to not insure my pets?

[Chevrotains]

Does anyone here just put away savings each month for their pets? I'm aware there is definitely a risk to this as well, but just tired of the amount going up each renewal.

It’s a gamble. We’ve insured our 1 year old cat for £12 a month. He got pyrexia last week and we ended up with a £500 vet bill. We claimed and got it back very painlessly, so I’m glad we did insure him.

Depends on the animal being insured. I have an older indoor moggy cat and now put away the premiums each month into savings. She had a check up recently and will need a dental clean which might result in an extraction but insurance wouldn’t cover any dental work.

My other older cat who passed away last year was fully insured but there was an excess plus a reduction in payout due to her age, plus it didn’t cover, which we sadly ended up with, being put to sleep, so I think I ended up getting back £200 on a £700 claim. Since then I’ve saved the £60-odd a month premiums instead.

However if I had a horse, or a pug or similar which are known to be prone to some illnesses, I definitely wouldn’t take the risk.

I might insure my cat if I had one cat. Since I have 3 I don’t, not because I can’t afford it, but because it’s unlikely they’ll all require treatment at once, so the money saved on premiums for two of them can pay vet bills for the third.

I have 3 cats and two of them have had very minor operations (superficial wound revision/closure) that have cost a thousand pounds each. One of those two has also had treatments costing three figures a few times. I think the insurance has paid out about the same as we've put in over 12 years. I don't think we've have been as disciplined about saving into a "pet" account for that long, but could see that if we did and were good about not touching it, having no insurance could have worked out. The main thing that concerns me (and the main reason we have insurance) is that anything more than a superficial wound will cost many more thousands and we could just about deal with that as a one off, however I'd prefer to retain that savings cushion for other things... I sleep much better at night knowing that insurance will cover emergency expenses in case of accident or major illness.

Our pet dog is covered for third party on house insurance which we checked prior to choosing not to insure her. Vets fees have gone up extortionately mainly fuelled by people having pet insurance. One of the farm dogs broke his back leg and hip - we told the vets £2000 was the budget and could they sort it for that , answer was yes no problem . Insured I’m guessing nearer 5/6K .

I just cancelled my pet insurance for a chihuahua. You have to pay the vet up front anyway so you have to have the money available to start with.

Also the premiums were near on £30 a month so I decided to have a separate pet account and put the money in there instead so it's there when needed.

I used to just put away £50 a month for my dog. This was fine when he needed a minor op to the tune of £450. Then he started to need monthly injections at £85 each and it soon disappeared! He is a large breed and when he turned 11 and was seemingly pretty healthy I knew anything that happened would be expensive so I took out a policy that covers £2000 of vet bills a year, just to at least take the edge off anything pricey. It was about £35 a month but the first year we used it all up on one emergency incident requiring an out of hours hospital stay. Renewal came around and it went up to £45 but I kept paying. We’ve claimed once already and now found that he needs a £4000-5000 operation. So although we will have to fork out most of it, at least a good chunk is covered.
The thing that costs the most, I’ve found, is out of hours care and 24/7 hospital care. More than the actual procedure or drugs.

My advice would be, could you afford thousands on operations if needed? If you can afford the monthly payments for peace of mind for insurance I would do it. I do slightly regret not getting a more comprehensive policy but that’s the gamble you take.

@Showdogworkingdog I know you didn’t say what your dog’s mobility issues were but ours has arthritis (and cdrm) and has monthly librella injections. They’ve been a game changer. Day before injection his legs give way, the day after he bounds around the garden like a much younger dog.

By the time my dog died at 11.5 I was paying £80 per month. I payed a lot less at first, but can't remember how much. But say it was £80 the whole time, that's £11,040.
Given a single big vets bill for a serious injury will be at least half that (her brother cost £6k for a three day vet hospital stay alone) then good luck having enough saved if you use that method.
My grandfather always said "insurance is a luxury, until you need it"

I stopped DDogs insurance when she reached 8 and we had never used it.
She is now 13 and apart from check ups and diazapan for her anxiety of fireworks, which cost were both under our previous excess, she has never needed anything.

We tried insurance. But ultimately find it easier, and better value, to save money each month.

I have pet insurance but I do this for all other things - appliances, boiler cover etc (including life cover and income protection actually). Overall you end up quids in.

But pet bills can be astronomical so it’s the one insurance I think is worth it.

I've always insured mine until the premiums got insane when they reached their senior years.
I wouldn't put an older animal through big surgeries or cancer treatments so I found it pointless paying insane premiums after age 10

My dog slipped a disc and was paralysed in her back legs. Total cost was £7k, we'd had her less than two years. I've never been so pleased that we didn't just 'put a bit up each month' insurance for us was worth every penny.

