Keep Above
What a pet costs
Food by the week, insurance by the month, registration by the year — a pet's costs each run at their own rhythm, which is why a single guessed figure usually misses. This calculator takes each cost at whatever rhythm you pay it, brings everything to a year, and reads it back per year, per month and per week — with a first-year figure that counts the one-off setup once. Every number is yours; the page holds no averages for any kind of animal.
Adoption or purchase, gear, first visits — counted once
Your estimate, not the page's
Put in each cost at whatever rhythm you pay it. Nothing here is read from your budgets, and nothing is saved.
| A week | — |
|---|---|
| A month | — |
| A year | — |
| The first year, with setup | — |
| Kept for 10 years, all-up | — |
Why does a pet cost more in some years than others?
The figure this page lands on is an average, and a pet's costs are not spread evenly across a life. The first year carries the things that happen once — settling an animal in, the gear, the first round of visits — and that year never comes round again. The years after it tend to run flat, and those are the ones a single yearly figure describes well.
The far end of a life tends to run heavier than the middle of it, and that is the part an average hides most completely. Nothing here knows where on that curve a particular animal sits, so the kept-for total reads as a sum of ordinary years with one unusual one at the start — not as a forecast of any single year ahead.
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
Vet bills, registrations and boarding keep their own schedule rather than a monthly one — how budgeting apps handle money set aside for later bills.
About this calculator
Why doesn't the page suggest typical costs?
Because what an animal costs depends on the animal, and only you know yours. Published averages span such wide ranges that a prefilled figure would be an assertion, not a help. Every box starts at zero and the page adds up what you put in — nothing else.
How do the weekly, monthly and yearly rhythms combine?
Each row has its own rhythm switch, so a weekly food figure sits beside a yearly registration figure. Everything is brought to a year — weekly times 52, monthly times 12 — then read back per year, per month and per week. Switching a row's rhythm doesn't change the amount you typed.
What does the first-year figure include?
The ordinary year plus the one-off getting-started costs — adoption or purchase, gear, first visits — counted once. The kept-for total counts that one-off once too, so it never inflates the ordinary year.
Does the page take a view on pet insurance?
It does not, in either direction — insurance is a row like any other, taking a figure at a rhythm and joining the total. A row left at zero is simply not counted, so a pet with no policy costs nothing extra here. Whether to carry one is not a question arithmetic answers, and nothing on this page leans either way. What it can show is what a premium comes to over the years you set, sitting beside everything else on the list.