Turnips

What, me worry?

I have always considered myself to be pretty savvy and difficult to fool. I always read about older people who get bamboozled out of their life savings by some huckster who comes to the door, and I think that would never happen to me.

    "Ma'am, I'm from the Office of Home Owners Who Don't Know Squat About the House They Live In, and I am here to inspect your foundation."
    "Oh sure come right on in."
    "Ma'am, you have a crack in your sub-piling that holds up the area directly under your bedroom. I'll have to make sure the floors in your bedroom aren't about to buckle and send you plummeting into your sub-standard basement."
    "Oh, by all means."
    "And Ma'am, could you point out exactly where all your cash and jewelry is located?"

No, not me. I'm not some clown who just fell off the turnip truck.

Last week we went to the Eastside Neighbors Association holiday party. Mark and I sat at a table with one of my neighbors, sipping wine and whining about the cost of insurance here in Florida. Mrs. Neighbor was shocked to find out that my house isn't paid off.
    "But haven't you lived in that house for quite a while Alan?"
    "Twenty years."
    "And you haven't refinanced it? If you refinanced, then took that money and paid off the mortgage, and then took the money you saved by refinancing and paid off the refinancing, you would save so much money that... "
I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. It sounded like those old voodoo economics, but I figured I would check it out anyway. So when I got home from the party I went on the internet and found a home refinancing calculator. I plugged in all the appropriate numbers and information, then I hit the calculate button. I found that even with a lower rate of interest I wouldn't be saving any money worth mentioning. What I didn't know is that this bank's website would take all my information and turn it over to a bunch of 'mortgage' companies. Since the moment I hit enter on that website my email inbox has been flooded with bullshit offers. Not just for refinancing my house, but for everything from boner pills, to remodeling. That isn't the worst part of it. Every day since then I have been receiving phone calls from mortgage companies and banks, with most of those calls coming during the dinner hour. I don't know how many different ways there are to scream obscenities into the phone, but I've come up with a lot of them. My only fear is that if I was stupid enough to give some random website enough information to cause this, what will happen as I get older? Is my brain atrophying at an accelerated rate? Or could it just have been the wine from the holiday party?