Do you have pet insurance? Why? What kind do you have?
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Yes, our vet convinced us to because it would save us overall on her last mass removal. I'm honestly not sure how it saved us. I'm considering cancelling it.
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Nope - never have and we've owned pets my entire life.
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Yes, we have VPI. Our dogs are a breed prone to knee problems, and one will definitely need surgery when she's older, so the vet recommended it. I don't pay the bills so I honestly don't know if it's saved up anything so far, but it's supposed to?
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No. I did. It went up all the time and they added things to it they wouldn't cover! I was spending like $600 a year on it and nothing was ever covered. Such a friggen waste of money.
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Nope. My dog has a lot of issues now that she's older, but we did the math and if we had started insurance it wouldn't have saved THAT much plus there are so many restrictions.
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No, we don't. We have had a series of unfortunate events in the past year and a half that has caused us to spend over $10k in vet bills. (We just so happened to have both cats needing emergency surgeries and one dog needing two acl repairs.) Do I wish that I would have had pet insurance? Of course, BUT our situation is so unique and doesn't happen often that it didn't make sense for us to take out policies on all four of our pets. We priced them out and they really are very expensive, and even tho we have incurred so much debt so far bc of it, the odds are that we if we got the pet insurance now it would be a waste of money. In my opinion, pet insurance just really isn't worth it unless you KNOW your pet will in the future need a huge procedure.
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Not really, but we use YNAB for budgeting and essentially have a category for pet expenses. We put a good chunk into it each month and have created quite the nest egg that will be available if something ever happens to one of our two dogs. I feel better doing it this way than using pet insurance.
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@Mrs. Champagne: Ditto. We had it for the first three years of my pup's life, but recently cancelled. They upped the rates every year despite the fact that we never used it, and we decided there was no way it was saving us money in the long run. We have enough in savings to cover any unexpected/emergency procedures she might need.
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Thanks for your responses everyone, they pretty much echo what I feel about it
I did have a $10,000 vet bill that it would have saved on but the almost $100 per month for just that one issue at the end of his life I don't think was financially the best decision for our family
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I adopted a dog as a 6 month old puppy and she came with 1 month free insurance with PetCare and in the second week I had her, she had a foreign body ingestion that required an emergency vet stay, surgery, and then 5 days at the hospital recovering. The bill was several thousand dollars and I got a check from the insurance company within days. So I always kept it. I only pay $12.95 a month at this point and my dog is turning 14 in June.
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Nope, we have 2 dogs who are pretty healthy. we just pay for their yearly check ups and shots.
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@gingerbebe: that's a good rate! Mine was $66 a month or something by the time I cancelled!!
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Nope. Insuring 4 animals was really expensive and there were too many exclusions to seem worthwhile. We do factor them into our emergency fund calculations though.
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No, seemed like a waste to me.
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@TemperanceBrennan: same here, we put aside a set amount for our pets each month. I looked into several types of pet insurance but it seemed like they had too many exclusions to make it worthwhile for us
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Yes, I had Healthy Paws. Only canceled because DH lost his job and we had to get rid of any unnecessary spending. We have 3 dogs and 2 cats. Only 2 of the 3 dogs were insured, since they were performance dogs (agility), more likely to have an injury requiring surgery, and the oldest. I loved it for the piece of mind...I never wanted to have to make a decision about whether or not to follow a treatment plan based on a financial decision. Healthy Paws had the best coverage at the time (illness, accident, hereditary, congenital, cancer, with unlimited lifetime benefits. I believe they even cover alternative care, like acupuncture and hydrotherapy).
While we had the insurance, one of the two insured dogs hurt her back and couldn't walk. It was super scary, I was very pregnant at the time, and I was beyond thankful I didn't have to stress coming up with potentially thousands of dollars. I met the deductible easily with xrays and such, and HP pushed my application through (to let me know if they would cover her for this) as fast as possible in case she needed emergency surgery. Luckily she was seen by a specialist who said that she would most probably heal on her own, and she's fine today.
I also agree with the people who just put money aside on their own to cover unforeseen expenses. There's definitely a positive to that; I just can't plan that well ;). We paid around $100/month for the two.
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Nope. We have two cats but they are indoor only. If they were outdoor, I'd probably be more likely to consider it.
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I just purchased pet insurance for the first time today. It was with Pets Best. It's $20 month for 100% coverage with a $500 annual deductible for emergency/cancer/hospitalization care etc. You can play around with the deductibles and percentages and there is a discount for additional pets. Not sure how this stacks up but it was right in my price range for what I was looking for. Emergency, life threatening needs. Posting in case someone is looking...
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I do but our dogs breed is prone to so many health issues (hips, cancer, bloat, other genetic diseases) that we didn't want to risk going without. Its our first dog so it's hard to say yet whether it is worth it. He is showing signs of arthritis in his hips at 5 years old so we will see I guess.
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Yes!!!! $30/month for my two pups and literally received thousands in reimbursements (eating clothes, GI issues, toe nail accident, etc). To this day my husband says the pet insurance is the best insurance we have! We're through pets best.
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@MrsYellowJacket: yay! I just stumbled upon the company while doing a life insurance payment! So happy to hear you like it.
By the way, they have a stand alone accident only insurance for $8 a month. If anyone wants that. I didn't go with that one though. Probably good for puppies. -
Long ago, I used VPI. It saved some money, but only because we were dealing with some major health issues.
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Nope, we considered it when we got her, but didn't get it. At first we weren't sure if we were going to keep her, as our dd wasn't quite 2 and we weren't sure how they'd get along.
Im not sure what we still don't have it, but she's never cost us much in care, plus we already got her fixed.
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