Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - The Dog Ate My Wallet

Episode Date: June 1, 2021

Nicole learns - the hard way - about the hidden costs of pet ownership. Dog moms and Cat dads, this is the episode for you. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Well, it doesn't. Charge for wasting our time. I will take a check. Like an old school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. Nicole Lappin. So guys, I have some very, very exciting news.

You may have seen on my Instagram or on the show's Instagram, at Money Rehab Show. Maybe you've even heard a little peep at the end of my episode on the hidden cost of miscarriage, but I got a little doggy coin of my own. Her name is Penny, my lucky Penny, and also so on brand, am I right? Say hi, Penny. So Penny is a toy poodle. She is, yes you are, three pounds. I am absolutely obsessed with her. Even though she's in her terrible twos right now, she is biting and chewing the mic stand, as a matter of fact, as we speak. But Penny is my first pet. I never had one growing up. I didn't

have a dog. I didn't have a fish. I didn't have a bird. I kind of used my best friend's Dalmatians as my own surrogate dogs, but I always, always wanted one of my own. I never really could logistically because I was always traveling. I basically lived on a plane up until the pandemic. So one of the silver linings of the pandemic was that I was in a much better position to actually take care of and keep a dog alive. So I did it and now I am deep in it. I never thought I would be that doggy mommy who is rushing to order dog toys online and carrying my fur baby everywhere I go, taking her to dinner in a sling, which happened last night. I mean, she doesn't have an Instagram yet, so to be fair,

I haven't gone over the edge. Well, a quick correction here. Since I originally recorded this, Since I originally recorded this, I actually did make an Instagram for Penny. Sure did. And you can follow her on Instagram at DoggyCoin. Because, of course, she is at DoggyCoin. But look, I also didn't expect Penny would cost me a pretty, pretty penny. I thought, how much could a three pound dog? She will be about six to eight pounds.

How much is that going to cost? Probably not a lot. Not true. So far, I have spent probably about five grand on Miss Penny. That's a lot of fucking pennies. I was not expecting actually to spend nearly that much money. I was looking for a dog and I thought at some point this year I would find my dog or my dog would find me, which is actually what happened. So a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend posted a picture of Penny on Instagram.

So that, I think, is five friends removed. She then sent me a screenshot of Penny and was like, I know you're looking for a dog. This is a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend's dog that she's giving away. So maybe you can get in touch and adopt this dog. And it looked like the dog I was in the market for. My partner is allergic to dogs, so I was looking for all kinds of oodles, and I thought a golden doodle was cute. And so I see Penny, and obviously my heart just turns to mush. I totally fall in love with her little face. And so I ordered a bunch of stuff. I spent about 500 bucks on Chewy, which is like the Amazon for dog stuff on her bed, her bowls, and her food, and her treats, and her bones, and her leash, and her collar, and her treats and her bones and her leash and her collar and her harness and her little dog sack

slash baby Bjorn thingies that I got in three colors, some chew toys, a dog car seat, a little fence in order to keep her in areas almost like a little baby fence. And I'm sure there's other things. And we were off to pick up Penny. I was so excited. I was prepared. I was ready mentally. I was prepared logistically. And I show up and her first dog, Mommy, asked me if I wanted her Venmo. And I said, sure. And she said, you know, I think my friend told you that I'm looking for the same amount that I paid for her when I got her from the breeder, which is $4,000. I was like, it's what? And apparently that did not get relayed through this game of telephone. I thought I was adopting Penny.

And so in my mind, adopting meant I was saving her from a shelter and I was going to come rescue her and that I was doing her a favor and that adoption was free. My friends, adoption is not free. free. My friends, adoption is not free. Just make sure if you are in the market for a puppy, you get all the information before you go. Because honestly, Penny got into my heart at that point. Forget about all my negotiating tactics. Forget about money rehab. I was just Venmoing her the money. It was over. So obviously now that I know and love Penny, she is priceless and totally worth it. But I tell you that story almost as advice that I would have given myself but did not take. So don't do the same thing I did.

