The 3rd Decade Podcast
The 3rd Decade Podcast
How Pets Fit Into Your Finances
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Join Scott Bennett & veterinarian Dr. Sarah Neuser as they discuss some of the costs associated with owning pets, in addition to how you can minimize certain expenses through preventative care. Additionally, Dr. Neuser goes over some of the benefits of holding Pet Insurance, as well as what to look for when price shopping and selecting your plan.
How's it going, everyone. Thank you for tuning into the 3rd Decade podcast. My name's Scott Bennett . And today we're talking about pet ownership and specifically the cost of owning pets. How much should we the budget for our pets? And what about pet insurance? When reviewing budget sheets and talking with 3rd Decaders, one of the line items that has some of the widest ranges is pet ownership and how much people spend. So we wanted to address costs and , owning pets. I know for a lot of 3rd decaders, their pets are one of their biggest expenses. So in order to do that, we were fortunate enough to have one of our graduates, Dr. Sarah Neuser, who is a veterinarian and, and as , also, as you'll hear a really big advocate and somebody who has thought about cost specifically, in terms of pets, we also talk about preventative ways to hopefully lower costs or lower the risk of cost down the road. Her thoughts was extremely helpful. We had her on t oday to talk through pet ownership, and Sarah provides a ton of insight into different ways to think about the cost of owning your pets and how to deal w ith it. So here i s my conversation with D r. Neuser. I hope you a ll e njoy D r. Neuser. Thank you so much for coming on and agreeing to talk with us about this .
Dr. Sarah NeuserIt's been my pleasure. I've been looking forward to it all week.
Scott BennettGood, good, good. So you have a really unique perspective of being a pet owner yourself and knowing everything that could potentially go wrong with pets as well, because you see it and how much that might cost. How much do you personally think about your , uh, expenses and stuff in terms of owning your pet ?
Dr. Sarah NeuserYeah, that is a great question. Um, and so I think it's helpful if you know, a little bit about me and my background, so that I can give you like what my perspective is on my animals . Yeah . That'd be awesome. Um, so I am from Minnesota. I graduated from their veterinary program a couple of years ago and , um, moved on to Tucson. I work in a small animal general practice , um , type of setting. And so whenever , um , I think about veterinary care, right? There's a lot of different things to consider. There's where you live. Are you in a big city? Are you rural? What kind of animals are you treating? Um, dogs. Cats is what are go to is, but lots of people have horses. Cows, pigs are becoming a really big , um , pet for people, pot , belly pigs. They're so smart, so friendly , um, Guinea, pigs, birds. So like there's a lot of different types of animals that are really important to think about. I have two pets of my own. So I, when I was in vet school, did the vet school thing and adopted one of my surgery patients <laugh> , she was the pretty young cat . So her name is baby G and she's four years old is just a little monster and a terror anda sweetheart. Um, and then when my husband and I got married, I inherited his dog. So we have a dog and a cat , um, and her name is Maddie and she's like a 10 ish year old German shepherd, Husky mix. And so , um, you know, when you ask this question, knowing all these things that could wrong and, and how much that might cost and how much I think about my expenses, it's really specific to who I am as a veterinarian, what I can provide for them and also where they are at, in their life . So , um, obviously there are the things that you think about for pet care off the top of your head. Like how much does their food cost and , um, you know, are they on any sort of monthly preventative medications or chronic medications for old age? Um, you think about, you know, do they go to doggy daycare ? Do you have to find a pet sitter for them when you go up on vacation? Um, those types of things, of course. So , um, quite frequently I tell them that they should get jobs and they should really start contributing to , um, their expenses. But so far they are , you know, just providing me love and support and, you know, snuggles. So I guess that works <laugh> . Um, but other than that, you know, I think about, there are things that as a general practitioner, I can't do for my pets. I am not qualified . Like if Madie , my dog , um, broke her back, I couldn't do back surgery on her mm-hmm <affirmative> . And so, like, she would need to go to a specialist in order for that procedure to be done. Um, and you know, aside from the fact that I don't like operating on my own pets, because there's a pretty strong emotional connection to that . I'm not interested in, u m, you know, going through, but, but yeah. U m, we think about our expenses for them all of the time, because, you know, w e're a ll, I do know the worst of it and, a nd I see the worst of it. I mean, most of the time, most of our pets are pretty healthy a nd, a nd that's what I want the average pet owner to have. U m, but then I do see the worst of it when I'm at work. So I'm always kind of thinking about what does that look like for them? I d on't k now if I even answered your question.
