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If you don't have insurance- how much do you put aside each month for vet costs??

Ambience

Warren Veteran
I was just thinking today that maybe i ought to get insurance. I was wondering if it may work out cheaper in the long run. Then i read the policy document and said all your dentals have to be upto date, and that your cover doesn't start until 12 months from your last dental. Dental stuff like burring isn't covered and any pre-existing conditions.

Well i have alot of bunnies who have had contagious eye infections. I have adonia with pasturella. I have had sunny with dental disease and shadow with mallocursion also Blaze with molar spurs. So none of this would be covered and i'm paying out over £100 a month normally in vet bills anyway.

I was thinking do i pay for insurance about another £100 a month + the £50 excess where required or do i just carry on the way i am, savings abit more. The reason i've brought this up is i was wondering how much i need to have aside per rabbit if they happened to get ill at one time.

Insurance gives you upto £2000 cover per animal, so that would be £28,000 worth of cover. I doubt that i would be covered for the majority of things that may crop up. I know £100 a year insurance for one bunny is nothing compared to the costs i've had to pay for poorly bunnys so far.

I was wondering what does everyone put away or have available for vet costs should the need arise. Can you cover all of your bunnies if they were to fall ill at the same time? I know i couldn't cover the £28,000 if all mine were ill at once, so maybe insurance would be better?

I have an account for the bunnies that currently has £500.00 in and i have £100+ per month expenses on general routine vet treatment, not including vaccinations, spaying costs etc, which i contribute more too each month. I can also get help paying anything that crops up.

I was wondering if insurance is worth it, or should i just put another £100 aside and pay as problems crop up, which they invaribly do over time?

Any advice would be helpful,
Thanks
Ambience xx
 
I don't have insurance for my lot as overall I have 20 animals and insurance costs would be astronomical.

The majority of things I go to the vet for wouldn't be covered by the excess anyway,so I have a slush fund that is kept for vaccination costs, worming (all the routine stuff) plus £300+ kept as a "float" for any ad hoc things that arise
Everyone in the house contributes to the "Bunny Jar" by chucking change and a few quid in as we go (that usually pulls in a few hundred a year and covers the vaccs)

I have savings that I wouldn't hesitate to dip into if needed if something catastrophic happened, but I have the advantage of being able to get drugs at cost price (obv. with a prescription)
 
I don't have insurance for my rabbits so I put away the money I would otherwise spend on insurance (£30pm). I do have other savings that I can dip in to if I need to though.
 
I've been weighing this up too. At any one time I always have enough money for an emergency appointment + about £300 for treatment which would cover something urgent happening with one bun (I have 3 at the moment.) I think I might consider getting insurance for them when they are about 3 years old, so that by the time they're four, they're covered. They're all about 1 year old at the moment.
 
I've been weighing this up too. At any one time I always have enough money for an emergency appointment + about £300 for treatment which would cover something urgent happening with one bun (I have 3 at the moment.) I think I might consider getting insurance for them when they are about 3 years old, so that by the time they're four, they're covered. They're all about 1 year old at the moment.

Don't forget that if by the time they are 3 they have had previous health problems these will be excluded by the insurance and also I am pretty sure once they reach around 5 years most policies put the excess up :?
 
Thankyou everyone- would it be worth getting for my 5 rabbits that haven't had any ill health and just excluding the rest that have had some kind of problem, they are all around 3.

£31.67 would be the monthly cost- then the £50 excess with exotic direct. The way things are going, it wouldn't surprise me if i had something come up in the next few years. I seem to have a contagious eye infection going around at the moment.

Ama, lily and lucy have just come down with it, so i've put them on some terramycin and i'm going to take them to the vets next week if it doesn't clear up. It could of course be dental again. Hmmm i wonder if i am doing something wrong? I've changed diet and had sooo many problems since i cut pellets down to very little and increased veg and hay quantities. Maybe just coincidence. They will be into the vets anyway for a dental. All there teeth seem okay though.

Back to insurance- still torn on what to do.


