Tag: percentage

Pet Insurance: Is It Worth It? — Ongoing Calculations (2021 — Current)

Writ­ten 6/19/26; Updat­ed 6/19/2026

What

Explor­ing the life­time cost of pet insur­ance for my dog

Why

To fig­ure out if it’s worth the mon­ey

Dog Profile


Age: 2020 — Cur­rent (6 Years)

Species: Dog

Breed: Mixed (Coon­hound mix)

Size: 70 lbs

Pre-Exist­ing/­Ma­jor Health Con­di­tions: None

Pre­dict­ed Health Issues: Noth­ing spe­cif­ic, she’s a mixed breed

Insur­ance Cov­er­age: 2021 — Cur­rent

Cost

As of: 6/19/2026

YearBase Pre­mi­umWell­ness Rid­erFees*
2021 (1yo)$406.85$248.40-
2022 (2yo)$406.85$248.40-
2023 (3yo)$450.83$277.50$2.00
2024 (4yo)$527.80$277.50$3.25
2025 (5yo)$946.05$277.50$3.25
2026 (6yo)$1,161.14$277.50$3.25

*per month­ly install­ment

Totals

Pre­mi­umRid­erFeesGrand Total
$3,899.52$1,606.8$141$5,647.32

Lifetime Coverage Analysis

Major Medical Base Premium

Base Pre­mi­um TotalReim­burse­mentCov­er­age (%)
$3,899.52$191.225%

Wellness Rider

Well­ness Rid­er TotalReim­burse­mentCov­er­age (%)
$1,606.8$1,180.0073%

Overall Total

Total CostReim­burse­mentCov­er­age (%)
$5,647.32$1,396.2225%

Conclusion

TL;dr - Any insur­ance is a gam­ble. While so far, I haven’t need­ed it and it seems that I’m hand­ing the insur­ance com­pa­nies free mon­ey, one major pro­ce­dure in the future could be worth all the mon­ey (if not more) paid into the plan. Will con­tin­ue to cal­cu­late in her life

Any insur­ance is a gam­ble. You have it just in case that major thing hap­pens, because you nev­er know.

Before this dog, I had 2 pure­bred dogs that end­ed up with major issues at the end of their lives. I thought I could just set aside mon­ey for them, but in the end, it was­n’t enough. Enter this dog in 2020 as a pup­py. I decid­ed right off the bat to get her insur­ance, despite her being a mixed breed which are known for being healthy ani­mals. Did­n’t think I’d ever use it. To date, I’ve used Major Med­ical for her twice (once at an E‑Vet for $23 out of $200 cov­er­age, and the oth­er for an ear infec­tion for full cov­er­age of $130). In total, they’ve paid out $191.22 for the $4,040.52 (includ­ing fees) that I’ve put into the “just in case” plan. This means, I’ve giv­en them $3,849.30 in their pock­et in 5 years. That’s $769.86 per year!!

I was unsure about the Well­ness Rid­er when I first signed up yet decid­ed to try it, any­ways. Once you get rid of it, you’re nev­er allowed to have it again for the life of your dog. Now, 5 years lat­er, I do not rec­om­mend the Well­ness Rid­er. Insur­ance is a gam­ble, but there’s no gam­ble about pay­ing out for rou­tine pre­ven­ta­tive care. So far, it’s cov­ered 73% of my claims, mean­ing that I’ve giv­en away (as of today in June 2026) $426.80, total, to the insur­ance com­pa­ny. That’s $85.36 a year. There’s noth­ing they cov­er in full, so, no, there’s no rea­son to have it. I could have put that mon­ey away and invest­ed it, instead. Now, I have to say that from a med­ica­tion per­spec­tive, I’ve only ever had to give my dog a dewormer (Insur­ance paid $25 of the $49.24) and some ear med­ica­tion (insur­ance cov­ered the $24.82 in full) noth­ing more. I also don’t use the phar­ma­cy card dis­count (through Wal­mart) because she real­ly does­n’t need reg­u­lar med­ica­tions. Yet.