Scott BennettYeah you did. And, and so it's something that comes up and you think about it? You , you are in a unique position , uh , cuz you can do some know the preventative stuff and everything else that you can do. For the person who's not a vet as yourself, is there an , an amount or something you , you think people should have saved for their pets? Is there something , you know, when we go through a budget with people, right ? You're like 50% of your bills are , must pay and 20% should go towards financial goals and 30% towards discretionary. A lot of people I think would put pet costs in their must pay like in and most people would. So , um , and that could eat up a chunk of it. So when you think about kind of saving for pets, is there, is there a line that you can point to or not really?
Dr. Sarah NeuserYeah. That is such a hard question and it touches on because there's just so many variables , things like where are you , um, are you an emergency setting in a specialty setting? Uh , did you wait through five days of vomiting to decide that your pet needs to be seen now? Well now you have to go to an emergency hospital versus have you brought them into your general practitioner on day one of vomiting. Maybe you could have gotten away with some, you know, less expensive costs because we could have done more supportive care. Um, I think one of the tricky things too about vetmed and what makes that question so hard is that yeah, you talk about, there are people who, there's not a number they wouldn't pay for their pets. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> um, but then in all truthfulness it sometimes isn't about a number that people could or want to pay it's about what people have mm-hmm <affirmative> um , and so many, many times in my position I've been, I've been told I have $100. What can you do? And honestly, that's not very much right . And so it is really, what we talked about earlier is that it can be really frustrating c uz my goal is always to advocate for, u m, pits and you know, what the best h ealthcare options are for them. U m, but I, I have to work within a budget. U m, so I would say just as like general c osts a nd t hings to think about, I know this will probably go out to, u m, all of the 3rd Decade locations, but I'm in Arizona. So some of my examples are g onna be location specific, but I can tell you that if, u m, your dog is out in the b ackyard and gets bit by a rattlesnake, that's at least a $ 1,200 emergency. Wow. And, and it's because of the cost of the antivenom. And so I'd say if you had a thousand dollars, that's a good starting point. Um , for some of those bigger emergencies you can, you get away with less for um, like maybe a vomiting or diarrhea. Sure. Yeah. Um, but is it gonna be upwards, multiple thousands of dollars if there's like a true traumatic injury possibly. Yeah. So I think a thousand dollars gets you in the door, it gets you diagnostics. It probably gets you some supportive care. Um, but yeah, it's not easy. And then also something that , we don't always think about because it doesn't pertain in human medicine as much, but um, the size of your animal often matters to the cost of its treatment. So the cost of medications for a five kilogram dog is much different than when someone brings me a MASTIF or a Saint Bernard or a great Dane . And I have to quadruple the amount of medications or supportive care that I'm offering, or it takes me twice as many staff to do the same procedure. Um , and so that's also something to take in mind. Um , and you'll hear people say , um, veterinarians, that the first year of your pet's life is expensive and then like kind of towards like year seven, eight as they get older and start entering those geriatric years, those are expensive. But the in between is usually pretty much preventative care, hopefully all things go well. You have to budget kind of for those different timeframes of your pet's life too, which is ki nda a weird thing to think about.
Scott BennettYeah , but I never thought of it that way of like, okay, here when their puppies you're going all the time to the vet and chances of the they're gonna swallow something like my dog did. Then later on it is all the preventative, before getting to all the meds tick up the visits tick up . That makes some sense. But I know for humans, there's been study after study that show, if you go to a general practice doctor and do preventative care, you end up saving money, even though that trip, you know, costs you some money to do, but in the long run you can hopefully avoid some of the bigger bills. I'm sure that's the same in veterinary medicine, right?
Dr. Sarah NeuserOh my gosh, this is the soapbox I will die on <laugh> um , for sure. Um, yeah, so I , you know, one of the questions that we had talked about is what are ways that pet owners can save money. Right. And I am here for that because I am a pet owner myself. <laugh> . Yeah. Um , and, and , um , so there's, if you don't mind, I'm just gonna go right into it.
Scott BennettYeah, please .