Before you fall in love with a doggie, make sure you get all of the information, including the price. make sure you get all of the information, including the price. So basically, I had no idea how much I would have to change my spending plan because of Penny, whose name is more accurately Stacks on Stacks on Stacks at this point. According to the ASPCA, the first year of welcoming a pup into your home could cost between $1,000 and $2,000. That's a lot of doggy coin. Sorry, I had to. This cost is for things like getting your dog spayed or neutered, vaccinations, pee-pee pads, food, collars, leashes, maybe grooming if your dog is fancy, maybe getting their nails did if they're super fancy. But this could skyrocket if you need an extra set of hands with your dog. For example, if you need to hire a dog walker or take your pup to training class, or if you're

enjoying some post-pandemic outings and need to bring your dog to daycare or even board them overnight. And that's not even counting the cost of adopting a dog or getting the dog from a breeder. If you're adopting a dog from a place like the ASPCA, you'll likely spend between $100 and $350, depending on the age of your doggo. If you're going through a breeder, you could easily spend a couple grand. For a cat, the startup costs are a little less, but honestly, the cost is not as dramatically different as I thought. I thought that cats would be way less expensive because they're so low maintenance. Again, I've never had a pet before, so this is what people tell me. I found that the first year of owning a cat does cost, though, a little over $1,000.

Because yes, while you're probably spending less on food and probably won't be buying leashes and collars, etc. But if you're into that, get after it. But there are some costs to owning a cat that you don't have to put down if you have a dog, namely a litter box and litter and so on. The New York Times actually just did a piece on the cost breakdown of what six families spend in one month, and I was shocked to see just how much pets were factoring into their bottom line. One family spent more on their pets than they did on their mortgage. One of the big questions that I've seen online is whether or not to get pet insurance. The rationale for pet insurance is really the same as people insurance. You never know when you may get hit with a big bill from the vet.

If you live in a woodsy area, you know that dogs love them, some porcupines. If you have a sweet tooth, you also may discover that your pet has a sweet tooth, too, and chocolate is famously poisonous for dogs. So shit happens. The veterinary industry is growing and nationwide veterinary costs are in the tens of billions of dollars annually. And the goal of pet insurance is that you're not contributing hugely to that statistic. One of the biggest advantages, in my opinion, is that you don't need to decide whether to take on a life-saving treatment for your pet. You won't have to go through the awful process of trying to decide

whether you can afford what's best for your pet's health. I'm about three weeks into the pet mom game, and I already can't imagine having to make that choice. On the flip side, the monthly cost for pet insurance does add up, and not everything is covered. The average cost for dogs is about $50 a month, so $600 a year. While in some cases coverage can reimburse a lot of different treatments or surgeries, there are limits for pre-existing conditions. Also, many companies increase the premium for your pet as they age. So it's a tough decision because there's a chance that it could help you save big if you're hit with a huge unexpected vet bill. But actually, according to a 2016 survey, 46% of vets said it's not worth the

money. So it's a coin toss. Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Money rehab will be right back. Now, back to business. I personally don't have pet insurance for penny just yet she is though the money rehab co-mascot along with our producer katherine's pup mimsy i wanted her to weigh in too does mims have pet insurance you know what We did not decide to get pet insurance for her. Mimsy is five years old and she's cuter than she's ever been, of course. When I looked at pet insurance when she was a puppy, we got her when she was about 10 weeks old and it was more than we wanted to spend on a monthly basis. It was about $85 a month because she's a pug, and pugs can have some health issues. Of course, they have the pushed-in nose,

and they are brachycephalic, as that is technically called. So there are additional precautions that vets have to... Yes. What's that? Brachachecephalic is the word for when they have like that pushed in nose like Shih Tzus and pugs and all those like short snouted dogs. If you're ever in the mood for a hilarious Google, look up pug skulls. It's ridiculous. But yeah, so there are extra precautions. They tend to get things like allergies and some other health issues as well. I know for Mimsy, we probably spent about $1,000 on vet bills when we first got her between all of her initial shots and getting her fixed, which was, I think, only about $350, but especially for pugs, they have to

intubate them anytime they go under for surgery, just to make sure that their breathing passageway is clear. Another thing that we spent a lot on for her was because she does have allergies, several vet visits, trying to figure out the source of her allergies, trying a lot of different foods. So there were times when we buy a whole bag of food and her allergies would flare up and we basically wouldn't be able to continue giving her the food because she was real, real itchy. And what we wound up doing, and this actually was a super helpful thing what we wound up doing was finding an allergy test on amazon you can just order it on amazon you just put a few hairs into a baggie send it off to a lab and we found out what she was allergic to so that helped a lot

what is she allergic to so she's allergic to like all kinds of things, which is why just switching the foods wasn't helping because it was like a lot of dog treats and food have like cranberries, sweet potato. Our vets had said actually take her off of any beef and chicken foods because those are the most common allergens that dogs can develop. If they're like just eating beef flavor food or just eating chicken flavor food, they can develop an allergy to that because their bodies sort of get overwhelmed. But because we'd been avoiding those, she was allergic to all the more rare meats like the venison and the rabbit and those sorts of things. So she now is on beef and chicken. But the big thing was we found out she is just plain allergic to grass. So anytime we walk her, she's sniffing in the grass, trying to find a

