How to prevent expensive vet bills.

Now we all know that taking your animal to the vet can be very expensive at times, due to vet medicine being non-government subsidised, the fact that it's a business, the fact that there are huge overheads and the fact that staff need to eat and pay bills . However there are ways that can make the process a lot more affordable:

1. Make sure you have pet insurance.
There are many pet insurance companies out there and many vet clinics will advise you of one or two that would be good for you. They may even set you up with a pet insurance company when you bring you pet in.
So make sure to ask about insurance when you go in to your clinic and they will be happy to help you.

Depending on your policy pet insurance will cover a wide range of conditions that aren't pre-existing. So insure your pet as soon as you get it and make sure you are familiar with what your insurance company will cover.
Pet insurance is well worth it.

However one problem with pet insurance is that it only tends to cover cats and dog and does not tend to cover exotic pets. So if you can't find a pet insurance that will cover an exotic pet then this brings me to my next point:

2.Set up credit with your vet clinic.
Many vet clinics will happily allow you to put a certain amount of money into your account each week, (This could be anything from 5-20 dollars a week), so that if need be and an emergency happens or unexpected costs occur you have a little stockpile at that clinic, which could put a size-able dent in your bill.
Personally I like it when someone has credit , cause it is always nice to be able to tell them that they don't have to pay anything that day.

3. Follow your vet's advice.
Believe it or not we are not out there to fleece you of all your money. Most of us are in it for the love of animals and when we advise on pet care we do it because we are ethically obliged to do it. We do a lot of preventative medicine and this comes in the form of annual health checks with vaccinations, annual blood tests, defleaing, deworming, proper nutrition etc etc.

So how does getting your pet regularly checked and vaccinated save you money?

Well, by keeping your pet healthy it is less likely to get sick.

Getting your pet fully vaccinated when it's a puppy or a kitten and fully wormed and defleaed may seem really expensive at the time, but it is nothing compared to the cost and suffering that you and your pet would go through if they were to contract one of those diseases that the vaccinations protect against.
Take Parvovirus for example: it is a very dangerous disease which unfortunately takes the lives of thousands of dogs every year. Parvovirus can cost over a $1000 to treat and even if you spend thousands on your puppy the prognosis may be guarded to poor as the disease  may have affected it too badly to save it.
Parvovirus is easily prevented by a proper vaccination regime that would cost you a fraction of the price that treatment of the disease would cost.

When your vet tells you not to take your puppy for a walk until the full vaccination regime is completed then follow that advice. This is because the animal does not have full protection from those diseases until at least 10 days after their last scheduled puppy vaccinations. One vaccination is not enough to protect your puppy, they need several spaced 3-4 weeks apart.

Make sure to be on time with your vaccinations as well. During their first vaccines it is very important that they are 3-4 weeks apart as the immune system takes at least 2 weeks to form antibodies to a pathogen. And at the 3-4 week mark the levels of antibodies are at their ideal level to respond to a booster shot. So this is when the next booster should be given in order to fully cement the immune system's reaction to the disease in its memory. The timing is crucial.
So if you are too late for the booster vaccine then the whole regime needs to be started again and thus you end up paying more money.

So I really advise that you follow your vet's advice as they will prevent you from having to spend more in the long run.

It's just like a car, small but regular payments for tuneups and checks will save you from having to pay a huge bill at the end, for something that could have been easily prevented by those small check ups.

Edit: Another way to prevent expensive vet bills is to become a vet. That is one of the reasons I became a vet - so I could look after my animals as soon as they needed it, prevent preventable ilness, not have to worry about as much expense and know that it would be just that little bit cheaper for me.
I don't have to pay for consults or the full price on products (it depends on the clinic you work at what you get). So it's a kind of good way to get cheaper vet bills, however you do have to end up with a giant student loan; one that can number in the hundreds of thousands. So I suppose in that regard it is a very expensive vet bill, but at the time it seems cheap. lol.