Pet insurance - discuss

[Millionairerow]

Hi
Both my dogs are 8 years old. Healthy cockers. M and S insurance up from 33 to 49 per month cos of age. Should I renew? Is the insurance worth it? I've got a quote from £10 cheaper but would like it to be cheaper than that.

M

I have recently stopped renewing all our pet's insurance. We have a cat and two dogs (3 years old) and combined the insurance was around £60 a month and rising every year. I expect to have dogs for at least the next 30 years I do not expect to require £20000+ worth of veterinary treatment in that time period which is what my current premiums would cost. Never mind that the excess seemed to keep rising and after a certain age we would be expected to contribute a % of the cost of treatment.

I have I think sound reasons behind this. First of all we can afford treatment should one of them need it. I am now putting away the equivalent of our premiums away each month for the future but in the mean time we could cover the costs without much hardship. Second I am not overly sentimental about our pets and could make a cost benefit decision. Third I do not believe in treating animals too much. I did some work experience at a vets and honestly thought that some treatments were worse than the disease, animals are not like people they live in the now. Finally as we have dogs I have joined the dogs trust so we benefit from third party insurance from them.

I know having insurance is seen as essential to responsible pet ownership but for our circumstances I'm happy with not having insurance.

Same as above - have decided to self-insure by putting money away each month to cover pet costs. We also have a general Emergency Fund that could be used to find an operation etc. We used to pay for pet insurance but the problem is, if the pet just dies then all the premiums paid in for that animal are gone, whereas if you self-insure you would still have that cash in the bank for your other pets.

Something else is that as you have more than one dog self insurance makes more sense. We're likely to get a third dog and again we can afford it but then I started thinking we'd be paying £80 a month just in premiums. I'm probably tempting fate but our dogs are pretty healthy. We used to have a boxer and she had ear problems, skin issues and lumps. But generally the cost at the vets was always £20 or £30 more than our excess. Never enough to make it worth claiming. The cynic in me wonders if vets are in league with pet insurance companies.

Shop around as my cats insurance had shot up to £35 and managed to change it to £14.we have claimed quite a bit for her and definitely more back than we've paid in. Cat is quite elderly and has asthma so very basic insurance as pre- existing conditions not covered.