Would you give your pet away for a million dollars?

[honeychile]

Originally Posted by susan314

Absolutely. I love my dog, but my children are my first priority. As long as I knew he'd be going to a good home, there's no question that I would choose providing security to my children first.

I wonder how many of the people who voted "no" in this thread have children? Most of the names I recognize seem to be from childless folks, but I don't know the status of all of 'em. Would be interesting to see the breakdown.

They don't call them "furkids" for nothing!

[Sister Havana]

No way. Barney is my baby!

[summer_gphib]

This is clearly the worst thread in the history of the site.

Anyone who answers "No" and isn't already inordinately wealthy is an absolute moron.

Not necessarily. I don't put a LOT of value on money. It's nice, but it doesn't rule me. I grew up pretty wealthy. We weren't the richest people, but for small town middle America, we had it really good. I had 3 brand new cars (as surprises, I didn't ask for them!) by the time I was 18. My junior year of college I was given 100K, to finish school on. But with money comes a lot of demons. Someone in my family stole over half of the money that was left after my tuition, because he was addicted to gambling. He had access as a guardian, and just took it. It would have been a nice down payment for a home.

It also left me not respecting what a dollar was actually worth. I didn't work until my senior year of college (even then my family didn't want me to!), and by my first year of being married hubby and I had over 18 k of credit card debt. I didn't go to my family with it. I began to realize the benefit of hard work and actually getting myself out of things. We only made about 50k a year back then. But we made sacrifices and got it paid off.

To me money isn't the end all be all. I learned that the hard way. There are MUCH more important things in life, like dignity, respect, and knowing that I earn the money I've got. I have never asked my parents or anyone else in my family for money since I've been married (7 years today!) and unless we are dying, I won't. Does that mean that I don't want a nice house, and I wouldn't love to have a million dollars, absolutely not. But I like the satisfaction of knowing that hubby and I earned it.

No, I don't have kids, and Forrest (my basset hound) is my kid. Animals are not disposable and have feelings. To me, knowing that he is happy and well taken care of, is worth much more than a million dollars. A dog's love is so sincere and so unending.

So maybe I am a moron. I don't want things given to me, I love the self satisfaction of earning. I just see a darker side to money, that makes me think that getting money the easy way is not the answer to life's problems.