Dr. Sarah NeuserThere's a couple of things. So number one , the best thing I can recommend is that you are going to your veterinarian at least once a year, some pets benefit from twice a year. Um, we are really good at physical exams. We are really good at picking up on those slight and subtle changes that happen that as pet owners, all of a sudden, you don't always recognize, like how did my dog gain 25lbs well , I don't know either, but I am recognizing it, but it's so fun . I touched on I'm from Minnesota. I think food is love. Um , right. And I think as people have been home this last year, especially, and , um, spending more time with their pets and getting used to maybe some of the things that their pets do when their home with , vs when we're out. Now that we are , we're feeding them more and I'm seeing that in the clinic. And so , Purina did a really cool study. It was called a lifespan study where they took 48 or 50 puppies , um, from seven liters, split them statistically. And then let half of them eat as much food as they wanted growing up. They were not regulated. And then the other half they reduced, they just fed them for what their ideal body condition score was supposed to be. Um, a couple months into the study, the first group, they had to actually cut back how much they were letting those dogs eat because they had no self control . Um , they didn't know how to maintain a body weight . Um, so then there was a little bit of a limit, but they found that over the course of like the 16 year study, d ogs who had a restricted diet lived 15% longer.
Scott BennettWow.
Dr. Sarah NeuserWhich in labs is like two years, year and a half to two years, and so it is the really think that feeding a high quality balanced diet in the right proportion is the best thing you can do for your dog. Yeah . Um, and that's so tricky because marketing will have you thinking otherwise, and it'll have really well meaning people, moms and pet dads and trying to feed the best diet , but that's not always the right thing for them. So preventative food is the best thing. Um, toothbrushing, one of the costs of veterinary care is dentistry just like in our mouths, if we didn't brush our teeth , um , for years, our teeth would fall out. Um , and pets, their teeth are shaped differently than ours. Their jaws are shaped a little differently than ours, so they have some advantages. Um, but truly if you can do once a day toothbrushing , um, that could save you a $500 or a $2,000 dental surgery to have teeth removed. And ultimately I'm preventing pain, cuz I don't know if you know this, but broken teeth hurt. Abscessed teeth hurt. Those things are painful. And as p et owners you know, those a re things we can be thinking about. U m, and then, you know, the other thing I always laugh about when I talk about pet c osts is, you know, what my dog's favorite thing to do is go on a walk. Yeah . That is her favorite thing and it is free. Um, and, and so, you know, when we talk about the human animal bond and we talk about , um, what pets mean to us and how we can keep them healthy, how we can keep their brains healthy walking is one of the best things that we can do for ourselves as humans. Um , but also for our pets and , and their brains. Um , so, and that's that doesn't cost anything. It costs you half an hour in the morning, half an hour at night, maybe. I mean, depending on how big your dog is, how much energy those , some of those crazy pups, they need more great. Yeah . But you know, that's what I got . My cat is eating my he phone cord . So I would just like to apologize. This is real life.
Scott BennettReal life. One thing that Nikki and I have actually talked about that I am a complete novice on and, and have not done enough research, admittedly is pet insurance itself. So what can you share with us about pet insurance? How often do you see it? How is it, how comparable is it to human insurance? When is it a good versus not? If there is some rules of thumb, if you could just give us a little bit of a run down there, that'd be really helpful.