What will I do now? Giv­en that the pre­mi­um jumped $100 to $420 to $250 a year from 2023–2026? I don’t know. It’s com­mon that insur­ance jumps as years progress (just look at human insur­ance), but as she only gets old­er, how high will it go? I am ashamed to admit that I nev­er noticed how high it got since I start­ed; just assumed that it would go up or I was spend­ing too much some­where else. DANG, though!! Orig­i­nal­ly, I was going to play this all the way through her life and do the cal­cu­la­tions, and decide whether it’s worth it or not, but… at this rate, I’m bet­ter off just sav­ing the $855.22 a year they pock­et from me and invest­ing it! Espe­cial­ly if I only get back 5% of it and the rest is going to some­one else. The ques­tion is: what will she need in the future? It’s hard to know… Just one surgery could wipe me out. And we all know how cost has only sky­rock­et­ed in recent times for every­thing…

Com­mon Dog Pro­ce­dures (Depend­ing on where you live)

  • Spay/Neuter: ~$300 — $500
  • Den­tal: ~$800 — $3,000
  • Lumps/Tumors: ~$800 — $2,000
  • Bloat (Gas­tric tor­sion): $2,000 — $8,000
  • Slipped Disc: $6,000 — $11,000
  • Joint Surg­eries (e.g. hip dys­pla­sia): ~$3,000 — $10,000
  • Can­cer: $1000 — $10,000+

When you look at it like that, one major surgery may pay for your dog’s entire life’s worth of insur­ance pre­mi­ums… If, the insur­ance com­pa­ny does­n’t drop you the instant you try to make a major claim, of course.…

In a way, I’m won­der­ing if the insur­ance com­pa­nies try to out­price you so that you drop before they have to pay out big time as the dogs get old­er. They make more mon­ey off of young dogs with min­i­mal health prob­lems, after all. I have to decide, now, if I want to just drop the well­ness rid­er and con­tin­ue with major med­ical, or if I just drop it all togeth­er. I don’t know!! My dog means a lot to me. I had it hap­pen before where I said that if my dog need­ed that much mon­ey in pro­ce­dures, I might just put them down. How­ev­er, when I was faced with that very sit­u­a­tion, I decid­ed I would rather be in debt than give up on that dog. He made it anoth­er 3 hap­py years with me. 100% worth it.

Pizza: Dough + Baking

writ­ten 10/12/23, updat­ed 10/15/23

What

Piz­za dough recipe

Ingredients

*See notes for unit con­ver­sions and oth­er tips

3½ cups All-Pur­pose Flour (plus for knead­ing)

1 pack­et Active Dry Yeast (2¼ tsp)

1⅓ cups Warm Water (105 ‑115F/38–46C)

1 tsp Sug­ar

Hon­ey (option­al)

2 tsp Salt

2 Tbsp olive oil

Pinch of Corn­meal (option­al)

Top­pings of your choice

Sup­plies: Stand Mix­er, Work­ing Sur­face, Plas­tic Wrap/Kitchen Tow­el, Large Mix­ing Bowl, Wood­en Spoon, Mea­sur­ing Sup­plies, Some­where Warm, Oven

Time

5–10 min­utes yeast acti­va­tion

7–10 min­utes in Stand Mix­er

~1½ hours for dough to rise

15 min­utes for anoth­er dough rise after sep­a­ra­tion or punch down

10–15 min­utes to shape the piz­za + 5 min­utes for more rest­ing

10–15 min­utes to let olive oil sit

~10–20 min­utes to bake

Total: 2–3 hours

Steps

Yeast-leav­ened dough smells, looks, and feels sooo gooood

Making the Dough

  • In stand mix­er bowl or oth­er bowl, dis­solve sug­ar (1Tbsp), hon­ey (option­al) in warm water (1⅓ cups @ 105–115F)
  • Sprin­kle the dry active yeast (2¼ tsp or 1 pack­et), try­ing to not let it clump (you want them to dis­solve, and clump­ing won’t allow that)
  • Cov­er with plas­tic wrap or tow­el
  • After 5 min­utes, if not all the yeast has dis­solved, stir it a bit, and wait a lit­tle again for them to foam up (they’re alive!!)
  • Then add flour (3½ cups), salt (2 tsp), and olive oil (2 Tbsp)
  • Using the mix­ing pad­dle attach­ment, mix the ingre­di­ents until they com­bine
  • Swap out for the dough hook attach­ment (sticky! messy!), and now set it on low-medi­um for about 7–10 min­utes
  • Test the dough around the 7‑minute mark. It should be a lit­tle sticky/tacky and smooth-look­ing. If it’s too wet, sprin­kle on some more flour and keep going. It’ll be ready when you can poke it with your fin­ger and it bounces back
  • Light­ly grease a large bowl
  • Form the dough into a rough ball and place it in the bowl
  • Cov­er tight­ly with plas­tic wrap or tow­el and place it in a warm place for about 1.5 hours until it dou­bles in size (see notes for tips)
  • Remove the wrap/cover
  • With light­ly floured hands split the dough into how­ev­er many piz­zas you’re mak­ing (or just 1 big piz­za is cool)
  • Roll them into balls, cov­er, and let it/them rise again for about 15 min­utes to 2 hours

