Correct, but as I mentioned with houses and cars one claim will literally be more than a lifetime of insurance payments. I pay ~$600 a year for homeowners right now. ~$600 a year for car insurance as well. Say that over my next ~50 years of driving/living in a house that I own it averages out to $1k per year. (Should be reasonable as car insurance should get cheaper with age but add inflation, then house will likely be downsized towards retirement etc.) That is $50k over my life in payments for each.
One single claim from either of those (especially on the liability end) can easily be $250,000+ enough to bankrupt me. I also have a term life policy that costs $120 or so a year that would pay to my family $100,000 in the event of my death. Low probability event, but worth paying the premium to insure my family could continue on and pay the bills without me. This is where insurance is worth it. Also worth noting that house and car insurance aren’t even an option, but a legal requirement.
$240 a year to shield yourself from a $3,000 expense? Now that is where it isn’t worth it. There is such difficulties in getting claims made. Just google “pet insurance scam”. Same goes for electronics and any add on insurance on almost all sub $5k items. Every pet owner should realize things can and do come up from time to time and should easily have $3,000+ emergency fund considering many have kids, houses, cars, jobs etc. on top of owning a pet. One emergency fund can cover all kinds of things and only on the very rare “perfect storm” of things going wrong should one find it exhausted. I’m really not trying to get on OP here, as maybe her car broke down after a natural disaster causing a claim on her house and her washer went, and both her cats required surgery all at once etc. but those are rare times. I see gofundme all the time by people that I personally know who just literally don’t have $500 in the bank for a rainy day.
I basically had a lot of expenses that month when I found out, and prior to that the vet account had been substantially drained by very recent vet bills for my other cat, Helios. So I only had about $200 or so when I found out about the surgery.
In order to afford even as much as I DID pay, I went on the Australian equiverlant of food stamps and I had to have my rent subsidised in order to try and save up as much as possible. I was told $850 - so I saved up $790 and I was planning to pay the rest with my pay that week.
So the $1500 bill hit hard. Hence the donation drive.
While I know you’re not aiming directly at me in this case, this is still in relation to my own donation drive, so I’m going to say this - try not to judge people before you know their prior circumstances or their methods to be responsible. I’ve been selling cards, making home sacrifices, ect, in order to try my best to save up the funds. I simply couldn’t this time.
TBH, I think I’ve done plenty to make sure that people who donate know that I’m not doing this cause I didn’t put away for ‘a rainy day’, as you say. I’m doing it because things just got too much, too fast, and I need help.
@skinst I am not judging just speaking in general terms. I don’t know you or your situation, and you don’t really owe it to explain it to me either. I just have seen so many things in my personal circle (friends, family, co workers) where I do know the whole situation (or at least much more of it, it is hard to ever know it all) and there are just so many people out there who really suck. It is nice to see people pitching in and helping you so you can help your animals. It seems that in this case you were already having the procedures done, then figuring out what to do on the money end after. Your pets care was the first important thing. I have seen or heard of too many times where animals are put down or given up and passed into shelters in situations like this because of such irresponsible people not being remotely financially prepared to handle them nor caring to prioritize the pets health/well being over some money.
I know that I consider myself prepared, but I am sure the perfect storm of things going wrong could leave me in a similar situation with my 3 pets. I like to think the odds of me encountering that perfect storm are about 0.0000001% because I have prepared so well, but with 6 billion people in this world even at that rate tons of people would be in those situations as it is life and shit does happen. And again I know several people in my circles who have 3+ pets, 2+ kids, 2+ cars and a house and no e-fund at all. These kind of people are really what I am talking down in general as it is basically 50/50 in any given year whether or not they will be needing to start a gofundme to pay for something and the ones that suffer are their children and pets.
Fyi my pet emergency came out of nowhere and i had thought $300-550 would save my cat. A weekend passed, my cat passed away and i was given the surprise giant bill. I didnt know that it would become so complicated, fruitless, and expensive so quickly. Just wanted to save my cat. But it cudnt be done. A heart condition from birth (1 side of heart thick), led to heart attacks,dental disease, pnemonia, fluid in wrong places… the only good thing is that know i tried for him. And then after he passed i was able to take in a sick kitten, and saved her.