Pets cost. And before you shout out, I know, I know, your pampered pet isn’t a luxury, they’re ‘one of the family’. But I bet you didn’t realise quite how expensive they are. Very few pet owners do.Again, I know that having a pet is all about companionship, the quality of family life, etcetera, etcetera. But if you stopped for one moment to tot up just how much Fido costs you, I think you’d be in for a big shock.
The average dog owner spends £1,183 a year on their pooch, while cat owners aren’t far behind at £1,028 per year. That’s a grand total of £16,500 over a 14 year lifetime for dog owners.
Recent YouGov research shows that dog owners spend an average of £144.53 a year on vet fees, and there are plenty of other stats available about how much pet owners shell out on insurance.
So it’s hardly surprising that 38% of pet owners actually can’t actually afford their furry friend, according to research by Mintel.
Yet, while people are forever banging on about how they can’t afford to have a baby yet, who ever makes the same excuse about getting a dog? Read on and you might start thinking differently. Because there’s quite a lot you could do with £16,500 – other than paying for pet food, kennel fees and poochie ‘puffa’ jackets.
You could:
Man’s best friend or man’s new best friend? You could spend that sort of sum and kit yourself out with a 2006Porsche Boxster, with just under 26,000 miles on the clock – and still have change left over for the insurance.
Or if you want something a bit more ‘roomy’ how about a Jaguar XF? You can get a supercharged SV8 2008 model for bang on £16,500. You can even get your hands on a classic Ferrari, according to classiccarsforsale.co.uk
That £16,500 is no small sum and it could get you on the property ladder. Thanks to the government-backed NewBuy scheme, first-time buyers can find themselves a 95% mortgage again; meaning you only need to find 5% for the deposit. That means your £16,500 could bag you a property worth up to £330,000.
The £98 or so a month that you would spend on a pooch could build into a very nice nest egg instead. Don’t forget compound interest, which even in today’s low interest rate environment, means that your total £16,500 savings would grow to almost £21,000 if you left it untouched and added to it regularly for 14 years.
You might not be thinking of retirement yet (well, except maybe when the alarm goes off on Monday morning) but you should. If you join a scheme and have the monthly contribution paid straight out of your salary you don’t even have to fork out the full £98 a month. After tax and national insurance savings on your pension contribution you’ll actually hand over less than £65 a month.
That pooch money can pay for your house – well a good chunk of your mortgage anyway. Say you have a £100,000 mortgage at 6% on a 25 year term, if you could stretch the monthly sum by a couple of pounds to a clean £100 you would pay off your mortgage six years and four months earlier than planned and – here’s the best bit – save yourself £26,892. That’s more than enough to pay for the house AND buy a fast car!
Contributor
Having written about money for more than 15 years, Emma-Lou knows a thing or two about how to get the most from it, whether it’s saving it, growing it, stretching it, or – ahem – spending it. A self-styled discount diva, Emma-Lou doesn’t stop until she gets the best deal. An experienced journalist, she has worked for The Daily Telegraph, the Evening Standard and The Times and was previously editor of Shares magazine, and Moneywise magazine and editor-in-chief of iii.co.uk.
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