Even if you are not one of the many people who are short of money right now, it is smart to think about financing your animals’ health care.  There are many ways you can find money to treat your cherished animals. Some veterinarians, especially integrative ones, will be willing to barter with you. What skills do you have? Can you clean their parking lot, sidewalk, clinic? Are you a bookkeeper or accountant? Are you great with the internet and able to help them build a web site? Could you get new clients for them? Call the veterinarian of your choice (especially an integrative one), ask to speak with the veterinarian and tell them your financial situation and that you would like to build up credit for future problems or to pay for a current illness. Ask if they will take payment plans and think what you could offer as collateral. Ask if the clinic has its own fund to help those in need. Call multiple veterinarians, especially integrative clinics.  Purchase pet insurance. Also, many cities have humane societies and other groups that can help with medical bills, rabies vaccines, spay and neuters. See the list below for a few organizations trying to help people in a crisis with their pets. You can also save significant money by following the holistic approaches discussed on this web site, including not vaccinating (except for Rabies), feeding local sources of free (or less expensive) food ingredients (many blog posts on this). This will take some time and research, then will be easy and inexpensive.