Blind Spots: Pet Edition
I love dogs. I grew up with a dog and never pass up an opportunity to pet a random dog on the street. If the boys keep asking hard enough, we might actually get one for our household soon, too.
Buddy, my childhood friend, showing off part of his Michael Jordan jersey collection.
In my 10+ years of coaching, though, I've realized that pets are one of the biggest financial blind spots for families. It never fails. When I'm going through the initial budget with a new client, and we get to the pet category, the answer is always some form of, "Oh, we spend almost nothing on pets. Probably just a $50 bag of food every few months."
That's when my eyes get really, really big. Pet expenses are secretly crushing people's finances from right under their noses. Yeah, that bag of dog food might only cost $50, but all the other things we don't think about cost hundreds.....or thousands. And the vet expenses!!!! Here's what a typical vet expense monthly rhythm looks like: $0, $0, $0, $0, oh crap! That "oh crap!" moment is where the wheels fall off, and where the math works against us. Pets get sick. Pets get hurt. Pets make poor choices.
I didn't want this piece to be merely anecdotal, so I dug into my client files to find some real-world data. I looked up 8 active clients who have 2+ years of pet data. Here's what it looks like (in order of my research discovery):
$9,130 over 51 months = $179/month
$5,860 over 21 months = $279/month
$6,815 over 47 months = $145/month
$5,850 over 45 months = $130/month
$11,730 over 24 months = $489/month
$15,744 over 24 months = $656/month
$4,320 over 36 months = $120/month
$16,482 over 41 months = $402/month
In total, these eight randomized clients had an average monthly pet spend of just over $260/month. I don't know about you, but that's a tad bit different than a $50 bag of food every other month. These families range anywhere from $120/month to $656/month, with unexpected vet bills being the key driver of how high this category can get.
Pets are also one of the main culprits of credit card debt, as there's a deeply emotional component to this. When faced with a life-or-death decision regarding our beloved pets, it's hard to emotionally look ourselves in the mirror and put a rational price tag on our go/no-go decision. Thus, we simply act now and sort it out later. This is having some pretty harsh consequences for families.
Again, this isn't an indictment of pets or pet ownership. Rather, this is my encouragement to make decisions with our eyes wide open. It's totally okay to financially prioritize pets, but we ought to understand what we're really getting into from a financial perspective. The same goes for other categories, too! Eyes wide open is always the best approach. That way, our cute little pets (and all the other choices we make) can truly be blessings in our lives, and not pain points.
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