Pizza Time

  • Pre­heat your oven and stone/pan to 450F (high­est mine can go)
  • Start prep­ping the top­pings
  • Take your dough ball and using your fin­gers, start stretch­ing the dough from the cen­ter, out­wards. Get the thick­ness as thin or thick as you’d like (if it starts to resist, let it rest a lit­tle before con­tin­u­ing to the size you want)
  • Brush on olive oil and let it sit for 10ish min­utes to soak in
  • Work on oth­er dough balls in the mean­time
  • Option­al: Sprin­kle corn­meal on bot­tom of work­ing sur­face, piz­za pan, and/or piz­za peel (helps with trans­fer and pre­ven­tion of stick­ing, plus it adds some tex­ture to the crust if you like that)
  • Put those top­pings on!
  • Get it into the oven (watch out, the pan will be HOT)
  • Bake for 10–20 min­utes
  • It’ll be done when the crust is gold­en brown, and the top­pings are melt­ed

ENJOY!

This was smoked brisket and chick­en with fresh moz­zarel­la and home­made fresh toma­to sauce

Notes

  • Try not to pile too much stuff on the piz­za or it won’t cook even­ly
  • You can do stuffed crust piz­za eas­i­ly with some moz­zarel­la tucked under the crust edge!
  • Don’t over­work the dough unless you want it denser. Be gen­tle!
  • Bread flour will give the piz­za some chewi­ness. You can sub­sti­tute it 1:1
  • Piz­za dough needs 4 basics: Flour, Water, Yeast, and Salt. Salt and olive oil are option­al though, they help with brown­ing, slight­ly taste, and tex­ture, espe­cial­ly since home ovens can only get to around 450F (pro­fes­sion­al piz­za ovens cook at 600 — 850F)
  • Active Dry Yeast needs to rise at least twice, but Rapid Rise Yeast only needs to rise once
  • 12/25/23: used bread flour and acci­den­tal­ly used 2 Tbsp salt. Incred­i­bly salty

Gen­er­al­ly, Neapoli­tan piz­za is about 60–65% mois­ture (depends on the style. Detroit it 70–80% mois­ture). Here is some math, if you want to use a cus­tom amount of flour for your piz­za

Conversion

1g = 1.17ml

1ml = 0.00423 cups

1 cup flour = 125.16 grams (HERE)

Example

3.5 cup = 438.04 grams

438.04 grams ✖ 0.65 (65%) = 284.73 grams

284.73 grams ✖ 1.17ml = 333.13 ml

333.13ml ✖ 0.00423 cups = 1.41cups

Proof­ing Dough

65% mois­ture: 3.5 cups flour @ 1.41 cups water

60% mois­ture: 3.5 cups flour @ 1.30 cups water

If your house is cold and can’t find a warm place, you can try:

Cup of boiled water — Boil some water and pour it into a mug. Put your dough and the mug in a hard cool­er or a toast­er oven (I tried the microwave, not rec­om­mend­ed). This should give it the right envi­ron­ment to rise. May need to top off if it’s too cold. I used this with suc­cess when try­ing to make French bread

Oven — You can heat the oven up to 150F or so for about 30 min­utes, and then place the dough in the oven with the door propped with a wood­en spoon. After about 30 min­utes, close it to keep the heat in. I used this tech­nique though it was much hot­ter because I’d just fin­ished bak­ing pota­toes at 350F for an hour. I let it air out a bit, test­ed the tem­per­a­ture with a ther­mome­ter to make sure it was aroudn 200F (I fig­ured if it’s too hot, it’ll bake the dough), then propped the toast­er oven door open with a spoon. Dough rose amaz­ing­ly