place to go potty. She loves to lounge in the grass, in the sunshine, or in the cool spots if it's a hot day. So we do have to get her a shot for her allergies, usually once every two, two and a half months. And that pre-pandemic was $50 a time, but the price went up during pandemic. So now it's about $80 a month. Why did it go up? Right? I don't know. I think it's just how everything sort of went up during COVID times. Kind of looking back as far as whether we should have gotten pet insurance or not. Because she's now five, we just recently had an experience where she needed to go in and have her teeth professionally cleaned because she was getting some plaque and tartar buildup. And all dogs get that, but pugs especially get

a little extra because their teeth are sort of compressed and they're like all in a smaller space. They have the same amount of teeth as any other dog, but not as long of a snout to fit them all in. So they can tend to get a little more buildup in there. So we took her back to the Midwest with us. We thought, oh, well, it'll be less expensive to get this done here. We took her in. We knew she would need a couple teeth pulled. And it is, even for the cleaning, something where they do put them under. So we took her in between the teeth being pulled and cleaned and the surgery, and she was due for a bunch of shots. It wound up being about $1,200 to get her teeth cleaned. And she had hats? Yeah. Yeah. And extractions. Because it's a surgery. She had to have a whole surgical team. She had to have all kinds of blood tests a week before or a few days before.

It's really like just like a person going in for surgery. So I wound up being like $1,200, $1,300 plus, you know, a little bit extra for other shots and things that she was behind on. But where that really started to pile up was when we got back to Los Angeles, I noticed that she, all of a sudden I was trying to brush her teeth after, you know, this was a number of weeks after having gotten her teeth done. And she'd had most of her teeth pulled on one side. So when she had chewed on a bone at some point, she had favored the side where her teeth were pulled and chewed on the other side and she had broken a tooth. So my heart just broke. I know my heart just broke because I was like, oh my goodness, she's been in this pain.

And she just like, when I tried to brush her teeth, she jumped back out and zapped her. Like it was, we looked, it was exposed nerve, the whole deal. So we immediately had to get her in to our local vet. And she had to go in for another dental surgery 30 days after the first one. So that wound up being, they actually found a few more teeth that they were like, we'll probably have to pull these in a few years. So we might as well just pull them now. So that wound up being another $1,500 surgery 30 days after the first one. So it was a lot all at once, of course. But at the same time, I sort of did the math in my head. And while she has had to

have her, you know, shots for her itchies, and she does have a little more expensive food, I think we spend a little over $100 a month on her food because of her allergies. We have to get the special frozen food. And she's also just a little picky about what she likes to eat. So adding it all up, I do feel like essentially we've broken even at this point. If we had started pet insurance when she was a 10-week-old pup, we would have spent about $5,100 on pet insurance. And I'm also not sure if that covers just like routine shots and stuff. I kind of think it probably doesn't because the deductible is like $250. But I think we probably would have maybe saved a little bit of money versus at this point, being five years old and looking back, I think we probably have saved a little bit of money,

maybe even $1,000, $1,500 on not having pet insurance. But then, you know know you do have those cases where like somebody's cat gets a broken leg and it's a ten thousand dollar surgery so you know I still do it is oh yeah I have friends whose cat they actually like their cat jumped out of like a two-story window and broke its leg or three-story window or something nugget uh-huh and it had to have surgery and it was like $10,000. So those cases, I'm like, you can't plan for that other than saving up or insurance. All right.

So it sounds like it was kind of a wash for you. Yeah. Same, same. Both ways. All right. Well, here's our recommendation. Today's tip you can take straight to the bank. When you're thinking about getting a dog, do the research on what brands have the least amount of

health problems. With the way dogs have been bred in the United States, there are some breeds that are more likely to get certain illnesses, and avoiding those breeds from the jump may lessen the incentive to get pet insurance. Then talk to your vet about whether they'd recommend pet insurance for you and your dog. But my two cents, I'd recommend opting out of pet insurance and instead setting aside some of your emergency fund for your pet. That's all for today's episode. Okay, mascots. Penny bark, please. Mimsy, say bye-bye. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartMedia. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Our producers are

Morgan Lavoie and Catherine Law. Money Rehab is edited and engineered by Brandon Dickert with help from Josh Fisher. Executive producers are Mangesh Hatikadur and Will Pearson. Huge thanks to the OG Money Rehab supervising producer, Michelle Lanz, for her pre-production and development work. And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all.