This is a reader comment that summed up the rationale behind pet spending very well, in my opinion. Let me know what you think!
I think the negative reaction to pet spending, and pet health spending in particular, is due to people’s inability to see money for what it is: liquid effort. Nobody would expect a pet owner to put their pet to sleep rather than spend 30 minutes a day applying a special ointment or preparing a certain food. But 30 minutes a day for a year is the time equivalent of a month spent at an 8-5 job! In other words, 1/12th of the average person’s 
annual income-generating effort. If you wanted to, you could spend that time generating income and bring in an extra few thousand dollars during the year.
Another thing that gets said is "If you have thousands of dollars to spend on a dog, you should use it to save lives in some third-world country" (or something similar). Why are we afraid of the obvious retort: "I care more about my dog"? It’s simply true. We have no emotional attachment to a faceless entity in another country, but we have a strong emotional attachment to our pet. And since money is only liquid effort, you might as well suggest that if the questioner has 30 minutes a day to spend watching television, they should use that time instead to raise money to save lives in some third-world country! That is exactly what they just told you to do, and choosing television over a person’s life is even less defensible than choosing a pet’s life over a person’s life, if they really want to play that game.
I buy pet insurance for about $90 per cat, per year, and I most people think even that is silly. Good grief, that’s less than their food costs each year, by half! It’s a drop in the bucket, and it saves me from ever having to make a money-based decision about the life of an animal I care about. Most people just don’t think or behave rationally on this topic, or on many other money topics for that matter.
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I thought this comment did a great job at squashing some of the retorts people use in regards to pet spending. I also really enjoyed his idea of the spending just being “liquid effort.” If you would spend 30 minutes a day to apply an ointment, as he says, you could also spend 1/12th of your annual take home pay to fix your pet.
I'm MLR. After graduating from college debt free, I decided to write a blog encouraging people to adapt responsible and sensible personal finance rules.
August 31st, 2009 at 10:42 am |
That truly is a great comment, thanks for sharing it MLR! I’ve had animals all of my life, up until moving out of my parents house a week ago. There’s something very lonesome about being in an empty apartment, with no kitty! (I’d love to get one, but my boyfriend is allergic.) I’m sure it would be different if I hadn’t grown up with animals, but it’s still a very real feeling of loneliness. I think pet spending is a lot like spending money to go out with friends, or see a friend: it’s a hedge against loneliness. Pets bring a lot of entertainment and enjoyment, but their main function is companionship. That’s a hard thing to put a price on, which is why people struggle with the question of how much to spend to save the life of their pets, I think.
Stephanie PTY´s last blog ..Announcing the Back-to-School Shuffle for a Shuffle Giveaway!
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MyLifeROI Reply:
September 1st, 2009 at 11:20 am |
@Stephanie PTY,
You could always get a hypoallergenic cat right?! I have no idea what they cost, I just know they exist :)
“A Hedge Against Loneliness” — I like that… I’ll have to bring that up with someone next time they bring up pet spending!
Thanks for your thoughts!
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August 31st, 2009 at 3:17 pm |
I don’t think pet insurance for cats makes sense becus, having been a lifetime cat owner, my experience has been that they don’t get sick until they’re seriously ill, and when that happens, i spend out of pocket rather than shell out $100 a year for 10 years with no need. My cats are indoor cats so that eliminates the need for risky vaccinations.
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MyLifeROI Reply:
September 1st, 2009 at 11:23 am |
@fern,
Pet insurance, like auto insurance and health insurance and every other type of insurance, is a way to smooth out your expected expenditures by pooling your risk.
The normal argument is that “$100 per month for 10 years won’t effect you nearly as much as a $1,000 bill all at once.” Now, if you put $100 per month into an expected pet spending account or something, that is different.
Do realize, though, that the main reason I posted this comment was for his rationalization of pet spending, not so much his advocacy of pet insurance (even though I do understand where he is coming from).
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September 2nd, 2009 at 4:18 pm |
there’s a lot more to life than working as hard as you can for money and saving everyone else’s life. Optimizing to the nth degree takes an infinite amount of effort!
having a pet is about bringing joy in your life. if you’d rather adopt an orphan that’s your choice, but you shouldn’t expect everyone else to have the same level of commitment.
Living Off Dividends & Passive Income´s last blog ..How To Invest Like China
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September 5th, 2009 at 1:19 am |
First, I like the concept of money as ‘liquid effort’. When you’re young and working for the bulk of your money, thinking of expenditures in terms of how long you would need to work to earn the money or vice versa, the amount of money you could earn by working rather than doing something else, isn’t a bad way to view how you spend your money or free time. Although, it does put you in the position of trying to decide whether each hour of TV is worth the loss of theoretical income.
Going back to the post that inspired this comment, I think part of the problem is the ‘big sum, all at once’ issue. If you told someone that your pet had a disease that required food costing an extra $25 dollars each month, hardly anyone would bat an eye, while spending $3000 in one fell swoop for, say, an operation, tends to draw quite a reaction. This occurs even though the total amount for the former situation will equal $3000 after ten years (if my math is right) and can ultimately cost more. Just one of the many quirks of human nature.
As for the suggested retorts to someone questioning your priorities (particularly in favoring your pet over a nameless foreign human), while they are good in theory, I’d hold on using them in real discussions. At best, you can expect to get more flack from anyone who doesn’t understand your connection to your pet (which is pretty much anyone who would raise this objection to begin with), and at worst, you can find yourself arguing all your spending priorities with someone who not only doesn’t watch TV, but works a part time job for more money to donate to his pet causes in order to ‘give more back’. Finding yourself being questioned about whether you’ve cut back on your television viewing in order to work more to, in turn, cover your pet’s expenses is not really the sort of conversation that anyone wants to have with a (soon-to-be former) friend.
Roger´s last blog ..Some of My Pet Peeves
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