Farmer Bob Faces the Property Insurance Slug! By Bob Farmer, Dairy Farmer

It is tough for us all with the cost-of-living crisis, and especially tough for the small farmer. It is the weekend now, but I am still fuming from getting in the snail mail my annual home, contents and property insurance. It has gone up in one hit almost a thousand dollars! The biggest increase I have ever seen. In fact, the insurance company, whom I will not mention, had a little slip in the envelope, almost as an afterthought, telling me why my insurance is so high. It listed things like, well, cost of everything going up, and re-insurance, which brings in the globalist context. Stamp duty, another slug, has gone up too.

I will ring complaints tomorrow, but I do not expect any mercy from these blood suckers. What we are going to see, I predict, is worse than even the council rate slug, that insurance will increase from $ 500 to $ 1,000 or more each year, forever. Taken to the limit, at some point, the insurance will cost more than a new house and contents, and even property! So, there is a fundamental problem here. And all that assumes that in the unlikely event of an incident, the insurance company pays out, and does not find some technicality to escape payments, or radically reduce them.

As well, if the probability of a fire wipe-out was a worry to me, then I should have life insurance as well by the same argument. So, where does it end? It ends here.

Hence, I announce that I am going to go without this insurance now. This is not financial advice or any recommendations for readers, just my own personal view point, reached while thinking about it working on the farm this weekend. Here is what I concluded for myself, not necessarily, you. Insurance is a bet with the company that an incidence will happen. They bet it will not, given that things like fire burning everything down, or flood washing you away, are a low probability; sure, it can happen. As there are no streams near me, not so likely for flood. For me, the only real reason I insure is fire, and I tended to be a bit lazy on fire clearance given the insurance safety net. But now I will need to work hard on land clearing. So, after finishing this essay, I will start clearing land that should have been cleared last season.

Time will tell if this is the right decision, or false economy, but I don't have the money to pay the present insurance bill (even in instalments), so what else can I do?