Pet Insurance Question

This doesn't really answer yout question, but just to share what I did. I looked at pet insurance many years ago, but decided to put the premium amount in a HYSA each month instead. It was only for vet care that I wasn't able to pay out of pocket. Fast forward 15 years and my dog needed a $10k surgery. I was able to pay in cash and still had $5k in the account. I didn't have to think twice about getting the care he needed, which took a huge amount of stress out of the situation.

We looked into pet insurance for our puppy, however, determined that taking whatever the premium a month was going to be and putting that into a high yield savings account just for her was a more prudent plan. She is now 3 years old and luckily very healthy, so that money is growing in her account for her if and when she might need it. If it turns out we don't use all of it in the future it's another savings vehicle with interest verse sending that money to the pet insurance company.

I've been thinking the same, when we first insured our dog as a puppy it was $46 USD a month; she's now 6 and it's $146 a month, over a 200% increase and I'm not sure worth the benefit. At the time, it had made sense in the past we've had both a dog & a cat have $8-10K plus medical events and vet bills have gotten more expensive, though they were both 10+ when they were ill. We've (fortunately) never needed the insurance, but I've had friends who it's been a big benefit. I've been hesitant to cancel but at the current cost it might be better saved for general emergency.

Is it possible to cancel, and put half into emergency fund savings & the rest towards your cc debt, work towards being able to self insure yourself? And make sure you continue with their regular vet care to monitor for things that could become emergencies. I've found it's usually cheaper to go to their regular vet than the emergency vet, but obviously emergencies happen.

I have a cat and two dogs, and have concluded that insurance is not worth it. In the vast majority of cases, you'll come out ahead if you just save that money each month on your own - if each cat lives to 20, that's a lot of months of saving. Right now your savings are probably best put towards credit card debt, and since your cats are more likely to experience issues when they're older you will have time to build up more of an emergency fund. I'd also second the comment about cat emergencies being less expensive - my cat was once in the pet ER for several days with kidney failure (she's fine now!), and it was only $3k usd after everything

I'm sorry that you lost ⅓ of your income. We have a pet ( 5-year-old dog) and we have had pet insurance since he was a puppy. Like your insurance, ours doesn't pay for check ups/well visits, however we have gotten a lot of value from having it.

When he was 3, he had a luxating patella (basically a dislocated knee). The surgery cost about $6,000 all in and we paid about $1,200 of it. I have a friend that decided to pay $20K out of pocket when his dog (6-years old) was diagnosed with cancer. They didn't have insurance.

Similar to how we view any type of insurance, we hope we never have to use it, but it's there for us for peace of mind. As we know, pets are amazing, but also expensive.

I'm not sure if this helps or not, but wanted to give you my perspective from our experience.

Good luck!

If you're paying off high-interest cc debt, then I think canceling pet insurance is a no-brainer. I canceled the insurance for my 3 dogs a few years ago. With the amount I've saved in premiums each year, I can now better afford an expensive surgery if something happened to one of them (the last surgery I had was about $3k to remove bladder stones from my eldest). Even if you had insurance, a portion of the claims get denied and they still take months to process regardless.

If Canada follows similar practices as the US, pet insurance won't cover pre-existing conditions. If you cancel and they develop any diagnosis while unenrolled, that diagnosis won't be covered when/if you re-enroll later. Just something to bear in mind.

One thing to look into before you cancel is how much lower premiums would be if you elected to go with the maximum deductible. The higher the deductible you choose, the lower your monthly premiums will be.

You mention that if there was an emergency, you would need to put it on a credit card. The first step on the path to FI is to start saving up an emergency fund so you don't need to resort to credit cards to pay for an emergency. A general rule-of-thumb for an emergency fund is 3-6 months' worth of your living expenses. Keep this money in cash in a High Yield Savings Account (HYSA) or a Money Market Fund (MMF) at your brokerage firm so that it's quickly accessible when needed. Bogleheads have a great article on prioritizing your savings.

To me, the first question is to determine whether your insurance is any good or not. When I went shopping for pet insurance about 7 years ago, I did a LOT of research. There were about two good companies (Healthy Paws and Embrace), and probably a hundred terrible ones.

I went with Embrace, and I'm glad I did. My dog has had multiple $10,000+ accidents and illnesses, and insurance has saved my bacon multiple times. However, my premiums have gone up to ridiculous levels (over $700 a month!) so I'm thinking of dropping it.

Cats tend to be less expensive than dogs. I would lean towards dropping the insurance IF you have a very healthy emergency fund (cats can get cancer too).