BB Mommy , do you get your stuff through online companies like vetuk- i was just wondering if it works out cheaper. My vets are charging me about £20 for tiacil now( they change the prices as i go-they have gone up!) , and it's just over £5 online through a store i looked at. I'm thinking the prescription cost will be high though, and you have to have a consultation i believe, which is chargable. It would make much more sense to get a prescription for me as vet prices are so high, but i don't know where i can get one without having to pay a fortune for a prescription and consultation for them all, they all seem to charge as much.

BattleKat, seems like a sensible idea. I have 5 bunnys that haven't had any conditions - i can either pay the insurance company £32 or put that aside. Not sure what to do yet.

Candiflare, what age do they treat animals upto?

Hugo's There- Will anything related to eye infections or dentals be untreatable if i insure them, as some of mine have had both of these. I realise pasturella is out. If the eye infection cleared up- like it did for ares and sunny will it be classed as untreatable again if it we to reoccur.

Thanks everyone for your help :)
Ambience x
 
We have 12 buns. our vet bills for the last 3 years have been 2000-2200 a year (gulp). Insurance does nto cover innoculations - so take away 800. We looked at insurance and reckoned we would need 3expensive emergencies a year (at 300+) to make insurance worth it - we average about 2 expensive episodes so for us it is not worth it. It probably depends on how many buns you have and whether or not you feel you can cough up 500 with 24hr notice without selling your body. Not that mine would be worth much:lol:
 
Well I really um'd and ah'd about getting Dinky insured as I calculated it was worth it up to three and after that you may as well put money aside, but last year I claim on all three policies, (Dental/Stasis for Poppy/ Stasis for Sweetpea/ Anal Polpy removal/stasis/blood tests etc for Gus) over £1000 in total so thought it was worth getting Dinky insured as well
 
I had Fiver insured for a while but i honestly couldnt keep up the payments. at the time i was out of work so i was worried that if anything really bad happened that i couldnt afford it. I am now in work and cancelled the policy. i've also been thinking about getting Ellie and Fiver insured...it'd be about £20-£25 a month for them both with petplan. They have no previous problems but i still worry about long term problems like dentals or diseases.

I am luck and fortunately still live with my parents and i know that if anything happened my parents would cover the cost until i could pay them back.

The best thing i think would be is to have a jar like the other person posted :) Or even have a savings account and add to it when you have the money.

xx
 
Interesting thread. Sorry if this question is irrelevant:oops:

But for those of you who put your money to aside for 'pet savings' what account do you use?
- A savings account
- Basic Bank Account?

I'm not too sure which one is best to use as if anything happens to Velvet, you can use a bank card to pay for the vet bills anytime whereas you can't do that with your savings? So I am slighlty unsure which one is best to have.
 
Interesting thread. Sorry if this question is irrelevant:oops:

But for those of you who put your money to aside for 'pet savings' what account do you use?
- A savings account
- Basic Bank Account?

I'm not too sure which one is best to use as if anything happens to Velvet, you can use a bank card to pay for the vet bills anytime whereas you can't do that with your savings? So I am slighlty unsure which one is best to have.

Mine just stays in a current account so that if I have to rush to the vet I know I can just pay on the card and there won't be any problems. I do spend the money on other stuff when I've got a lot in there, I just always make sure I have a couple of hundred.
Any very expensive bills that might occur will come out of my long term savings account. No sense in having hundreds in a standard bank account with low interest when you probably won't need to get at it.
 
BB Mommy , do you get your stuff through online companies like vetuk- i was just wondering if it works out cheaper. My vets are charging me about £20 for tiacil now( they change the prices as i go-they have gone up!) , and it's just over £5 online through a store i looked at. I'm thinking the prescription cost will be high though, and you have to have a consultation i believe, which is chargable. It would make much more sense to get a prescription for me as vet prices are so high, but i don't know where i can get one without having to pay a fortune for a prescription and consultation for them all, they all seem to charge as much.

Ambience x

I still have to get a prescription, but I work for a large animal charity so I'm able to get goods, food and drugs at cost price.
I wouldn't bother for one-off treatments, but for long term problems like heart meds etc it would save me a fortune.
I get all my vaccs at cost price too
 
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