Uh oh . . . looks like we're getting poor!

I'm certainly frustrated in seeing high bills all of a sudden from our insurance company.  That same company deals with ALL our things -- home insurance, car insurance, social security matters, medications, etc. etc. Initially our social security money went down -- they would pay some of those funds directly.  And an additional $200 or $300 a month got charged to our bank.  That went on for 5 or 6 months.  But suddenly over the last two months those bank fees have gone up to well over $700 instead!  Gees!  Why???  Since Mark usually deals with that insurance company (it's for folks who were in the army previously), I hope he'll give those folks a holler and find out what the heck they're charging us additionally for now all of a sudden!

And then there's our tree removal issue.  The guy who's going to remove them already took down several big trees in the front of our house early last spring and didn't charge us all that much at all for those.  But yesterday when we had him come look at all those trees we need to have removed out in the back pasture, well . . . he's indicating approximately $7000!!!! Yikes!  But of course those trees out there are way WAY more of a problem than those we had in front.  Instead of the removal of the 3 in front, he's going to get rid of about 6 or 7 HUGE trees, several of which are about 100 feet high and two have stumps more than 4 or 5 feet thick.  

Obviously, the other half of this tree that's already fallen is about to do the same --
right onto the storage building -- if it isn't removed SOON.

As the guy told us when he checked things out yesterday, that the stump on the other
half of the tree that fell is definitely not healthy enough to remain up for long!

So the guy said he would come by tomorrow to at least begin taking things down -- certainly the worst of them.  Then if it rains before he gets everything removed once they're on the ground, he'll just have to wait to come back until that area dries out again.  Buy hey -- once they're down, it won't bother me to have them laying on the ground for a while.  At least they won't be destroying everything in a storm after they're down anyway.  

Also, once he cuts down all the trees that need to come down, instead of paying him to remove the roots of all those tall trees, we just told him to cut them down but to leave the tree trunks (except that dead one) up to 6 to 10 feet (so the horses won't accidentally trip over one that's down close to the ground).  Those would just look like posts and will no doubt appear a bit peculiar but hey -- the cost will go down almost $2000 if he doesn't have to remove the roots, so that works for me!   ($9000+ was way too much!)   Besides, they may possibly grow out again in those tall stumps.  Once we lost one in a hurricane a while back over by the side of the house, even though it was cut down almost all the way to the ground, that tree grew right back up again.  I guess all those roots were good for something anyway!  But hey - whether they grow back up or not, it doesn't matter to us.  They just can't be horrendously tall any more. 

Although this tree removal will be so darned expensive, regardless of the cost, we don't want to hold off and end up seeing them crush our storage building out there in back -- or the electrical horse fence -- or even the neighbors' homes out behind us.  For that matter, we've noted to the guy who owns all that land back there in back, that if those people are concerned about those trees back at the edge of our property falling on their trailers, we'll have them removed as well IF they let the guy drive up from their street to get to them.  (We would have to remove the electric horse fence for him to be able to get to them from our side, and I don't want that to happen.)

And for the matter of money, of course it's time to get more horse hay for this winter too -- another thousand dollars or so.  I hate to think about how much of all that money is going to need to be removed from our 401(k).  Good grief!  Makes me wonder if I should be getting another job!  Gees!  (But I sure don't want to do THAT!!)  Oh well.  We probably won't live to anything near 100 years old, so I guess we'll have "enough" money (we hope) even after paying for all this stuff. Let's hope so anyway!