~ See a penny, pick it up ~

That’s what Thomas Daigle has been doing for 35 years, saving enough pennies to pay off his mortgage.
When Mr. Daigle and wife first moved into their Milford, Mass. home in 1977, he knew he wanted to make his last payment memorable and from then on, started saving a few pennies a day.  “It was something I wanted to do,” he told the Milford Daily News.  “I was just praying I didn’t die first.”

After a few years of collecting, the grape crate he stored the pennies in began to break from the overwhelming weight, so transferred his bounty to a pair of steel military rocket-launcher  ammo boxes. Mr. Daigle rolled the pennies in packs of 50, which  became a hobby for him, and stored them in his basement.

This past April, he had enough pennies to make his final mortgage payment, which weighed-in at more than 360 kg, delivering the two boxes to the bank. According to the Milford Daily News, he didn’t  say the exact number of pennies he had, but the total came in at  over 62,000.

But if any homeowners in Canada want to make their mortgage payment in pennies, they better start hoarding. The federal government announced in March that it is  phasing out the copper coin starting this fall, citing rising production costs.

Canadians don’t appear to be as interested as Mr. Daigle is in making a statement with their mortgage though.

Tibor Bogdan