Dr. Sarah NeuserSo I have a love, hate relationship with pet insurance. Um, and I love it because I have seen it save lives. I have seen , um, I mean, just this last weekend, a friend of mine who is , um, if I home in Minnesota called me and he said, my dog has to go to the emergency hospital. Uh , there's a splenic tumor and it's bleeding out and my dog needs emergency surgery and that surgery and the aftercare is gonna cost him about $8,000. Um, wow . And he has insurance. He has the right type of insurance. And so his outof pocket is gonna be like $600- $800 . And I think , um, that is one of the biggest blessings that I can give people is just to say, I can fix this if you can come up with the money. And if you have insurance, you don't even have, think about coming up with the money as long as you know, what it is . I've also seen insurance be really frustrating for pet owners because it , um, is still relatively new. I think in the UK, it's a lot more popular than it is here. Um , most, I don't know what the percentage is. A lot of pets in the UK , um, are on pet insurance and in the U.S., We're still getting people there. Sure. Um, but it's challenging because there are so many different types and there is a lot of fine print. And if you don't know what the fine print says, you can get into a lot of trouble and it may or may not be an advantage to you. Um, and so I have had my pets on insurance before , um, and I benefited greatly things that you need to know about for insurance are, oh my gosh, so many things , uh , you need to know what does it cover? So is it basic, you know, just accidents, is it illness? It does some pet insurances are starting to cover preventative and care . Um , is it chronic diseases, but you also have to know what they don't cover. So , um, breeds of dogs that are short faced , they're called brachycephalic. Um, they often have respiratory problems. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and because their faces make it hard for them to breathe , um, and horrible dental problems. And there are an insurance plans who will do , um , breed specific legislator, like will have breed specific exclusions that say, if you have a short face dog, we're not gonna cover its dentistry, for example. And so you need to know those types of things before you get that type of insurance. Right. Um, otherwise there's just no advantage to you, right. Um, you also need to know that like the cheapest insurance, just like in human medicine, it doesn't always cover everything. Um , so things I tell people to, to look for is what is the monthly cost and that will vary. Um, I mean, it's really easy to go online and type in pet insurance and get quotes from different companies. Um, so you can do that and it'll tell you what your monthly cost is. And it I've seen people struggle with this because they'll pick the one that's the cheapest and I get that world budgeting. Um , um, but it doesn't tell you necessarily what is your deductible and is that deductible per year, which, you know, if you have a $300 deductible per year, that's fine. You can probably , you might meet that. That's not horrible. Um, is that deductible per condition. So every time your pet comes to me for a different thing, you have to meet that deductible mm-hmm <affirmative> . So it comes to me for an eye problem. It comes to me for diarrhea. It comes to me for a skin mass . Those are three different problems. Um, and you know, maybe that plays into your finances. Um, you also need to be careful with pet insurance because some of them have payout. Um , and so if you have a dog, I keep using dogs cuz I think they're the most common.
Scott BennettThey're most common probably too. And probably more expensive or the most because of the weight thing, like you said
Dr. Sarah NeuserSize . Yeah . They can be. Yeah. Um , so I'll keep using them, but again, this applies to lot of creatures. Yeah . Um , but there's payout limits too. So some insurance companies will say we'll pay out , but only up to $10,000 or only up to maybe even $3,000. Well that doesn't serve you either. If you have a $15,000 surgery and I mean maybe it does, it helps take off some of those costs and, but you need to know those things up front. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . Um , and so those are, those are really critical, you know, as a, as a veterinarian, I've used multiple ones and I've like my cat that I had when I was in high school , it was interesting because I got her insurance and then , um , but she already had some pretty bad oral disease. Right. So her preexisting condition was that her teeth were really bad and she needed a pretty expensive dental surgery. Hmm . Um, but then a new condition that popped up after that was that she ended up having some chronic kidney disease and um, and so that her kidney disease was it covered up to what all of the deductions and the monthlys were for the rest of her life. Yeah . Um , and that was amazing because one of the things about kidney disease is that you need to feed them a special food. Um, and her food was covered because it was a prescription diet and a recommendation from her veterinarian at the time . So it's tricky because there's just so much that goes into it. Um, but I would say that people who want to talk pet insurance should really, the best thing that they can do is go to their veterinarian and say, Hey, what do I need to know specifically about my pet? You know, my pet is one years old. Um , maybe you can get away with just some accident insurance because they're about to get into some trouble, you know? Yeah. Um , they probably don't need everything else or , but it also depends on too, how comfortable you are to spending money. And so going to your vet and saying, what are the things t hat my p et is predisposed to? What do I need to watch out for w hat, you know, those types of things can be r eally helpful
Scott BennettIt sounds a lot like , the people who run human insurance, are running pet insurance as well, cuz there's so many parallels. Is it the same where you have to worry about your vet, accepting a certain type of insurance? Is that the same or is it kinda universal?
Dr. Sarah NeuserSo that's a great question. I don't exactly know the answer. I think most of the time, the way that it plays out with most insurance companies is that you pay the cost upfront and then the insurance company reimburses you up to whatever percentage point. And so in theory, then any vet that you would go to, it would be covered , but not necessarily. There's different modalities. So like if you were going to a pet acupuncturist, that's maybe is like not the type of care that's gonna be covered under your plan.
