Met with Monty Mortgage this morning. He is a delightful gentleman who moved to Alaska in 1984, after graduating from college. Monty had followed a friend here and ended up falling in love with this gorgeous state. Who doesn’t?

We had a pleasant chat, and even though Capitalism is a scam, he still made me feel good about my credit score: “We like to lend money to people like you.” Yes! My big decision was whether to go with the HUD 184 loan or a conventional loan. And then I need to consider the futures made possible by different down payments.

Even after all these years, my poverty mentality keeps hanging around me, the little demon. So despite my worries that destitution is lurking around the corner, giggling and rubbing its tiny hands together in glee, I am pulling the trigger and seeing what happens next. And interestingly, although Monty’s name kept coming up when I was quizzing people on who to use, I did reach out to two other possible lenders. But Monty responded first, nearly immediately, while the others took days. In fact, after I left his office, I saw two messages from them as if they knew I was meeting with him. Too late, too late, was their cry.

Monty recommended Renee Realtor when I asked. He also suggested I take a free online Homeowner course offered by the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation. Even if I know the information, Monty said (which I don’t), taking the course will save me a couple of hundred dollars on the closing costs. I’ll do it! My plan is to be ruthlessly frugal over the forthcoming decade so I’m in a better position when I retire for real. Frugal within reason, of course. No more impulse purchases on Werner Herzog dolls and Joan Crawford books. But I don’t need to withhold the pleasures of a periodic trip to my beloved Palm Springs now and again. Blessed are those who budget with intention, as the book of good intention tells us. If I must have a Yoko Ono T-shirt, I will see if it is in my budget. And I am counting on this blog to be one of my sources of cheap entertainment.

Gave Renee a call, and she said she’d get me started on my new chapter.

The condo is back on the market. And I’ve decided to act. As Bacon exhorts us in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), “‘Too late, too late’ will be the cry when the man with the bargains has passed you by. If you got no money on you now, you’ll be crying tears as big as October cabbages.”

Made an appointment to meet with Monty Mortgage this week. If nothing else, at least I am putting myself back into some semblance of civic duty to the economy, such as it is.

After rewatching To Be or Not to Be (1942) over the weekend, I listened to a Jack Benny radio program on cassette (Side A is “Man About Town” and Side B is “Carmichael is Sick”). I love you, Jack Benny!

Unfortunately, no surprise, there is a white-racist joke, which broke the program’s spell. The race jokes are much rarer after they moved to TV, thank goodness. Britta Perry’s line in Community popped into my head: “I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at ….”.

The production company kept the original commercial plugs in, so there were several spots for Jell-O and Jell-O Pudding.