Hi! It’s snuggle time!
About a year ago, before our Doberman turned 1, we started considering pet insurance. We just didn’t ever want to find ourselves in a position where we had to make the difficult choice between our beloved fur baby and thousands of dollars in an emergency surgery or procedure.
I did some research on whether pet insurance was worth it, and the polls were pretty divided right down the middle. Since that did nothing to convince me not to get pet insurance, I did some research on who the best providers were. The answer seemed to be pretty clear: Trupanion.
So I filled in an online quote, and with a deductible of $400, our monthly premium would be $65.08 for 90% coverage (i.e. any claim would cost a $400 deductible, plus 10%) with no lifetime maximum.
Fast forward a year, and I get a friendly email from Trupanion advising that his policy is up for renewal and his premiums have skyrocketed 20% to $78.09!
So now instead of spending $780.96 in premiums annually, we’d be spending $937.08, an increase of $156.12 a year. That just seemed outrageous!!!
So after a very brief discussion with the Mr., we quickly decided to cancel his insurance. It terrifies me a little, because if Murphy has anything to say about it, we’ll need insurance as soon as it’s terminated. However, instead of throwing all that money away, I have set up an automated transfer of $40 every two weeks (to coincide with the Mr.’s paydays) to a Tax Free Savings Account at PC Financial which is currently offering a promotional interest rate of 2.5%.
Sure, it’s not much, but at the end of the year, we will have $1,040 in savings (not including interest) and so as long as we end up spending less than $1,440 (+$400 for the deductible) in vet fees that we would have claimed (regular vet exams are not eligible), we’ll still be ahead.
Just a quick note before anyone else rushes out to cancel their insurance policies though – I filled out another online quote before cancelling and found out that if I started a brand new policy now, his premiums would now be $90.31/month – $12.22 more than we were paying! So it is definitely worth keeping your insurance policy if you think you might need/want to reinstate it in the future since it will cost you a lot more to do so.
What are your thoughts on pet insurance? Would or do you have it? Did we make the right decision?
Unchained55 
I think your smart and you made a good decision.
Can’t really put a price-tag on health. Even if you didn’t come out ahead and were $5, $50 or $100+ in the negative your Dobens will continue living a better life than 50% (or more) of the global population.
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Thanks! We will have $120 saved this week. It doesn’t sound like much, but we spent more than $780 last year in premiums with nothing to show for it. By putting $40 aside biweekly, we’ll have $1,040 after a year. In the best case scenario, nothing happens over his lifetime and we have a lump sum of cash. Worst case is we need to dip into the savings! By having pet insurance, the “best” case scenario is that we waste hundreds of dollars a a year on unneeded premiums, but worst case scenario is we get some(or more) of the premiums we paid in illness claims.
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