Scott BennettRight. So it's all about reading the fine print. Exactly. Like regular insurance, but shocking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shocking. Um, but it's, it's so helpful to think. And so many people, again, I , I don't even, I love my dog and I never thought about pet insurance. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and it's something that I think most people don't think about mm-hmm <affirmative> so that's really, really helpful. And, and to know that it is new and that it's probably slash hopefully just gonna get better, right. More and more competition, more people , uh , looking into it like insurance has as a whole, there's been some improvements I think is really good to know. Well, Dr . Neuser is there anything that we didn't touch on today that you'd like to touch on in terms of being a pet owner? Or do you think we, we hit on it all.
Dr. Sarah NeuserI would say my number one recommendation for people is to just build a relationship with their veterinarian. Um, you know, it's, it's like going to your regular GP or going to your regular dentist, the better your relationship is with them. You , and you have to find someone you trust. If you don't like your veterinarian. I that's. Okay. People don't, you know, not everyone gets along with everyone. Find someone who works for you, who has those same like philosophies. Um, you know, what I would do for my pets is maybe not the same as you would do for yours. That's okay. Um, most veterinarians are trained to give you the best treatment plan. The one that we know works or is most likely to succeed. Um, and, but if you have a relationship with your veterinarian, you can say, Hey, I'm in a tight spot right now. What can we do? Um, and if you have a relationship with your veterinarian where you trust that they are, are doing the best thing for you and, and most are truly , um, we did not get into this profession to make millions , we just don't. But most people, most vets can find a way to work with you and say, Hey, let's try this first. If this doesn't work, then we can move on to plan B if we can move on to plan C. Um , and so that relationship is really critical. I think for people who are, are trying to figure out , um , you know, the best way to save money. And, and if you have that relationship, sometimes you can call and say, Hey, my dogs having diarrhea. Can I try some meds for a couple of days first before, you know, I take 'em in for a big workup. And depending on the, you know, veterinarians, we operate , um , within a one year timeframe, it takes us one year. So from when we establish a relationship with your pet, we have something called a veterinary client patient relationship. And that's good for legally. Um , that's good for one year, which means, you know, some within that next year, we might be able to help without necessarily seeing them. That's not always true. Like if you came to me in March just a wellness exam and then you call me in December and say, well, it's it, hasn't, it hasn't been a whole year, but their back is really painful. I'm still probably gonna recommend an exam, cuz I think that's the best medicine , um , to make sure that something more serious isn't going on. Um, but you know, if you call me in April and say, Hey, my dog's just having a little bit of diarrhea. I did see that they got into the trash. I don't think there was anything toxic in there. What do you recommend? I can probably help. You know, there's, there's different ways that I can and that comes from, you know, back and forth. I always tell people that , um, I'm very good at my job, but if I recommend something that you can't at home, I don't need non-compliant owners. I don't need it. It's not helpful to me. It's not helpful to you. It's not helpful to your pet. Um, and so if I have that relationship with you , um, that is, that is where we find that sweet spot where your pet gets the best care. So that is like my biggest recommendation , um, is just to build the , that relationship
Scott BennettThat makes total sense. That it's really helpful too, cuz you don't, most people don't think about their vet that way. I don't think. And it is helpful . We have that luckily with our vet and I can think of our dog has pretty bad allergies and she said, well, we , we need to get her on this hypoallergenic diet. And then she said, wait, you have two really young kids. There's no way you're gonna be able to keep her from eating anything, you just can't. So let's try some other things. And for my wife and I, after looking at the price tag of this dog food, we're like , uh , I don't know. And she said, there's no way. So it , it makes total sense to, you know, have that cuz she, what she knew our lives and knew what we were dealing with and then could apply it to her dog and she's been able to solve it without the huge price tag for us, which is nice. So , um, well again, thank you so much for, for coming on. This is something that I don't know, many people are talking about, especially in , in terms of expenses and it's really awesome to have a professional like yourself who could share some of your experience and stuff with us and with the whole 3rd Decade. So thanks again.
Dr. Sarah NeuserMy pleasure. Um , happy to come back if you guys have follow up questions.
Scott BennettThanks everybody for listening and thanks again to Dr. Neuser. I hope you all enjoyed and we'll talk to you again in a couple weeks.