Green Card

With 6 months to go until my current Green Card expires, I applied for a new Green Card today.  It cost over $500 just to apply for the replacement.  What a rip off, especially for completing and submitting just the one form that I was able to do online (much easier compared to the volumes of paper forms I had to submit to apply for the Green Card initially 10 years ago - good job I kept most of this paperwork because it had some information that I needed for this application e.g. of all the US states, I would never have guessed that the state where my initial application was processed was Nebraska).  The processing time for this application is likely to be longer than 6 months.  Though thankfully less than what I anticipated, I just looked it up and it says 7.5 to 10.5 months.  So there will still be a period of time where I won't have a valid green card, and so international travel would be difficult (though I think you can apply to get a stamp in your passport that allows it).  But in all honesty, thanks to the pandemic, the American response to the pandemic and my pessimism I don't expect international travel to and from the US to be a viable option even in 2021.  So I don't imagine I'll have any travel plans next year that could be disrupted.  I have given, and continue to give, some serious consideration to applying for US citizenship, but for the moment I will stick to permanent residency - and consider citizenship again at some point during the next 10 years until it comes time to renewing again.