I was speaking to someone in my village when I was walking my dog and they were telling me about how they went about paying for their pets' vet bills. They have a massive leonberger dog and had 3 cats and it was impossible for them to find anyone that would insure their dog at a reasonable price.
As nothing is 100% guaranteed to go wrong with one pet but 101 things may go wrong with another, insurance can sometimes lose or save you money and it usually comes with an excess (you have to pay a certain amount before the insurance company will pay out. eg. excess of £100, bill of £500 you pay £100 and they pay £400) and sometimes the condition your pet has might be in a sneaky clause that says the insurance will not cover you for x,y, or z.
The way they put aside money for the dreaded vet bills was that they had a bank account that they put however much it would cost to insure the cats each month into this bank account and if anything was to go wrong with the pets they would use the money specifically for the pets in the bank account. This paid off because although unfortunately the cats had to be put to sleep (the condition was not such that the cats could recover) - they both had strokes - age 2 and 12. As euthanasia is relatively cheap compared to any operation they still had money left over which came in useful when their dog a few months later had a £900 operation on her foot to remove a tumour - which if they had not put the money away, the operation would not have been possible. In this particular case they would have been paying out for the cats (for which would have not been helpful) and had no money set aside for their dog.
This is just something to make you think and NOT telling you to do this or not to do this. Whichever you pick it is a risk as both ways have the potential to save you a fortune or lose you a fortune as it is a risk due to the cost of insurance that may or may not be necessary and if you don't insure then the cost may be more than you have had chance to save by putting away the cost of insurance each month. My dog is insured for £14 a month and so far *fingers crossed* she has had nothing that we needed to claim on the insurance for, however, my grandma has just claimed a lot (don't know exact figures) for tumours around the eyes that needed removing. But as shown above this way benefited for this family. Please see my Pet Insurance post for more information on that.
But which ever method you decide to use to put aside money for operations etc it is your decision and I am sure there are even more options depending on your circumstances. But I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you definitely put money away/insure in case something does go wrong. People think it doesn't happen to them but it does. At my time on work experience I have seen multiple animals having to be sent to cat or doggy heaven because the owners simply cannot pay. For example just the other week a 2yo cat that needed surgery to either fix or amputate. Fix - very expensive. Amputate - about £600. Euthanasia - £60. However, the next day a cat that had been hit by a car needing a slightly different operation - displacement of hock - that needed drilling and tying the bones back together had the option of surgery as it was insured. Things do go wrong so make sure you are prepared! It may just happen to you!
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