Owning Pets Without Breaking Your Budget

We all love our pets, but we don’t always account for them when planning out our finances and budgeting.

Most of us see our pets as a member of the family and are willing to incur any costs to ensure their happiness. 

For example, our cat has a condition that requires us to purchase expensive food to maintain his health.

We don’t like the high cost of his prescription diet, but we are willing to cover this expense.

We pledged to take care of him when we adopted him and we will stand by that commitment. 

So, how can you ensure that owning pets and achieving your financial goals are not mutually exclusive? Here are a few things to consider:

Essential Expenses

You must first understand all of your essential expenses if you are going to achieve your financial goals.

And pet expenses can be a significant portion of your essential expenses.

First, you want to determine your annual expenses so that you can see what percentage of your expenses is related to your pets. 

This is a good baseline to determine how much these expenses will impact your savings rate as well as your annual net income.

Here are a few essential expenses that relate to pets that you should categorize:

• Food/Treats
• Medications/Vaccinations
• Veterinarian Visits
• Toys
• Training
• Living Items (Leashes, Food Bows, Bed)
• Bathing and Tidying Items (Litter, Doggie Bags, Shampoo)
• Pet Sitters or Boarding Fees

Non-Essential and Emergency Spending

How much does it cost to provide our pet or pets with everything they need? How often are we purchasing frivolous items for our pets?

A third set of questions to ask relate to future expenses.

Like humans, pets need more care as they get older.

It is important to understand and potentially prepare for these additional costs especially if you plan to have a set annual income when you incur the costs.

Paying for these costs may mean saving up more now to be prepared if a large expense is incurred for your pet in the future.

Here are two ways in which you can account for a large unexpected pet expense while being mindful of our financial goals:

• Simply add an amount (such as $5,000 per pet) to your savings goal
• Include an expense in your annual budget averaged out for number of years of life expectancy 

Let’s get into that last bullet for a minute.

For example, if the number of expected years left is 10 and you are continuing with $5,000/pet you would then have $500/pet for the next 10 years in your budget in addition to other recurring expenses.

Additionally, you can set this money in an investment that will compound if you are not using it.

This is similar to sticking money into a Health Savings Account, although without the great tax advantage.  

Both ways result in building in some financial protection and ensuring that you can cover any unexpected costs. 

You want to make sure you do some research into your pet’s species and even specific breed to determine potential costs in the future. 

For example, we learned from our veterinarian that we should have our cat’s teeth cleaned which gets pretty expensive.

Had we done a little bit of research we could have planned for this common expense to maintain our cat’s dental hygiene instead of paying it unexpectedly.

Final Thoughts

While pets may result in significant costs, they are companions that provide tremendous and priceless value to our lives.

However, that does not mean you should not be financially smart about your pets’ expenses.

You can help lessen the financial burden by setting financial goals and assessing your pet’s expenses, cutting down spending in certain categories if needed, and planning ahead so large costs are not unexpected.

Additionally, owning a pet may mean cutting back on eating out or traveling to achieve your desired savings goals.

But, this trade-off can be worth the companionship of owning a pet.

Tell us what you think, are you holding off adopting a pet because of the financial burden?