Pet Insurance
- Thread starter gocy444
- Start date
My wife and I have discussed this and are of the same opinion. Yes, our pets are part of our family but they are still pets and have short lives. Significant medical expenses cannot be justified just to extend their life by a year or two. With that said our last two dogs both required daily medications and probably cost us around $60 - $100/month. If it came to our kids eating, education, etc. our choice would have been made.
I always try to remember the story about a kid that explained why pets die early.
This makes zero sense to me. If you have a pet that gets seriously injured and it costs thousands of dollars why wouldn't you want insurance where you get 90% of what you pay back?
my wife would sell me to come up with $$ for our dog if we needed it
Agree, i wasnt spending 3k on a hip replacement. She was a great dog but no.
I’m not one to say just spend everything on a pet but I also don’t understand the let’s put the dog down thought process either. For example in the case of you can’t afford monthly medicine you don’t put the dog down. You may not be able to but there is someone out there who can.
I feel like both extremes are irrational.
Difference of opinion for some. Some people consider pets to be a part of their family. I dont disagree that sometimes you have balance the cost of something for your pet against other factors, but $25 a month, or $3,000-$4,000 over the average life of a dog, is a cheap price to pay to assure that you don't have to end a pets life because of a financial burden.
With that logic it would take you 200 months or 16 2/3 years to safe the appropriate $25 for a $5000 procedure. What dog is making it 16 2/3 years that you'd drop $5000 on?
Just an observation & I may get blasted for this but having spent the past decade living & working overseas in various countries, I think about what a huge difference $25/month would make in the daily lives of those living in the developing world....yet, that same amount to us is a drop in the bucket.
Not saying to get rid of pets & start sending your money overseas but perspective certainly changes things.
BTW - miss my dog:
Not saying to get rid of pets & start sending your money overseas but perspective certainly changes things.
BTW - miss my dog:
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Yes, if you knew that your pet was going to get seriously injured and it was going to cost you thousands of dollars, insurance would be a great idea. Just like, if you knew you were going to die next year and didn't have a preexisting condition, it would make sense to have life insurance.
In the end, the math says you're going to lose when you buy insurance but that doesn't mean it won't pay out for you. Just like when I go to vegas and put $25 on 33. The math says I'm most likely going to lose but people do win.
I just think people focus on things like pet insurance and TV warranties and totally blow off things like umbrella policies and disability policies.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...ff3dfa-ccb1-11e8-a3e6-44daa3d35ede_story.html
"How unaffordable? Take a male mixed-breed dog insured by Pets Best in the District. Enrolled as a puppy, his premium would be $35 a month, but by age 8, that more than doubles, to $83. By age 12, it’s $149 per month, or almost $1,800 per year.
Thus, over a nearly 13-year lifetime, that tail-wagging $35-a-month premium grows into a rabid $11,172 in total premiums.
And those age-based premium increases don’t include future veterinary price inflation, which will probably add even more to the monthly bill."
Consequently, market research shows the average policyholder insures not for the life of their pet but for only three years, according to the Trupanion filing.
But the problem with spending so much to insure against disaster is that the odds of calamity are fairly long. Every six seconds a pet owner faces a vet bill of $1,000 or more, according to PetInsuranceQuotes.com, an online marketplace. Pet insurers also cite this statistic. That sounds scary, but in a country of 185 million cats and dogs, that’s about a 3 percent chance over a year.
I think if you grow up on a farm you look at pets differently. Your understand that pets have an important role on a farm. You also understand at a young age that pets die / get injured and life happens.
But...people are crazy.
I bet if someone invented a travel agency to take their dogs on a trip back to their country of origin, it would be a hit. Send your German Shepherd on a 10 day trip to Germany. Let your dog frolic in its native land, eat genuine German cousine from the finest chefs, and end the trip on a storybook river tour on the Rhine. All for only $10,500 per dog.
But...people are crazy.
I bet if someone invented a travel agency to take their dogs on a trip back to their country of origin, it would be a hit. Send your German Shepherd on a 10 day trip to Germany. Let your dog frolic in its native land, eat genuine German cousine from the finest chefs, and end the trip on a storybook river tour on the Rhine. All for only $10,500 per dog.
Thanks for the business plan!!
I'm betting that I could just kennel the dogs in the US for a week and then put them in front of a green screen for various pictures.
Come for the recommendation on pet insurance companies, stay for the reasons on why you're financially irresponsible and why pets are not a good investment.
I love this site.
I love this site.
Think of the destinations:
Pekingese - visit China
Basset Hound - visit France
Poodle - Germany
Irish Setter - Ireland
Siberian Husky - Russia
(and yes I just looked that up on Wikipedia
Your evaluations make sense, but without those things you're rolling the dice. It's not a coin flip.
I have an expensive car and I paid cash for it. Aside from my house, it is by far the most expensive thing I own. I don't have to carry comprehensive coverage, but I do. In the long run, it's likely going to cost me much more than anything I'm ever going to recoup from it. But I have limited my risk to the price of my policy. If a tree falls on my car and destroys it, I'm out a huge pile of money....if I don't have insurance.
I could not carry the insurance and save me a pile of money. But I'm not going to.
How much is your car worth? Lets say $40k, of course you have comprehensive coverage, you'd be an idiot not to. But lets say your car is worth $3k. Would you have comprehensive coverage on that car?