Has anyone successfully self insured a pet?

ChopperST

Unless you are cash rich pet insurance is a no brainer, unless you are happy to euthanise should the worst happen.

I own a German Shepherd and the breed is prone to stomach and hip problems. A hip operation is around £3.5k, good luck saving that up.

It costs £16 a month to insure him for £10,000 per condition for life.

He managed to get in our medicine cabinet last year and eat 8g of ibuprofen.

A two night stay at the vets was £580 with all his treatment etc.

BJV

I would love to insure but TBH when I looked at all the different exclusions it confuses me to death.

aniahill

BJV wrote: »

I would love to insure but TBH when I looked at all the different exclusions it confuses me to death.

I think this is part of it too - because there are SO many options and so many descenting opinions on which company is good and balancing cost against reliability...

aniahill

ChopperST wrote: »

Unless you are cash rich pet insurance is a no brainer, unless you are happy to euthanise should the worst happen.

I own a German Shepherd and the breed is prone to stomach and hip problems. A hip operation is around £3.5k, good luck saving that up.

It costs £16 a month to insure him for £10,000 per condition for life.

He managed to get in our medicine cabinet last year and eat 8g of ibuprofen.

A two night stay at the vets was £580 with all his treatment etc.

I know it makes sense to insure in light of these facts, my concern then comes what happens if after one condition, my renewal then becomes £100/month and I can't go anywhere else with this condition?

I think what I might do is try for a seemingly good insurance and try to also save for a contingency plan in case it suddenly becomes a lot more expensive!

ChopperST

Then you have to consider that at the time if it is economical to consider continuing the insurance. Pets unfortunately can be expensive.

vaio

aniahill wrote: »

I know it makes sense to insure in light of these facts, my concern then comes what happens if after one condition, my renewal then becomes £100/month and I can't go anywhere else with this condition?......

Then you'll need to self insure.

Be aware that as you seem to have a liking for "lame duck" felines you can pretty much guarantee that any existing conditions will be excluded

Goldiegirl

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Brilliant

A second hand cat ? As opposed to a new one?

Saving into the kitty

Love it :rotfl:

vaio

ChopperST wrote: »

Unless you are cash rich pet insurance is a no brainer, unless you are happy to euthanise should the worst happen.

I own a German Shepherd and the breed is prone to stomach and hip problems. A hip operation is around £3.5k, good luck saving that up.

It costs £16 a month to insure him for £10,000 per condition for life.....

Nice choice of breed, our GSD had a flat (rather than sloping) back and didn't have hip problems (other than when it was bath time & suddenly his poor back legs became incapable of making it over the rim of the bath but miraculously recovered when it was time to go swimming in the local lake)

There was a thread on here last year about these "insure for life" pet policies, because they are annual policies the T&C can be changed so the "insure for life" bit isn't binding on the insurer and even if it was all they need to do is jack the premium up.

There will come a point (£16 is fine, what about £160/month? or £1600/month?) where it become unaffordable.

dunstonh

We self insured our last dog and was well into profit until the final years of his life. He had to have a hip operation and then got diabetes. We ended up worse off by a couple of thousand but it could easily have gone the other way.

We insure our current dog.
We also insure our horses but everything is bigger and more expensive with horses!

dacouch

vaio wrote: »

There was a thread on here last year about these "insure for life" pet policies, because they are annual policies the T&C can be changed so the "insure for life" bit isn't binding on the insurer and even if it was all they need to do is jack the premium up.
.

If you mean Halifax withdrawing from offering lifetime cover, the Ombudsman ruled against them in a group action