#029 — Should I Buy Pet Insurance?
I never really considered pet insurance until my dog Odie swallowed a sock, and we had to spend $1,000 to save his life. I just assumed insurance for my dogs was a high cost, low benefit type of investment. But now that we had a canine emergency threatening to derail our financial plans, I thought I’d give it a second look. So I grabbed a few brochures from the vet’s office to compare rates and coverage.
Our dogs
We have three dogs. Yes, more than necessary. We’re suckers, we know. Here’s what we’re dealing with:
Zipper – male, nearly 11 year-old long-haired black lab-mix. Because of his age, he may not qualify but for basic care packages.
Lucia – 4.5 year old lab-mix female.
Odie – 2 year old male, sock-eating lab-mutt.
All three are fixed. No litters of puppies for the MyMoneyMinute household!
Pet Insurance Example
Here’s a major pet insurance company whose brochure I picked up from the vet’s office. Click on the icon to link to that company’s website:
VPI
VPI offers flexible deductible options – $100, $250, $500, or $1,000. They also offer a 5% reduction for adding a 2nd pet. Here’s a sample:
- For Lucia, a “VPI Major Medical Plan (Base Plan) with a $250 deductible = $37.33/month. When you add routine & additional care (teeth cleaning, check-ups, etc.), the costs goes up to $59.33/month.
- For Odie, the prices drop a bit because of his age. The Base Plan is $32.72/month, while the upgrade is $54.72/month.
- Grumpy old Zipper is only eligible for limited coverage. Cost is $22.10/month, including “panic-moment” (broken bone, poisoning) & routine care.
With a group rate, insurance premiums on all three dogs would be $132.43/month, or $1,529.16 for an entire year ($60 discount for payment up-front). So, when you factor in $750 worth of deductibles, I’d have to incur nearly $2,300 in insurance-approved costs in order to break even. Each year. Not to mention, each year the premiums will only increase as my dogs get older.
Conclusion
It seems to me that we are still better off to self-insure through our pet’s medical needs. Even with Odie’s sock incident, our vet costs this year will probably be $1,500. We would basically need at least two dog tragedies per year to make insurance worth it. And that’s assuming no hassles and full payment by the insurance company.
Our other option would be to buy “Base Plan” insurance for Odie only. He seems to be the young buck without any fear. He’s very skinny, agile, and not afraid to run, jump, or chew anything. A sock-eating incident & a regular vet visit ends up being $1,000, we would have paid about a $375 annual premium. Add a $250 deductible, and we’d be $625 out of pocket before insurance kicks in. So this year insurance would have been a money-saver to the tune of $300 or so, again assuming all procedures would’ve been covered under the insurance. Buying for Odie may be an option, at least until his rambunctious puppy phase is over and he matures into an adult dog with a little more caution.
Other Policies
Here’s two other companies whose brochures I picked up from the vet. Take a look at their websites if interested by clicking on their logo below:
Do you have a pet medical story? Did your pet have insurance? What would you recommend we do?
Follow Me on Twitter!
I got pet insurance for my lab mix through Trupanion pet insurance. I was worried when I got Goldie that I would run into similar problems that my mom did with her adopted mutt: the necessity for recurring treatment. When she first got Tucker she spent about $2000 to find out that he had allergies, and now is faced with about a $200 monthly puppy medical bill. I didn’t want something like that to happen to me, so I looked into insurance. I ended up with Trupanion because they do offer a flexible deductible, so if I ever feel like I want to take on more risk (I currently use a $0 deductible) I have the option to go up to $1000. They also cover things like allergies, so if that did (gasp!) ever happen to me, Goldie would be covered. Best of luck!
Thanks Stephanie. We may have to consider it for Odie. We think that little guy ate another article of clothing. At least this one made it through his body this time!
Oh yikes! My Goldie had the same problem when she was a pup.
On thing you might want to make sure to ask any insurer about is pre-existing conditions. While I was doing my homework, I also asked questions for my mom’s Tucker and his allergies and was told by every company I talked to that his allergies wouldnt be covered because they already existed.
first off, that is awesome that you named your dog Odie! haha…..and secondly, swallowed a sock?! boy, you don’t hear that every day. I actually researched some of these as well, but have yet to choose one. in fact from the responses I got it seems like a better idea (for us and our cats) to do w/out, but everyone’s different
@Budgets are Sexy
LoL, well we didn’t exactly name him after Garfield. I found him near our local dog park one day – wearing a collar but no tags. It looked as if he was abandoned.
We put up signs and the local vet kept him for 3 nights. Finally the vet said we’d have to take him or they’d have to send him to the shelter. We kept him for another night or two but didn’t know what to call him. We didn’t want to get attached, so we called him “Other Dog”, or “O.D.” for short.
Needless to say, we got attached to the little guy. “O.D.” easily morphed into “Odie”, which we thought was fitting.
And, as Paul Harvey would say, now you know… the REST of the story.
@Budgets are Sexy
P.S. – I agree with Karen, your first commenter from your article on pet insurance. It seems as if there’s many loopholes that get you, including pre-existing conditions, which I believe are factored into the policy every 12 months when you re-up your policy.
Also, at 10 years old, that cat will be more expensive to insure, and many things simply aren’t covered. To me it is “cat”astrophy insurance (pun intended), which I can self-insure through an emergency fund.
Then again, if Odie keeps eating clothing…
Don’t get me started on the veterinary bills for aging dogs. At one point I figured I’d spent something like 40 grand on a German shepherd and a greyhound, both of whom lived to be 13 years old. Not all of that, o’course, was on veterinary care–the total included food, toys, doggy beds, meds, vet bills, and a car big enough to haul two 80-pound dogs.
After similar ruminations, I came to the same conclusion: veterinary insurance isn’t worth the cost. You’re better off to build an emergency fund specifically to cover vet bills, which will indeed grow more frequent and larger the older the critter gets.
@Funny about Money
LOL – we can really change our lives around those dogs, can’t we? Only buy certain cars because you need the room. That house has a small back yard? Nope, not good enough – let’s buy a bigger lot!
Thanks for your conclusions – I’ll definitely take them into account. At this point, with the emergency fund growing every month, it may be best to self-insure through Odie’s peculiar sock diet & Zipper’s old age.
Aww, I’m the proud mom to 3 dogs. I might have saved money with pet insurance, if I had taken it out right away. At this point my pooches have such long medical files they’re probably uninsurable. Also they exclude the most likely problems, hereditary defects. My latest addition required surgery to help him breathe, if we had insurance the surgery would have been excluded due to his breed (boston terrier). My oldest went through an eating foreign objects phase, my emeregency surgery cost way more than yours! Were they able to do an endoscopy to remove the sock? Labs are notorious sock eaters. My vet sliced him open, couldn’t find said foreign object and closed him back up. $3000! He’s still with us so obviously the whole surgery was unnecessary. An e-surgery would be covered by insurance, I certainly wished I had it after that. The insurance is best for emergencies or the unexpected, for routine care or the most likely problems it will not save you money.
It seems like something is missing, no?
I really liked the way they came off