Welcome to Money As If, a personal finance newsletter for anyone who's ever considered buying a chocolate shoe because they had no idea what else to get a loved one for a forthcoming special occasion.

Today's catalog:

• A study in pet insurance

• What's a lot of money? You tell me!

• Social commerce gets motherly

— Jeanine

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IN THESE, OUR (POSSIBLE) END TIMES

Do we only have bad money choices?

OK, bear with me. I promise this is going somewhere beyond my abysmal management of bill creep.

We got insurance for all four of our pets back in December 2018, shortly after adopting our final addition, Tucker, a then-2-year-old black Labrador Retriever.

The price for the collective crew at the time was about $160 a month or $1,920 a year — not cheap, but preferable, at least in my eyes, to navigating and shouldering the high cost of emergency pet care if two or more of them needed it at the same time.

My assessment was seemingly validated around nine months later when Rosie, our then 2-year-old Chihuahua mix, needed surgery on her foot. Her medical bills totaled $2,673, of which Trupanion paid $2,097, saving us a whole bunch of stress and, technically, a little bit of money.

Here’s the thing

We never filed another claim. We also never again paid $1,920 a year for pet insurance. Our premiums went up every twelve months over the next six years and not insignificantly.

We kept paying for the policies, though, mostly because of my continued fears of a worst-case scenario (pretty on-brand, as you may recall) but also because pet insurance, unlike car insurance, is sticky.

It’s hard to switch policies, given a new one will exclude pre-existing conditions that your existing one likely covers. Plus, the older your pet, the higher the quote, so savings via swapping years after the fact, especially in light of the pre-existing conditions caveat, are often not worth it. (Believe me, I tried to make this strategy work.)

Our hands were finally forced earlier this year, though, when Trupanion's last increase coincided with a drastic change in our household income — pushing the monthly bill to just about $400 a month or $4,800 a year.

Given we’d also have to cover each policy’s annual deductible before coverage kicked in — $200 for Rosie, $700 for Tucker, and $700 for each of our cats, Alex and Jeffrey — Teddy argued we should bank those big monthly payments and self-insure instead. (“It’s just math,” he said.)

So, after some intense rumination, mostly on sunk-cost fallacy, I canceled our pet insurance. This might mean … we wasted around $17,769 over the last six years ($19,866 in premium payments minus the $2,097 for our single claim).

But here’s the other thing

I don’t know that I would ever tell anyone not to get pet insurance. I'm not entirely convinced we did the “right” thing by canceling our policies.

Hindsight is 20/20, and I had no way of predicting Tucker, Rosie, Alex, and Jeffrey would stay (relatively) healthy over the last six years, just like I can’t say for sure that they all won’t need emergency care tomorrow. (That’s insurance for you, isn’t it? Heck, you buy life insurance, hoping to never use it.)

That doesn't change the fact that at some point — and probably much earlier than I recognized — our pets' insurance went from being affordable (enough) to prohibitively expensive. And given their age, our new household income, and level of savings, the better choice was to cut our losses.

(I contacted Trupanion to ask why our premiums increased so dramatically, but I haven't heard back as of press time.)

Zooming out

I'm saying "better" because both choices (pay $400 a month on a limited income or cancel coverage after years of paying into the insurance pool) are kind of … bad, a non-binary that seems to be getting increasingly prevalent in these, our possible end times.

Like stopping 401(k) contributions so you have at least 12 months' worth of emergency savings ahead of a looming layoff. Or spending, on average, 10% of your income on child care because it's too risky from a benefits perspective for one parent to stay home. Or skipping breakfast because the price of eggs is so high.

And don’t even get me started on college, which, between the high cost of tuition and, quite frankly, predatory structure of student loans, feels more like a financial trap and less like a good investment — albeit one you kind of have to make, considering, these days, getting a degree won’t help you so much as not having one could hold you back. (A topic for another day, I know.)

These choices exist for complex reasons we can't solve at our computers or kitchen tables. That's why — and, listen, maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better about the pet insurance debacle here — I believe in and consistently advocate for giving ourselves grace when we make a money "mistake." More often than not, we're just doing the best we can with the information we have at the time.