Have two cats who've been insured for two years now. I took out the insurance after losing another cat who became suddenly and unexpectedly unwell - cost me almost £1,000 over 3 days of illness, then he was put to sleep.

In the two years the current cats have been insured, one of them has had surgery twice - total cost of about £4,000 which the insurance paid, less total excesses of £75.

So yeah, after years of pet ownership with no insurance I think I'm committed to it now.

Always have for our dogs and horses. Once had a 7k bill for a pony so thanked my lucky stars for it then. Also have the legal cover and public liability as we ride in areas used by the public like bridleways and roads. Compensation claims can be in their millions, so I'd rather have that insurance cover than risk my house etc!
I've got (and always had) lurchers so no pure breed premiums here. The monthly cost is affordable.

I thought about putting the insurance money aside each month, then 2 £3k bills for one cat, followed by another £500 for him, and £200 for another just in a year made me think again. All paid by insurance (excess £99, lifetime cover), so while the premium will go up it's still worthwhile.

I'd hate to be in a position where I had to have one PTS because I couldn't afford a big bill.

@EvilElsa I am the same , the awfulness if my dog freaked and ran in the road and caused a horrible accident in which people were badly injured. I'm not gambling my home.

I never have had insurance either for cats and small animals. If something major was wrong I would have them pts. I adore them but there are so many animals needing love. I don’t know that I would want to put a cat through daily medication or a rabbit through traumatic dental surgery etc.

I did spend a fortune operating on my favourite one-eyed Guinea pig though, so who knows?!? 😃

Never have. I have a credit card for emergencies and wouldn’t pay thousands for a pets treatment so if it was more that would be it.

We’ve had 2 cats for 25 years an never insured them.
but it seems cats are far less likely to need an expensive operation and as a pp said, we are not going to spend money on cancer treatment etc to keep a cat alive.

We’ve had over £2k from our dog’s insurance over the last couple of years, both for relatively minor/common things (removal of a cancerous lump being one). So it’s been well worth it for us. He’s a big dog too so any treatment generally costs more - as does his insurance!

But he’s getting on in years now and our most recent renewal went up so it’s now almost £90 a month.

I’m not sure we’ll renew again, we do have savings and will keep putting money away for him, but he’s getting to an age where we wouldn’t want to put him through complex surgeries etc anyway, sadly.

I've owned cats for over 35 years and never had insurance (it wasn't even a 'thing' when I first had a cat).
Had a couple of expensive vet visits over the last five years but overall I'm still quids in through not having had cover.
I think that there us a risk that sometimes insurance encourages treatment that may not be in the best interest of the animal. Just because something can be done (potentially at great cost) it doesn't necessarily mean it should be.

We currently have five cats, and have been a multi car household for the last twenty years. Insurance now is so prohibitively expensive that for the last ten years we've had a "cat emergency fund" of a few hundred pounds ready for sudden vet bills. It's served us well, we top it up as and when needed, and on the one occasion treatment was looking to be way above what we had put away, we made the kindest decision to put a very elderly and unwell chap to sleep.
If you can afford to insure, then do it, if not, as long as you have some provision to ensure an animal isn't left in pain then you're doing the right thing.

We have it. A few years ago I wouldn’t have bothered. The one of our cats degloved its leg and another needed its tail amputating in 2 freak accidents inside the home. The first required appointment after appointment and made a full recovery but required stitches, antibiotics, dressing changes etc. The latter was mostly just an extortionate one off cost. I would never risk not having it now

neither of these are things I think any pet owner would PTS for surely? Do I don’t understand that argument. They is a massive area between affordable treatments for common ailments and £100000 for cancer treatments

I don't know why so many people think you only need insurance for extreme or life threatening conditions. I have a dog and two cats and have had to claim for all of them. Not for things like cancer or life long illnesses, but for biopsies, a broken leg, my kitten swallowed a massive hair bobble and had to go to emergency vets. None of those i would've been able to afford. And I'm not going to put a 5 month old kitten to sleep for swallowing a bobble because I couldn't afford the 5k the treatment it came to.

Ultimately it depends on whether you have enough savings to pay for any treatment that may crop up. If you are financially well off then I'd say just put money away, as some people never have to claim and it's a waste of money. However for myself I never wouldve had enough saved up to pay for the treatments. What if you just start saving, then a month later your pet needs treatment costing a couple thousand pounds? Its all personal choice of course but I feel like if your pet gets ill or injured it's more stressful to hear "this is going to cost 6k" if you've got to cough up that amount all at once, rather than just paying £100 a month and feeling safe in the knowledge that if anything happens they can be treated.