The Cost

About 2 months ago I compared the cost having a dying dog and a new puppy. In the first 3 months we hadn’t saved any money per month having a new dog. Things have changed.

Currently Lee is costing us about $50 a month in food.

Puppy school is about $100 a month (and we are almost done with this as our girl is an angel).

 We currently don’t have any major destruction or bad behaviour (I know, it makes the blog boring, but makes my life far more pleasant).

Now, all the pets together don’t cost what it did to keep our beloved Loki alive for a month (just to be clear we would totally pay that $ again if we had to).

Now to determine if having kids would have been a cheaper option.

It is estimated that it will cost about $250 000 to raise one kid to 18.

Our estimates in pets so far (15 years):

Cats food and supplies for 15 years: $18 000

Cat vet costs in 15 years: $4000

Dog food for 15 years: $9 600

Loki vet costs: $25 000

Other vet costs: $2 500

Replacement of stuff destroyed by dogs: $3 000

Misc costs (including city registration, training): $1 500

Total estimated costs for 15 years of pet ownership and 5 different pets: $47 400.

For a savings of: $202 600.
Assuming I am a pet owner for another 20 years - my estimated costs would be around $100 000 - meaning I still would have saved $150 000 (assuming I had one child - $400 000 if I had two)- and I think my quality of life is much better with pets than with children!  Pets can be left alone, are less likely to outlive you, are never ungrateful and never say they hate you, and when all is said and done, you can euthanatize them and not go to jail!

I will stick to pets!