Man Makes Final Mortgage Payment With 62,000 Pennies

Thomas Daigle wanted to make his last mortgage payment memorable. Chances are the person who ended up counting his 62,000 pennies it up won’t forget it soon.

For the final payment on a home he bought in 1977, Daigle walked into Milford Federal Savings and Loan Association in Massachusetts with two steel crates filled with pennies—62,000 in all, weighing a whopping 800 pounds in total. Daigle had already alerted the bank of his plan, Yahoo News reported.

“It was something I wanted to do,” Daigle told the Milford Daily News. “I always follow through.”

“I was just praying I didn’t die first.”

Daigle had been planning the payment for a very long time, hatching the plan as soon as he and his wife bought the home in 1975. He began saving pennies he found on the street and setting aside the coppers at a rate of 2.5 a day. The pennies went into a grape crate, but once it began to break from the ever-increasing weight of the pennies, Daigle bought a pair of steel military rocket launcher ammo boxes, the Milford Daily News reported.

One snowy or rainy days he would retreat to his basement and diligently roll the pennies into packs of 50. When he contacted the bank about his plan they were “100 percent for it,” Daigle said.

Daigle, who still works at the optician shop he opened with his college roommate in 1982, said saving the 62,000 pennies turned into a lesson he could impart on his kids. “If you say you’re going to do something, you do it,” he told the Milford Daily News. “Pennies add up.”

Each roll—62,000 pennies in all—was counted perfectly, bank officials said.