The big question is what kind of investments will you make.  The last year has not been good to the stock market but in reality it has still offered the best return over time.  Investing in the stock market today is still a good idea when you are putting away money that you intend to let grow.  I have been investing for twenty years and sometimes my balance goes down, like over the last year, but most of the time it goes up.  I am sold on having stocks as a strong leg of your investment portfolio.

Of course there are other investment vehicles that can be used but over time stocks have offered the best value.  I am putting more money overseas because of the potential problems with the dollar but I still think US equities are a great vehicle for growth.

Anyway, I thought I would talk about our dogs as they are important to my family.  We have three.  A 4 year old black lab/German Shepard cross and two 3 year old Rotweillers.  The lab/shepard is actually my wife’s dog which leaves me with the rotties.  They are a brother and sister and the female belongs to my daughter but she lives in Hawaii now so I get the dog.

These dogs are usually treated better than me in the family which is usually how it goes I think.  They are so spoiled that they even get a heated dog bed when the winter nights get too cold.  I know.  This sounds crazy because after all they are dogs right but they need to be comfortable.  It does get pretty cold here so I suppose it is a good thing.

They also have their own condo.  Well actually, it is a two story dog house.  They had a very nice 4′ x 8′ dog house but they couldn’t get along and one of the dogs always ended up in the rain.  I built a second story on the dog house and now the two males lounge around up stairs while the female sleeps down.

What we don’t do for our dogs.