We had to use our emergency fund in anger this month – here’s how it saved our dog and how well our emergency plan worked.
It all started with a routine procedure…
Our dog is getting older now. He doesn’t chew on things to clean his teeth anymore and he doesn’t let us clean them effectively. His dental hygiene isn’t on point by any measure.
During a routine check-up, we were advised to offer him up to the dental nurse for a scale and polish, which is pretty common. To do this, he had to be put under general anaesthetic. This is a bit of a risk in an older dog, but if it needed doing then he would have to lump it.
Unfortunately, it turned out that he had food stuck in between his teeth at the back, so he had to have them pulled. He’s quite a big dog, so he was knocked out for a while.
We picked him up on the Friday. Obviously, he was staggering around like a drunk. We took him home, where he ate and assumed the position of choice on the sofa.
In the morning, following the vet’s instructions, we gave him a pain reliever called Metacam. It’s a gel that you put onto their food or feed them by syringe.
A problem occurs
Understandably, he didn’t want to eat for a couple of days. Dogs can last ages without food, so we didn’t think much of it.
By day 5 we were concerned. We spoke to the vet, who sounded worried and insisted that we brought him in again.
Cue three days of ferrying him in-and-out of vets, overnight vet stays, opioid injections, and being stuck on a drip for a couple of days.
Anyway, it turns out that his sensitive stomach doesn’t like the Metacam. That wouldn’t have been a problem, but we’d mixed it with his food, so he had sore insides and low energy from hunger. His teeth healed remarkably quickly, but because his belly hurt he wouldn’t eat the food we gave him, which in turn meant that he got painkillers, which made his belly ache wordse… Yeah, not great. It took a while to work out it was the drugs making him worse.
Irritatingly, had he eaten, the Metacam effects wouldn’t have been so noticeable; but because we’d mixed it with the food he didn’t want to trust the food either.
He’s OK now. At the time of writing, he’s not eating his regular food, but I suspect that’s because my partner keeps feeding him treats.
Aww, that sucks – but what does it have to do with emergency funds?
A (budgeted) £250 visit to the dental hygienist escalated to £1500.
Now, I used my credit card in the first instance. I’ve written before about using credit cards to extend an emergency fund. In our case, we hired a car and knew full well that we could pay the vet bills up to £7,000 before tapping into our emergency fund pot.
This was important because we didn’t know how long the situation might continue or what might be involved.
As the dust has settled, we’re clearing the credit card slowly while it’s on a 0% rate. However, we know we can clear it at any time with the emergency fund cash.
At the time of writing, equities are taking a dip. I could sell the crypto, but it’s presently generating a return, and some of it is locked up for 28 days. I might have sold the gold, but that’s not instantaneous: there are a few steps involved.
Having that cash ready was a life-saver – for my dog, at least.
What would have happened without the emergency fund
I could have relied purely on a credit card. Sure. The risk though is that I might have paid a penalty (i.e. the interest due on the card) if I didn’t clear it in time. Under our plan, we have the cash ready if that looks likely.
We might have dipped into our assets, at a time when these are cheap due to market movements. When we re-invested, these might have become expensive again. Not great.
There’s also the thing about saving my dog’s life.
I’m not being melodramatic. We don’t live in an affluent area. Our vet took pains to caveat all of her advice with “we don’t want this to be expensive…” or “we would like to take him in for observation on a drip, but we can understand if this is too much…”.
So what?
My assessment is that they were asking this because some families wouldn’t have been able to afford the bills. This was all caused by a complication in a routine elective procedure, so it’s probably not covered by pet insurance.
At one point, our dog wasn’t looking too great. Before he was put on a drip and given different antibiotics, things were looking a bit shakey for him. He showed a terrific recovery immediately afterwards, but it was money well spent.
Sadly, it is my genuine belief that without an emergency fund, other families in our position might have been saying goodbye to Fido. This article on Yahoo! Finance suggests that this could be 1 in 5 Brits.
Was my emergency savings plan good enough?
Yes!
The situation wasn’t as dire as it could have been. There’s something reassuring about being able to look a vet in the eye and just say “sure, whatever treatment works best for my dog”.
I knew we had easily £11,000 instantly available. Our dedicated emergency cash fund is only £4,000, but we knew we could extend with the credit card to buy us time to sell assets if we needed to. Fortunately, we didn’t, but it was never a concern.
Would I change my emergency fund amount?
At the moment, we are happy with the £4,000 in cash and the clean credit card for emergencies. we live well below our means and we both have secure jobs, so we can be pretty comfortable with this amount.
I wrote a post about how we worked out how much should be in an emergency fund.
We’re now looking likely to relocate offshore this year, as I mentioned in my 2022 FIRE campaign plan. The cost of living will be higher and my partner will be giving up a public sector job, so we might increase the emergency fund when we move – but not yet.
We also have some fat in the system from holiday savings pots, DIY pots and so on that we can divert if we hit a genuine emergency.
Overall, I’m happy with our plan, and knowing that we had the means to do what’s best by our dog was reassuring in a stressful situation.
