A man-child reflects on mortgages, cars, school, dating, and other adult pursuits...

A few months ago I was pondering certain things in my life - if I was going to continue the grad program I was in, about buying a second car, and as usual, why I'm a complete failure when it comes to dating.

The sports car thing probably isn't going to happen. I can't bring myself to drop a ton of money on something that is just going to cost me more money in repairs.

Instead, what I'm probably going to do is throw a bunch of money at my mortgage. When I bought Casa De Mad a few years ago, I did a 40 year mortgage at 6.3% or so, and put 10% down, which means I'm spending $80 a month on PMI - private mortgage insurance, which protects the lender if I default. If I bring the LTV - loan to value, the ratio of the amount owed vs. the value of the house - to under 80%, I can drop that. So I'm looking at putting another 10% down and refinancing into a 30 year at around 5%. That would shave 6 years off my payments, and probably around $200 a month... assuming that the house gets assessed at what I paid for it. Zillow says it's worth that much, but who knows if the bank will agree.

That will save me a lot of money long-term. It's the mature, practical, adult thing to do, and I can't bring myself to do anything else. It also means that I'm going to need to go back to being frugal, because it will put a huge dent in my savings, which I'll need to rebuild. Instead of buying a second car, I hope to replace the Ranger in a year or two, preferably with something with a backseat and a paint job that doesn't attract every cop in a 3 mile radius. And I want to pay cash for it, because unless it's dead it doesn't make sense to borrow to replace it.

As far as school, still not sure. My plan right now is that I'm not taking any classes during the summer, but I still need to decide for the fall. It's nice not having classes - I can do 2-hour workouts at the gym, eat real dinners, watch an hour of TV every night, and kill a book or 2 a week - ones I actually want to read. On the other hand, I somehow managed to get A's in both of the classes I took last semester, it would be cool to have another degree, and it's not like I have anything better to do.

One thing I was hoping was that with more time, I'd actually be able to date. But that's not happening - I've stuck my toe back into the cesspool of online dating, even renewing my eHarmony subscription, but so far not even a nibble. I guess I had some illusion that the cloud of failure that follows me around like PigPen's cloud of dust would somehow magically disappear and that the opposite sex would cease to be repulsed by me, but not surprisingly, that hasn't happened - which makes the idea of going back to class, where at least I can interact with people who can't stand me in person instead of just over the internet.