When we purchased our current home, we were so excited to move into a neighborhood with mature trees. The yard of our new home has maples, oaks, some pine, and a few ornamental trees as well. Our yard isn’t even that big! My husband and I do not have bright green thumbs, but trees are easy, right? They’re not like flowers that have to be watered constantly, or bushes that have to be pruned. We moved in in the spring. The flowering trees framed all our windows with fluffy bursts of baby soft pink and white. The maple trees’ tall, sturdy trunks served as our front lawn’s regal pillars, while the full canopy of the healthy branches kept us cool in the shade. The backyard had a perfect climbing Tree for the kids, and two pine trees that I could imagine being majestically covered in snow in the winter. I was immediately in love. Not even a tiny part of me dreaded raking all those leaves or paying someone to come out each year to prune the tallest branches, because, honestly, not even a tiny part of me realized the maintenance involved in having several large trees.

On average, I’d guestimate we spend 3-7 hours every week working in the yard. Looking around, maybe not everyone does, but most homeowners do. If you don’t have time for that, yet still want to have a nice looking yard, the cost to pay someone else to landscape for you is something to consider for your monthly budget. Not only will you need to mow the lawn, rake the leaves, mulch and re-mulch flower beds and gardens as needed, water the flowers, pull or treat the weeds, fertilize and reseed, but you also have to consider the cost of when issues arise.

Last month, we had high winds and storms here in the midwest. On a beautiful but cold Saturday, we had family over for a visit when my husband thought he’d heard a loud crash. He said it sounded like the children downstairs had dumped over the container of blocks. We didn’t realize until we went outside that one of our pine trees had uprooted and fallen to the ground. It was pure luck that we were all inside when it happened, and it didn’t cause any damage to anything else. The tree was over two stories tall and could have fallen on our house, the play set, our neighbors’ property, or our deck, but it politely fell in the most convenient manner and location, narrowly missing our air conditioning unit.

If you own a home, you are likely well aware of the costs associated with these kinds of things. These incidents aren’t things you specifically budget for. No one considers the cost of the potential collapse of seemingly perfect, healthy trees. These incidents fall into the “other” category, or if you’re super smart, you have an Emergency Fund set aside for unfortunate events. Of course, even when you have an emergency fund in place, spending a grand on something you never even thought might happen is going to rightfully piss you off. The next morning, we went outside to assess the damage.

My frugal husband, not wanting to part with a chunk of our emergency fund, decided we should try to clean it up ourselves. What normally would have cost us hundreds, or maybe even a thousand or more, cost us only $36 to rent a chainsaw for 2 hours. Technically, it also cost us the price of fast food for our two boys who helped us saw and carry the wood, and several cuts and scrapes as well. However, the free workout and the sweet satisfaction of DIY was well worth the backache and palm calluses, I gotta say.

My advice for new or future homeowners is to not bite off more than you can chew. I guess that could be said for a lot of things in purchasing a home. Owning a home is always going to be a large investment in both time, and in money. If you new home has a huge yard, you will need to commit to spending hours cutting the grass or instead purchasing an expensive riding mower. If you have a lot of large trees, you may need to have someone come out and trim them every few years. You must also be aware that emergencies will happen, and you must be prepared with money or as in our case, a little bit of sweat, when they occur.