No one who has ever had a dog would debate me on the fact that dog ownership can get pretty expensive, pretty quickly.
Within the first few months of welcoming our freeloader roommate, The Dog, into the house, there was a nasty incident with a piece of glass in the forest, resulting in four stitches to a very sad paw and a $700 vet bill to my very sad savings account.
It’s amazing how quickly you learn to change a bandage that can’t get wet when The Dog makes a habit of stepping in his water dish.
Luckily, I was able to pay for it straight away, and only had about three panic attacks about my poor baby and his poor paw. But it also gave me a bit of a scare, and I signed him up for pet insurance on the spot.
For $65 a month, The Dog would be covered up to $2500 for illness and accidents, which would take care of any other unforeseen injuries – hopefully, anyways.
Of course, since the universe loves a good laugh, the only thing we’ve had to claim since then was a $107 vet bill for a bite to his ear, and the deductible was $100.
When I sat down to review my recurring payments, I realized that if I combined the other payments I was cancelling with The Dog’s pet insurance payment, I could put away $100 a month into an emergency savings account specifically for vet bills. After two years, I’d have saved the same amount as he’s covered for right now.
So even though it felt like the ultimate in tempting fate, I cancelled The Dog’s insurance.
Here’s why it was a good, and ultimately safe choice, for The Dog and I right now.
I can afford to top up his emergency savings quickly.
With the $100 baseline savings in place, it’ll take me two years to get up to the same level of coverage, but after that, I’ll have an even better in-case-of-emergencies fund that will just keep growing. Additionally, with the new goal of saving half of my income, I’ll be upping my Dog Fund contributions to $200 a month, giving me just one year until the fund is as big as his coverage would have been.
I have my own emergency savings to cover costs if they pop up in the meantime.
I’m lucky to be in a solid place financially, so if something did come up, the money is available. Even beyond that, I never carry a credit card balance, and I have a fairly high credit limit, so in the worst case scenario I could put the bills on credit until accessing my emergency fund.
The Dog is a young and healthy mutt.
He gets all the preventative care bells and whistles, from annual vet checkups, to bloodwork, to flea, tick and heartworm medication every year. On top of that, all of his
See? Totally young and healthy. And spry – did I mention spry?
tests have always been A+ perfect, he’s three years old, and he’s a mixed breed. Beyond all the benefits (frugal and otherwise) of adopting a mutt, he dodges many of the health risks that come standard with purebred dogs. All that to say is he’s pretty low risk at the moment, beyond the occasional accident.
For us, this was by far the right move, especially as I cross my fingers for many years of long, happy, accident-free life for The Dog and I. Even though it felt scary cancelling the insurance, if all goes well, we’ll have a decent stockpile in the Dog Fund by the end of the year, and it’ll keep growing until he needs it.
Have you ever had pet insurance? Did you find it worth the money?
I do exactly what you describe – not take out an insurance but put what I`d pay for insurance into a savings account instead. This way, all things are covered, and if it`s not needed, there`ll be plenty money there for another pet who may need a bit more.
I think you made a sound decision here!
I have never had pet insurance and have never understood it. It seems obvious to me that it is a problem that you save by having an emergency fund, and also by coming to the conclusion that it is very difficult to justify spending a fortune on a pet (e.g. if it has diabetes or cancer).
I have written about it previously below which may be of interest to you.
http://insideraccountant.com/2015/01/17/how-to-stop-your-pets-from-costing-you-the-earth/
I haven’t ever had pet insurance, and I’ve been lucky to have only relatively small expenses for my cats, so I haven’t ever considered pet insurance, but a pet emergency fund is a pretty good idea. Especially if we move towards having a dog in the future (I find they seem to be more expensive than cats in terms of vet treatments).
Even just judging by the pet insurance premiums, dogs definitely seem more expensive than cats! I think the only thing that ever went wrong with my childhood cat was a dental cleaning or two because trying to brush her teeth was akin to staring death in the face, haha. Meanwhile, I can easily see how my big dopey black lab mix could get into a world of trouble, even though we’ve been pretty lucky so far. Honestly though, having pets is one of those “I will always spend money on this because it makes me SO happy” things for me!
For sure! I will always spend money on my pets. I don’t feel a house is a home without a pet. 🙂
Back when I had a big dog on a grad student budget, I had pet insurance and no regrets. I had about 2500 in emergency funding, but considering the other things that can go wrong in life and the fact that a major illness or accident can easily cost twice that much at the vet, it made more sense for my peace of mind to have pet insurance. This decision was specific to my circumstances of having a small emergency fund, and very low income and thus a slow rate of building savings. I went with Trupanion, which covers absolutely everything including long term prescriptions and allows you to select which deductible/monthly payment arrangement works for your budget. I chose a $500 deductible, because I can comfortably say I always have at least that much to spend upfront on an emergency vet bill. For that deductible and the age and breed of my dog, I was offered coverage for $50/month. Putting that money into a savings account instead would have taken 8 years to add up to something equivalent to an emergency vet bill! $50/month was not going to break my budget and realistically, I wasn’t in a position to be able to save $200/month on my income at the time. It made perfect economic sense to me to have pet insurance and the peace of mind of knowing I could care for my boy if he needed something major.