30 Days of Thanks is a wonderful way of extending one day of Gratitude into a full month. In my opinion, we can all use a bit more gratitude. Thanks to the wonderful Amanda of Me, My Dogs, My Life, for creating it. Feel free to join us on Twitter, using the hash tag #30DaysofThanks. We can all use reminders of what is awesome in life.

Paying the Vet Bills seemed Impossible

When Abbey first got sick a few weeks ago, I thought I would never be able to take care of her. I have pretty much burnt up my emergency funds and have found myself struggling from week to week to keep my bills paid in full. This is purely because I am bad with money, and I’ve taken steps to undue the mess I’ve made of my finances this year, but these things take time to repair once you’ve screwed them up bad enough. That’s why, when faced with $1000 worth of veterinary medical procedures, I found myself thinking about robbing a liquor store.

I’m good at paying my bills. I am very proud of that fact. If I have a bill, I pay it. What I’m not good at is saving money.

I work around this by having a larger than usual amount of my check put into my 401k. If I never saw the money and don’t have access to it, then it isn’t real, and thus I can’t spend it. Thanks 401k!

So, I can’t prepay things like dog x-rays. I just do not have the cash on hand. If I had the cash on hand, I probably would have already spent it on something shiny or yummy… or both.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a sick pet. Pets are like an extension of yourself, in a way. They’re the good parts of you. The parts that love and protect unconditionally. So, when you can’t take care of them, you feel not only like an infinite loser that needs to be repeatedly kicked in the balls, but like you are letting a part of your soul die. It makes you think about horrible things.

I’m not the only one in this situation.

Look. Medical stuff is expensive, even with decent insurance. If I had to go to the ER right now, I’d be screwed and I’m covered. I wouldn’t even have the reasonable copay. Also, I don’t have dental insurance, and a few years back I spent several months in constant agony while I scrimped together to get the thing smashed out of my head with a large rock… … I went to the dental college to get it done… I might not have had the best dental student.

The point is, everyone has medical type stuff come up that they can’t afford to pay off all at once, but might be able to pay off in smaller, more tasty chunks. Almost all of us could use that kind of help.

The Helpful Solution

CareCredit is that kind of help. Somewhere between a credit card and a loan program, CareCredit is what is letting me take care of my pooch in her time of need.

I wish I had found out about it years ago. It lets you spread out the cost of a medical emergency into easier to handle chunks across 6 months or more, and even has a super low interest rate (around 15%) which makes it way better than a normal credit card for paying off those big medical emergencies.

Seriously, look into it.