Can a pet lover become financially independent?

The cost of health care for pets is rising fast, maybe even faster than the cost of human health care.  That doesn't surprise me. In the past few years, our golden retriever Jake had multiple surgeries and chemotherapy to treat (unsuccessfully, in the end) intestinal cancer.  Our cat Nacho also had a round of chemo to treat (successfully so far, fingers crossed) an intestinal cancer.  But Oscar is truly the grand champion of pet care: an exploded kidney, ongoing ideopathic cystitis, and a random freak out that led to an emergency midnight MRI that showed a normal cat brain.

Interesting fact: cat MRIs are performed in the same machine a human MRIs, but they are scheduled at night, presumably because human patients don't like to share the waiting room with kitties.  Go figure.

And then there was the sex change.  That's right, Oscar is a trans-kitty.

Irrational pet owners

Economists like to think of people as rational actors.  Ha.  Not when it comes to pets.  I'll feign an indecisive look or scratch my chin when the vet mentions that it might be a good idea to send the latest ultrasound to UC-Davis so an expert veterinary radiologist can have a look, but I'm not fooling anyone.  I knew I was going to agree to whatever doc advised when I put my ailing beasty in the car.  How can you say no to these faces?

NACHO

JAKE

What price for a healthy pet?

Health care, whether for pets or people, doesn't come cheap.  But how much is "not cheap"?  Luckily, I have been keeping pretty good records (thanks Quicken!) of our household finances for several years, so I (by which I mean Quicken) added up the yearly cost of pet care for the 2000s.  And this is what I found.

To orient yourself, each tick mark on the vertical axis represents $5000 in annual pet care costs.  The tick marks on the horizontal axis are years.  Here are the highlights:

• Up until about 2008, when we moved from Los Angeles to Hawaii, our pets were young and healthy.  Our average annual costs for the two kitties were less than $2000 per year - they jumped a bit around 2005 when Jake arrived.
• Pet care costs basically doubled to $10,000 per year after 2008.  this is when Oscar's health troubles really began to mount: ideopathic cystitis, exploded kidney, etc.
• The whopper of a year was 2016.  Lots of tests, lots of surgeries, lots of meds, and lots of chemo.  All tolled, the bill for 2016 was nearly $30,000!!!  Honestly, I was shocked to see that number.  I knew it was expensive, but I had no idea it was that expensive.
• So far, 2017 has been pricey but not as bad as 2016.  We only have Oscar and Nacho to care for now, and the bill as of October is just north of $12,000.

Would I do it all again?  In a heartbeat.  Jake, Nacho, and Oscar have brought so much joy into our lives that they have more than earned the care we provide.  Pets get high scores on my happiness scale.

What about the next generation?

But looking forward, I can't pretend that there isn't tension between my goal of financial independence and the cost of pet care.  Using the 4% rule, which says you can safely spend about 4% of your assets in a given year and not run out of money in your lifetime, we would need to save an extra $250,000 to cover an average year and $750,000 to cover the most expensive year of pet care.  A task that is made more difficult by the ongoing costs of care.  Maybe I would be just as happy with one pet?  Or being uncle to all the dogs in the neighborhood?