On pet insurance

I don't believe we're completely powerless regarding our financial health or that we can't learn something from a costly scenario or inevitable misstep — which is why I'm always more than happy to share mine. In terms of pet insurance, there are some things you can do to avoid our situation.

• Comparison-shop. We got pet insurance back in 2018, and there were fewer big-name insurers in the biz then vs. now, but even with that caveat, I didn’t do a great job researching our options. Trupanion had (and has) a good reputation for paying out claims, but it’s on the pricier side as its policies come with a 90% reimbursement rate. With four pets especially, we might have headed off a $400 monthly bill by going with a cheaper insurer at the onset.

• Plan an annual check-in. Insurers tend to raise rates around your 12-month mark. You'll get a heads-up about the increase, usually via email, but I know better than everyone that these notices are hard to process in real-time. It's better to plan an annual check-in on your rates and, if necessary, what options you have in terms of switching before your pet gets saddled with a laundry list of pre-existing conditions.

• File all claims. Also something we weren't great about, given it seemed none of our pets, outside of that 2019 incident, ever needed care above and beyond their deductible, but mental math isn't as accurate as putting pen to paper, so there's an off-chance we left some reimbursement on the table.

• Keep your information up-to-date. When calling to cancel, I learned that a change of address in 2021 would have qualified us for lower rates, though, at that point, we were past the point of no return. Of course, this update would have at least lowered the lifetime cost of our now-canceled policies … and my associated financial angst.

QUESTION … ?

What's 'a lot' of money?

The high price of everything’s got me wondering about whether our money perceptions are evolving in tandem. Help me out:

And thank you — responses will inform a future issue!

PRICE TAGS

'Stuff Meta wants me to buy my mom' edition

So much make-up. So much perfume. So much pink. So dang pricey.

👠 $55

for a Christian Louboutin-inspired chocolate shoe from Houston-based chocolatier Cacao & Cardamom, an option if you, like me, can’t afford to get mom the real thing.

💄 $96

for a three-piece Gleam & Glow set from Carolina Herrera, which includes a lip gloss, butterfly charm, and gold bangle. NGL, I don’t … hate this suggestion.

🎁 $180

for the Libre Eau De Parfum Mother’s Day gift set from Yves Saint Laurent, which includes a 3-ounce bottle of perfume, travel spray, and body balm.

🕯$230

for the Greek Sculpture present set by luxury candlemaker Anaïs. Includes a Venus candle, a man candle, a love candle, and two wax-and-wicked Roman columns.

 🌹 $699

for a big bowl of La Fleur Bouquet's forever roses in four colors. FWIW, I did forever roses as a Mother's Day gift a few years ago (though a decidedly less pricey version), and they're still on display in my parents' living room.

🐍 $7,900

for a stainless steel Serpenti Seduttori watch by Bvlgari. Set with diamonds and an opaline face. Love you mom, dearly, but LOLZ.

FRESH GREEN

Nowadays, most financial takes are boilerplate. These aren't.

• Speaking of the value of higher education, a recent Federal Reserve Bank of New York study found that having a college degree didn’t pay off for at least 25% of graduates over the last few decades.

• You all know I’m pro-morning latte, but maybe we should stop parking money on Starbucks gift cards — especially since the company estimates a whopping $187.6 million of those dollars will never get redeemed.

• A good read from fellow newsletter writer Hanna Horvath on managing wealth perceptions (and why we feel the need to do so), which includes a hilarious, though perhaps not unsurprising, recreation of a “rich person” from ChatGPT.

PAWRENT TRAP

And, finally, today, in things I would buy my dog if I could just buy my dog things — and, you know, I hadn’t spent all that money on pet insurance …

Best in show

La Jeune Tulipeis, a $250,000 dog collar featuring a 1.52-carat marquise-cut diamond at its center. Made to order and custom-fitted for your prized pup by the Posh Puppy Boutique.

For your Bayonne Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

Got questions, comments, receipts, tips, thirst traps, etc. you’d like to share? Send them to [email protected].

_{This article is for educational purposes only. We don’t recommend or advise individuals to buy, not buy, sell, or not sell particular investments or other assets, as everyone’s circumstances are different. Also, it’s your money and ultimately up to you to decide the best use for it.}