The pet ownership economy has reached the stage where financial institutions offer you cash back on the veterinary bills you cannot afford because you financed the dog with a different credit card at 24% APR.
This is progress.
The pitch goes like this: Spend money you do not have on a pet you cannot afford to keep alive, then earn 2% back on the vet visit that costs three hundred dollars because Mr. Whiskers ate a rubber band. Do this enough times and you will have earned six dollars toward the next emergency. Compounding works both ways.
Pet insurance as a credit card perk exists because someone in a conference room realized Americans will pay interest on anything with a heartbeat. The dog needs surgery. You need points. The bank needs your minimum payment every month until you die or the dog does, whichever comes first.
The average annual cost of pet ownership now exceeds what most people spend on their own healthcare, which makes sense because the dog does not argue with the vet about whether the blood test was in-network.
Credit card companies watched this happen and thought: What if we monetized the part where they cry at the register?
So now you can get complimentary pet insurance with your Visa, which covers up to five hundred dollars per incident after a two-hundred-dollar deductible, which means it covers nothing, but it photographs well in the marketing email.
The real innovation here is not the perks. It is convincing people that earning rewards on expenses they cannot afford is a form of savings. You are not beating the system. You are paying the system to let you feel like you are beating it.
The dog is happy though. He does not know what interest is.
Photo by Samsung Memory on Unsplash
Leave a Comment