I spent Tuesday afternoon calling pig breeders in the surrounding counties. I finally located two wiener pigs for my girls to enter in our local fair at the end of summer. Since the kids that auction off their animals at the fair get inflated prices at the auction, the breeders also inflate their selling prices. What would normally be a $60 or $65 wiener pig goes for $225- $300 if it’s for the fair. In most cases, these “Project Pigs” are the same pigs that are for the freezer but since the pig is for the fair it’s an additional $165+ over the market price. Is it fair to price gouge the kids? I’m not really sure, I guess everyone is just looking out for themselves and the almighty dollar.

After the auction, when my girls get their checks, I make them reimburse me the price of the hog and the cost of the feed. I’m trying to teach them life lessons and responsibility. This year I’ve decided that the girls should pay for the pigs themselves and then reimburse me the cost of the feed when they sell their hogs.

Here’s where I could learn a thing or two financially from my 10 year old. I told the girls we’d be going to the bank on Friday to get the cash from their savings accounts so THEY could pay for their pigs on Sunday. I’m thinking they could use experience handling a large sum of money and seeing just what $225 dollars looks like and how it feels to have to give up their own money to pay for a pig.

My 12 year old was cool with taking money out of her savings account, no problem at all. My 10 year old informed me that she wouldn’t be needing to withdraw any money from the bank because she’d been saving money and had the cash! I was shocked! Yesterday I had only $36 dollars in cash yet my 10 year old had over $225! She recycles bottles and cans every chance she gets. We also pay her a small amount for good grades. She saves up coins and when she gets a full jar, she takes it to the grocery store and turns it in to dollar bills. She’s a penny pincher and always has been. This just goes to show you and especially me, that a nickel here and a quarter there all add up. I wish I could be more like her. I have no idea how she got so smart about money at such a young age. She’s my hero!

I completed most of my goals from last week, I’m still working on one and that’s painting my daughter’s bathroom ceiling. So far I have one coat on but hope to put another two on today. That bathroom is already looking so much better.

My husband left yesterday on a business trip and won’t be home until Thursday night. With him being gone, I should have plenty of time to get a lot of stuff done around the house.

My goals this week:

1. Finish painting my daughter’s bathroom.

2. Clean out my daughter #2 bedroom. It’s pretty bad. She has clothes everywhere. My goal here is to pick up her clothes and go through them and make sure they still fit her. I’d also like to declutter her bedroom.

3. Clean out my son’s bedroom. Again, it’s pretty bad. My goal here is to get rid of old toys that he’s no longer playing with and organize the toys he still does play with.

4. Get listings ready for ebay. I have a huge clothes basket full of stuff I want to sell on ebay. I just need to take the time to get sorted them into lots, take pics and get them listed.

My HALF.COM sales update. I’ve made 5 sales! Woo hoo! After fees and shipping that’s another $35.60 to throw at my debt. I know it doesn’t seem like much but it’s better than nothing!

We’re gearing up for our county fair the last weekend of August. My three girls are all planning to raise a hog to show and auction off at the fair. They’ve been trying to contact the breeder and place their order for the pigs. I’m thinking we’ll probably get the pigs next month some time.

Last year my daughter #2 ended up getting the highest price at the fair. Her hog, Wilbur, was 297 pounds, he was hot and miserable and ended up fighting with all the other pigs and attacking the judges. Because of his horrible behavior my daughter ended up being placed last for the auction. Thanks to my husband’s buddies and everyone feeling sorry for my daughter, her pig ended up going for $11.50 a pound! They cap off the hogs weight at 260, so the buyer only pays up to 260 pounds. Well my daughter ended up getting just under $3,000. I make my girls pay me back for the hog purchase and the feeding of the hog. What’s nice about this is my girls are not only funding their own college accounts but they are also learning responsibility.

Yesterday I called the woman I get my steers from and told her I wanted just one this year. I’ve decided to cut back so I can pay off my debt faster. Last year we had two steer and my feed bill was outrageous. I did end up selling one steer and got my money back plus a little profit but I didn’t like having to put out all that money in feed every month.

I’ve also decided instead of raising two hogs for our freezer with the three fair hogs, I’m going to wait and get my freezer hogs after the fair is over. That way I won’t have huge feed bills every month and I won’t have to pay the cut and wrap fee on the steer and the hogs at the same time. Last year I raised hogs for some friends of ours while we were also raising the fair hogs. I was feeding out 8 pigs! It was just crazy so I’m not going to do that again.