Vet Bill Savings Account

I am curious as to how many people here have a savings account set aside in case they need to take their animal(s) to a vet.

I forgot one question for the poll, so here it is.

6. No, I have a friend who is a vet and does the work for free.

I don't exactly keep it under my mattress, (because I have a king-sized waterbed, and those are REALLY heavy, lol) but I do always keep a spare amount of funds set aside for things like vet emergencies.

I just get irritated when someone has an animal get sick or broken and they do not have money or insurance to get proper treatment. That is why I started the poll. I have an extra account specifically for any vet bills that I may need to pay for, even if it is for a basic health check up.

On top of that, my wife is a vet assistant and is going in for an interview with an office that cares for reptiles!! So please keep your fingers crossed! Also, the vets at this office work at the San Diego Zoo, every once in a while they bring in exotic animals to care for, which my wife is excited about. Hopefully question number 6 will apply to me along with question one, at least an employee discount would be great.

That would be so neat for her (and you, lol) if she could get that job, good luck to her!

And yeah.....I've always been a firm believer that if you can't care for an animal, no matter WHAT emergency should come up....you shouldn't own one. But that's JMO.....

I don't keep money set aside, but if something happens, I find money right away. A few years ago, I was able to scramble together $400 selling a lot of old college books to try and save an impacted leopard gecko. My vet doesn't offer a payment plan and insurance is only offered on cats and dogs, so I have to be able to get money quick.

I would have to add a number 7 to the list. My wife is my Veterinarian.
And her practice actually participates in a program called I think Care Credit or something like that. It is used mainly in Regular Doctors (dentists mainly) but it comes with a 6 month repayment plan with the first three months being interest free.
They DO NOT accept payment plans. Too often the person with the plan did not seem to care about their animal too much and the practice ended up eating 1000+ dollars when they just disappeared.

I don't have specific funds allocated, but we do have savings at our disposal.

All of our animals receive routine care and any time I add a snake to our collection I always budget for a vet visit when considering how much I am going to spend on the animal. If something unexpected comes up, we find the money.

My herp vet has extended discount pricing to me because I have a growing collection with an eye on eventually breeding. I work with him in that I try and bring my animals in groups (at least for routine care).

I too am frustrated at the number of people who apparently believe that health care for their animals (particularly snakes) is optional. On another site there was a post recently that basically asked "does belly rot cure itself or do I have to go to a vet?". I felt like telling the person to surrender their animal to the nearest shelter/rescue.