I got it for $1.99 thanks to my daily Kindle deal e-mails. I also snagged Murder on the Orient Express and What the Wind Knows. Hopefully I'll be able to get to more of those in March. I didn't realize what I was getting into with Katherine, I don't think, because the little status bar at the bottom of my Kindle will tell me that I have 9 hours remaining in the chapter and that is a whole lot.

What have you guys been reading? Anything I need to add to my list?

A Journey Out Of Debt

I'm sure you've read one of the articles about us millennials not being able to buy houses because of avocado toast or bottomless mimosas or whatever it is we're prioritizing over a money pit. I own a house, I can call it a money pit from experience. I don't fall into the avocado toast group because I do own a house, but I honestly only own one because it was so much cheaper than the rent I was paying. I do, however, fall into the millennial trope about credit card and student loan debt. I'm working on hashing out a five year plan, and paying off credit cards is Big Goal number 1.

this picture has nothing to do with debt, these are just some pretty flowers in my front yard that got no love on the gram

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I have been reading all of the money blogs and books and think pieces I can find. I once bought the Dave Ramsey money book, but it's almost like it's a solution for people who are just starting out in the whole doing anything with money business. Cash only isn't a good option for me because I feel the opposite way most people feel about cash. If I have to swipe my card, I'm thinking about what I'm spending, but if I just have cash in my purse? It's free money! It's weird. I think part of it is *knowing* the interest rate on those credit cards.

I'm not as worried about paying my student loans, house, or car off super early, because I have incredible interest rates on them. They're all simple interest under 5%. My main focus is the mountain of debt with the 25% compound interest. My current plans to tackle this particular goal are: obviously any money I can make from this blog, I'm studying to get my real estate license, and I recently applied for a bunch of a consolidation loan options, and finally found one I qualified for. That literally saved me $3,000 in interest, right off the bat and gives me an end date that I can literally mark on my calendar.

I also use a few cashback apps, Ebates, Honey, Dosh, and Ibotta. I absolutely recommend them all. I mean companies are going to track your spending habits no matter what you do, so you might as well get your cut of it. If you have any other suggestions, that I might not know about, pleeeeease hook yo' girl up. Obviously send me the link that gets you a bonus too. I always want whatever referral code helps us both out.

Now, I do want to get a little defensive here. In September of last year, the Wednesday before the Taylor Swift concert, to be exact, I was laid off from my job. Prior to that, I was essentially working two full time jobs, not using any credit cards, and paying them down. I had them so under control, I was super proud of myself. After I was laid off from my higher paying job, I started working full-full time for my dad's company again. It was a huge pay cut, almost $20,000 a year. There's room to grow and all of that stuff, but that was a huge shift, and some things had to be put on credit cards.

Anyways. I got my budget in order and have mostly everything under control now. It's just time to see if I can make some extra money on the side and eventually find out what it's like to be relatively debt free. I figured y'all might like to come along on this adventure with me. It won't be like the posts where it's all "See How We Saved $50,000 In One Year!" and then you find out that they make six digit incomes and have no outstanding debt whatsoever. It's going to be SUPER fun, right? Do you have any suggestions? Any hacks I might not know about yet?