Honestly this seems a little excessive, BUT there is one important thing you can do to prolong your rats life and that is to always have two or three. Sorry if you already know all this, but just in case: Rats are very social and help each other’s physical and mental health; we might think we can provide enough social contact for them, but they just need at least one other rat in their life to be happy. IMO It’s best to just start with 3 from the same litter (in case one dies on the younger side).

This is the real cost IMO, as you need a decent sized cage to be able to give them some room to move around, as well as lining, toys and food. This should usually be the majority of the cost of ownership.

Truthfully most rats are fairly resilient, the hardest thing to deal with its that their lifespan just doesn’t compare to other types of pets. 3 years is really the max you’re looking at and we’ve had many barely make it to 2, so really you need to plan for end of life care and burial or cremation costs and the occasional vet visit, which very a lot by region.

If you have a VCA or a local vet who specializes in rodents (cause trust me, we’ve had bad vets who accidentally did more harm than good) you should be able to get an idea of costs for a tumor removal should one occur, unless you just want to put them down once it starts hurting their quality of life. This is much easier said than done because they are such sweet animals.

For us in central MA, for our least healthy rat is around $800 for a tumor removal (which has already come back about 6 months later, so another $800 upcoming), and end of life stuff usually is around $200-250. I hope this helps!