Staff photo by Kevin Jacobus^^Mike Morin, 7/19/2005.

I’m a bit late on a New Year’s resolution for 2020, but here goes. I’ve decided that I want to have a mortgage until my 100th birthday. Looks like it’s going to be close. I’m 69.

With refi rates at 2.75% or less, Lady Baba and I are dancing the refinance rhumba on the house we bought in Nashua last year. At nearly two points lower on our mortgage, we can save over $200 a month, which will pay for the unending appliance replacement program we seem to have signed up for.

We’ve installed a receiving dock next to the garage for the parade of deliver trucks, UPS and daily FedEx visits. We probably violated building and zoning laws, but I’ll just wait for the city to come by. Next week, I’m installing a cell phone tower in hopes of getting better Wi-Fi than what we have now. My neighbors have agreed to pitch in and if all goes well, we will make enough money to put in a couple shuffleboard courts on East Dunstable Rd.

In the meantime, the way we’ve gone through appliances is laughable. We didn’t realize that nearly every appliance in the house was on its fourth and fifth legs.

About a week after moving in, the fridge crapped out, forcing us to live out of a couple Igloo coolers until the new one we ordered could be delivered. It proved to be too large to fit through the kitchen entrance, so we simply sledgehammered the entrance and in she came.

November arrived and within the first few days of the month, I was taking cold showers at 4 a.m. That got old fast. Then we lost the master bath commode in December, the equivalent of a lump of Christmas charcoal.

We had a few months where nothing broke. Then March came in like a roaring lion and our washer joined the scrap metal heap with the fridge and hot water tank. Just as we started getting cocky a week ago, the central air conditioning system waved the white flag. It was way overdue. Based on the Sanskrit etchings inside the cover, the HVAC technician estimated it was brought over on the Mayflower. Even then it was estimated to be 2,300 years old in 1620. I think it once kept the inside of the Sphinx cool during those scorching Egyptian summers.

“You got your money’s worth from this baby,” the tech chuckled. A couple days after that, the oven decided to die. We actually cheered that passing. It was 91-degrees that day and it gave us permission to take the summer off from cooking. Besides, we hated the electric glass cooktop and will put a gas stove in this fall.

Now you see why we are doing a refinance on a 16-month mortgage. The extra couple hundred bucks a month will go toward our appliance replacement addiction. If Nashua makes us tear out our loading dock, we’ll just add a spare bedroom for the Maytag repairman.

Contact Mike Morin at mike morinmedia@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @MikeMorinMedia. His column runs the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month.

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