Or my second title for this post: You love your pet HOW MUCH? haha…I found this pet cost breakdown via Kiplinger the other day, so I thought I’d share and see what you all thought about it.

I’ve never drilled down and detailed out exactly how much our own pets have cost us, but from the looks of it these numbers below seem pretty accurate.

Here’s what Kiplinger & The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals lists as what pets cost on average (you can see the much cooler & fancier graph here):

We own 2 cats (one speedy little booger, and one fatty hungry boy) and I’d say $670/year sounds about right for each. They both go to the vet at least once a year to get checkups and all – and usually more for our older one – and we go through cat litter & food like none other. In fact as I type this the little one just jumped up next to me to eat his dinner :) We have to put it on our breakfast nook/table so that fatty Bob won’t eat it from her! It’s a good thing they’re cute.

I also have a handful of fish, and I know for sure I spend way more than $35 a year on them (I also specifically say “I” instead of “we” as the Mrs. could do w/out them. She gets very sad when they randomly die). If I had to take a guess, I’d say I go through at least $200/year with all the live plants and food, and filters, and fish replacements, etc etc. And if I had a saltwater tank? Hah! That would be at least $50/mo easily. Actually, if you ever want to blow through hundreds of dollars super fast, get a salt water aquarium. They’re beautiful as hell, but man do they run up your tab!

Overall, these numbers above are meant to be averages though. Good starting points if you’re considering a larger family. They don’t include adoption fees (and I doubt pet insurance?) but they seem to be pretty on track from my experience. What do you all think? Do they align up okay? Or do you have zero pets, and thus much richer than us? ;)