What Our Pet Spending Signals

Decades ago we called our dog Spot. Now she is Bella and so too is our child.

Perhaps knowing what we name our pets can explain what we spend.

Pet Spending

Paralleling our own purchases, we are buying wearables for our pets. We can attach a GPS to our outdoor cat to monitor where she wanders. (One cat covered 16 miles while away for 48 hours.) Likewise, a GPS enabled collar can track calories, pulse, respiration, and temperature. In addition, the makers of an AI-powered device say it can turn a cat’s meows into English.

As a companion, ORo can feed, entertain and train a pet:

Except for boarding, we spend the most on feeding our pets. After that, our big pet outlays include veterinary care, supplies, and OTC medicines. At $647 compared to $282 annually, U.S. women spend much more on their pets than single men. And although Millennials own more pets than Baby Boomers they spend proportionally less of their income (.72% vs. .96%).

Meanwhile, in a country with universal healthcare, pets also get much cheaper vaccinations:

Our Bottom Line: Consumption Expenditures

As a yardstick of the dollar value of the goods and services a nation annually produces, the GDP has four components. At 70% (or so) in the U.S., its largest slice is the consumption expenditures that you and I spend. Next, gross investment is mainly a business category except for its residential section. Then, government spending is the third big category. And finally, net exports–exports minus imports–the fourth component, is typically negative.

Predictably, pet spending adds to consumption totals. Included as entertainment, pet expenditures soared from 2019 to 2021. Some analysts have attributed the surge to Covid:

Returning to our title, I suspect that once our pet names changed, so too did our spending .

My sources and more: Thanks to Slate Money for alerting me to the Washington Post pet article. As for spending, MarketWatch had the details and US News, the pet names.. Meanwhile, for more stats, I recommend the American Pet Products Association and the BLS.