Here's What Might Happen if You Don't Buy Pet Insurance Right Away

When my friend Sarah brought home an adopted dog two months ago, I helped her shop for supplies to get ready for the occasion. We bought a crate, stocked up on a few different brands of dog food, and purchased some toys that have since gotten destroyed in short order. So it goes.

Another thing I told Sarah, a new pet owner, to do once she brought her dog home was apply for pet insurance right away. And it's a good thing she did, because pretty shortly after being adopted, her pet got into the trash can, ate some bad stuff, and had to be taken to the animal hospital for X-rays and observation. That was a very large bill her insurance policy largely covered, minus her deductible.

If you're adopting a pet, it's important to sign up for insurance as soon as you can. Here's what might happen if you wait to get pet insurance.

1. Your pet might get hurt in the interim

Unfortunately, pets have the potential to get injured at any time, whether due to someone else's actions or their own (in my friend's case, poking around in the trash). The sooner you put pet insurance in place, the sooner you have coverage. So if your pet gets hurt early on after you bring them home, you won't necessarily have to raid your savings account to cover the cost of their care.

2. You may discover medical conditions that are excluded from your policy's coverage

These days, companies that write health insurance policies for people are not allowed to exclude pre-existing conditions. But pet insurance companies are not held to that same standard.

With pet insurance, it's perfectly permissible to exclude a known issue from coverage. So the sooner you buy that insurance, the less likely you'll be to discover a brewing issue that your insurer won't pay to treat.

To be clear, you can't hide a pre-existing condition when applying for pet insurance. Doing so could void your coverage.

But let's say you don't know that your pet has arthritis when you first bring them home, and your vet doesn't find the issue, either. If you buy pet insurance and then discover the arthritis two months later, at that point, your insurer should be willing to pay to treat it, since it wasn't a known condition at the time.

Don't wait to get pet insurance

You may be inclined to delay your pet insurance application because you're worried about the cost. But coverage for your animal may be less expensive than you'd think.

Forbes Advisor says that the average cost of pet insurance is $576 per year for dogs and $336 per year for cats. Of course, your costs may be notably different depending on your pet's age and health. The point, however, is that it pays to put insurance in place as soon as you can.

So once you bring your pet home, do some quick rate shopping to find your most cost-effective plan. It could spare you from having to pay for a host of pet care expenses yourself.