u/Serious_Parking7554

Question for all the folks who use wraps when exercising your horse: What do you use for padding underneath your exercise bandages? For context, it's one of the bandages I need to know for Pony Club. Not to be confused with polo wraps. I have the actual bandages but cannot for the life of me figure out what is reasonable to use for padding. I'm based in the US (Hawaii), so getting items like thin fybagee pads, Shires Bandage Liners, and similar is not really an option unless I order internationally, but then I pay duties on the items coming in (my last order from the UK I paid more in duties than the actual cavesson!). Any recommended materials? Mahalo in advance!

My husband and I have a small lump sum of money left over from our wedding, about $13,000. It's been sitting in a savings account for over a year now, and we're not quite sure the best way to maximize growing it.

We want to keep part of it in savings as the base for our shared emergency fund. We each maintain our own individual savings accounts as well in addition to this joint savings account.

Realistically, what are our options for investing about $7,000-$8,000 of this sum so that we can grow it at least a bit over time? We have not set a specific goal but would likely look at using these funds in about 7-10 years for housing, so we'd be looking to grow this as either the seed for a down payment or for renovation work on one of the family homes. We are far more likely to do the latter as my husband is the most likely in the family to inherit one of the family homes and the housing market where we live is insane. Even small bungalows starting at $1M and condos running $700k plus.

Editing to clarify: we both have funds set aside for emergency funds already in addition to our joint find. We have retirement benefits through our employers (state DOE for him, employer matched 401k with maximum percentage matching for me). I am only asking for options to grow the sum we have.

Please explain like I'm 5, budget management is a strength of mine but investing and growing money is like a foreign language to me. Thanks in advance!