How Pet Insurance Can Save You Money

Here is a guest post written by my daughter, Heather Kalinowski. As the mom of a five-month-old baby boy and two dogs, she is always looking for ways to be thrifty. She works for Trupanion pet insurance and truly believes in the benefits – both financial and emotional – a pet insurance policy can provide.

In today’s economy everyone is looking for ways to save money. For pet owners, saving money requires evaluating even more things, including pet food, grooming costs, boarding or pet sitting expenses, and veterinary care.

Unfortunately, for many pet owners, veterinary care is the biggest thing that digs into the family budget. While expected expenses such as yearly exams, vaccinations, monthly flea medications, and dental care can be easily factored into the budget, the unexpected expenses like major injuries and illnesses can cause a huge amount of financial strain and can lead to heart-breaking decisions.

Pet insurance is one way pet owners can help protect their finances in these difficult situations. When a major medical condition develops in their pet, pet owners with insurance can easily and immediately opt for the best medical treatment available without worry of cost.

When you are trying to be thrifty, it can seem counter-intuitive to pay an insurance company a premium every month on the chance that it will pay off in the end. However, pet owners who cherish their pets as part of the family and who may not be independently wealthy need the financial reassurance that if something catastrophic does happen with their pet, they will be covered.

It makes a lot of sense when you consider how veterinary treatment has advanced in recent years and the increase in expense that comes with those advances. Medical conditions that were once thought to be fatal in pets like cancer and diabetes are now curable with veterinary care that rivals that available to humans.

But if you don’t have the funds to pay for these advanced services, you only have two choices – max out as many credit cards as possible, plunging yourself into debt, or make the heart-wrenching decision to leave your pet untreated. With pet insurance, you don’t have to worry about making this decision – you are financially covered and in the end, you end up saving up to thousands of dollars.

My baby is having a baby!

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned that my beautiful daughter Heather and her husband Joe are having a baby.  This last year has been a whirlwind in their lives.  It hasn’t been a year ago that I was at their beautiful wedding.

A special moment before the ceremony

The beautiful bride and her handsome husband

Not long after the wedding they announced that they were going to have a baby!

We're having a baby!

They soon found out that the little bundle was going to be a boy!

It's a boy!

Between now and then they have moved to a bigger apartment and bought a car big enough to carry the whole family including their fur kids Ava & Jackson.

Jackson & Ava

They set up the nursery,

Babys bed

Toured the Birthing Center, got the car seat inspected at the police station, chose a pediatrician, and made practice runs to the
hospital.  They have the bag packed & ready to take to the hospital and are ready to welcome their new son to the family.

Any day now!

It’s hard for me to take this all in within just one short year.  Time goes by so fast, it seems like it was only yesterday that I was bringing my baby girl home from the hospital, and now she will be bringing her baby home.  I know my daughter is the happiest woman alive right now, just as I was 30 some years ago, and I know that she and her husband are going to be great
parents!  I can’t wait until my third grandchild comes into this world.  It won’t be long now…I’ll keep you posted!