Why Getting Pet Insurance Might Have Been A Good Idea.

Posted by david | May 26, 2007

To be perfectly honest, I always thought that pet insurance was an incredible waste of money. When people are having trouble paying their own “human” bills, does it really make sense to pay an additional $10-$20 per month for insurance for your pet? We have had pets our whole lives and have never had major bills to pay, so that might have swayed my opinion on this a little bit. However, my thinking might have changed, and here is why:

This month, we have spent $1,000 on our cat at the veterinarian’s office.

Yep, you read that right. First, about 2 weeks ago, we noticed he was getting a little skinny and he was kind of quiet, which is pretty unusual for him. After having him for the last 13 years, I had gotten used to a loud rambunctious cat that never stopped moving and had a very healthy appetite. But for some reason, he did not look too well and when I went looking on the web for symptoms and causes, I found it could be cancer, a thyroid condition or some other strange thing. So to the vet we went.

Well, $359 later, he got a clean bill of health, nothing wrong, he was in the clear. Maybe he was having a bad week, we were told. And then came the news…he needed dental surgery. Cats rarely, if ever, need dental work done. My whole life I have never known a cat to need dental work, and I have been around a lot of them. Well, it turns out that Asian cats have a higher incident of cavities, and our cat proved this to be true. He had 2 cavities, and the teeth were so far gone that he needed to have them removed. So yesterday, the cat spent the entire day at the vets office, getting gassed with anesthesia, having his teeth cleaned and polished, and having 2 teeth removed. When we went to pick him up at the end of the day, he was like a drunken sailor…glassy eyes, wobbly feet…it was actually very difficult to not laugh at him Wandering around the house when we got home was a pretty comical adventure. Anyways, the bill for the surgery was $600, leaving us with a grand total to pay off of $959.

Back to pet insurance, coverage for this cat would have been about $11 a month for the last 5 years, and if I had been paying it, it would have cost me $660…spread out over all those months. But instead, we have to come up with $959 all at once. Do I wish I had gotten pet insurance a while back? Now I do…but hindsight is always 20/20. I guess I cannot really complain because he has barely cost us anything during his 13 years so far, but still….it is a lot of money.

However, that being said, if it had been $2,000, I still would have paid it in a heart beat.

“Don’t opt for bankruptcy until you have considered an IVA or other debt solution. If you do enter into an IVA getting a loan or credit card will be practically impossible.”