Live on £4,000 for a year - 2009, Part 3

thriftylass

CW18 hope your yorkie is better soon. We got a cat but got insurance for her. Now I guess you do too and you still have to pay that much extra :eek:. What is covered by insurance then?

whitewing

SFT - I am loving the international updates, and look forward to more of them. Also loving hearing about Marrakech (sp?)

CW - So sorry about your poorly doggie. I hope you're both feeling more comfortable soon.

Nyk - love that C25K website, maybe in a couple of years, lol.

Not much to report here. Seeing the midwife for the first time next week. DS is off to his Dad's for a fortnight next week. DH and I will have some time off my self-employment in August; can't wait. May go somewhere or may stay at home. Have lots to do before then so best be cracking on.

grandma247

Good morning all.
CW The vets train about seven years as opposed to 5 for a doctor. Did you know that a vet can treat a human but a doctor cannot treat an animal?

My cold has really taken hold now so I have been sitting making embelishments for cardmaking. I printed off some very nice 3d pictures to add to my cards.

cw18

BigMummaF wrote: »

but now I'm wondering if the initial outlay for my first ever passport might not actually give me a saving in the long term. With no real hankering to travel abroad, a cheapie internal flight would not be an option as I've had no reason to update to a photo-driving licence either. See what you've done to me!

Took me a while to figure why you wanted a passport for an internal flight, but I'm guessing you need photo id It would actually be cheaper to change your driving licence to a photo one if that's all you want the passport for....

thriftylass wrote: »

CW18 hope your yorkie is better soon. We got a cat but got insurance for her. Now I guess you do too and you still have to pay that much extra :eek:. What is covered by insurance then?

No insurance for either dog

The dalmatian had a couple of medical issues when he moved him, and those would have meant about half the 'normal' things would be excluded from his cover -- but they wanted a higher than normal premium that I couldn't afford even when we were both working :eek:

The Yorkie was almost 13 when she moved in with us, so too old for a 'new' policy to be taken out. Her previous owners didn't have insurance either, so I couldn't even try and negotiate taking over an existing one

Whilst I was there on my first visit there were a few people came in with insurance documents as well as their pets. Some of these lead to a phone call from hospital to insurance company, and the go-ahead to do whatever was needed and bill the company. Others were told they'd have to pay and then claim it back from the insurance as the hospital "doesn't have an agreement with that company"

lyndasharp

CW, hope your little dog feels better soon. The cost of vet bills is scary, but having initially wanted to be a vet and done various amounts of work experience with them, you do appreciate how much they earn their money - and it is longer training to be a vet than to be a doctor.

We haven't got insurance for our cat, as at 8 - 10ish years old it just starts getting so expensive, it seems better to put the money aside and use it to pay future vet bills.

It's a coincidence that people were talking about bats a couple of pages back - I've got a training day about bats tomorrow! Mostly about planning regs when building, but I think there will be a few bats for us to look at!

whitewing

BigMummaF,

The only thing I'd say is that a passport is so useful for photo id in general. To be honest, I wouldn't be without one even if I never left the country.

I've only got an old fashioned driving lic and that is okay, but you do need photo id as well. The trouble with upgrading is that you have to have the photocard and the papercounterpart for id. Twice as much to lose!

whitewing

(See, I'm not getting on my work)

thriftylass

[QUOTE=lyndasharp;23677049

We haven't got insurance for our cat, as at 8 - 10ish years old it just starts getting so expensive, it seems better to put the money aside and use it to pay future vet bills.

[/QUOTE]

I got insurance for our (originally BF's) cat, after a couple of friends had extortionate vet bills (hundreds of £s) after their cats were hit by cars and a similar looking cat to ours was killed in front our house (what a shock til we noticed it wasn't ours - she walked back into the hous as we were about to take "our" dead one to the vet). Anyway, our cat was only 6 when I started paying for insurance and I paid £7 a month, now it went up to £8.30. Probably could save a lot more if I would have thought to go through cashback site.

Frugaldom

Ooh, Whitewing, don't forget to update your licence to your married name if you changed it, as the DVLA are sticklers for everything being bang up to date. I actually thought they had now updated everyone to photo ID status but then again, there's so much cafuffle about ID these days that it'll happen sooner or later even if I've misunderstood.

Vet training is much longer than that for a doctor for simple fact that vets need to study several species, as opposed to just one, and need to keep on studying as more species become kept in captivity. They are also a lot more involved with the legislative side of things as animals are far more legislated against than humans. We don't have specific small animal vets here, so the vets need to know a full range of species. Out of hours work isn't like part of the normal hours - they do normal hours PLUS out of hours. I've seen friends do 70 to 80 hour weeks often and there are all sorts of rules about females and pregnancy, so it's not like a job you can keep doing as a woman if you're planning on having a family. For a start, you're banned from radiology / radiography and locums cost an absolute fortune to cover for holidays & any sick time. Haven't you noticed how seldom vets or doctors are ever off sick? Yes, vetting was my first choice of studies but my dedication waned as exam results arrived.

lingojingo

nykmedia wrote: »

Is anyone else still doing the 'get fitter, not fatter' challenge and does anyone else fancy giving this a go? It's FREE, you just print the workouts and download your personal training schedule thingey. Or are you all going to make me switch to a different site for C25K chat? :rotfl:

Forgive me Nyk, for I have sinned - not merely fallen off the 'get fitter not fatter' wagon, but completely wrecked it and gained weight!

So, inspired by reading the website, I'm joining you on C25K. I'm going to download the MP3 file that tells you when to change from walking to jogging, see if that helps. Just need it to stop raining, would like a dry first time out!

CW, hope your dog gets better soon, how awful for you.

SFT, thanks for posting, it's really exciting that we can all share in your travels.