Pet Insurance a life saver!!

[aussie_dog]

Jake, my dog, recently tore the ACL in his leg and we had to put him in surgery. Initially the cost was $3,200 if we went to Calgary or $1,200 if we stayed in our city, but we ended up paying only $500 since our uncle, who is a vet, performed the surgery. He didn't own the hospital, so the $500 was pretty much used to loan the operating room and to pay for the anesthetics and all that stuff. But Jake has gotten into so much trouble in the past year (met a porcupine twice, getting quills both times, one of the times having to be put under to get them taken out; cut the pad on his foot, pulled muscles, etc.). So we're starting to think seriously about signing him up with insurance, and since you get 10% off if you sign up 3 animals, we might put Buffy and Willow (two cats) up too. Buffy's getting into trouble these days too. Now, I ask you, what is going on with them? Before last year, nobody ever got hurt, but now it seems like it's something new every week! If it's not a torn ACL, it's a cat fight with an unknown cat outside or a torn nail from climbing out a window!

We could think about setting up a new bank account and putting money in there (I've been thinking about it long before Jake tore his ACL) but we (everyone in the family, that is) has a habit of "digging into the cookie jar" when we don't have enough money for something. So if we need money, we might end up taking some money out of that account.

 

[wellingtoncats]

No insurance here

 

[slitty_kittay]

The reason we have insurance is because we are students and dont have much money. If Dax had something bad wrong with her we just would not have the funds for a big bill. The plan we have is very good, she is insured as a cheap addition to house insurance. We dont have checkups included, we budget for that. There is a fairly large excess(it would hurt, but in an emergency we could handle it) that we have to pay but then they pay the rest of the bill. The whole point was if she needed really expensive treatment or surgery it is covered and we wont end up on the street with a sick cat. I cant remember exactly how much we pay per month, but I worked it out one time and it was less than a single movie ticket to the local cinema.

 

[pinkmartini]

Originally Posted by Russian Blue

A friend of mine took out insurance for his dog. He paid approx. $200 a year for 5 years. When his dog got sick, the insurance paid hardly anything because of the illness being excluded. So he paid $1000 and received nothing in return. Imagine if he would have invested that money instead.

Be careful when choosing a policity and read all the fine print for exclusions!

Yup! Same here. We had pet insurance with our last dog and paid $1500 total and only received $200 from it back. Waste of $. We have enough $ in our bank to pay for an emergency if it should arise, and the only way I'd recommend pet insurance to someone is if they don't have any savings