Pivot

Looking back, it may have been that year that caused the pair of us to pivot, a start to the sprinklings of thoughts about what we should be doing with money.  I suspect it still was two years off at this point, but the man with all the gold and the cigars certainly made a couple of bottom feeders like ourselves realise that we were not in control of our money.

A year later we had saved our pennies, dollars, hundreds and thousands and we paid off the second mortgage on the townhouse, all ten thousand of it. I think that was very impressive at the time that we knuckled down and saved that sort of money.

Of course, in typical form, the system had a few surprises for us at the end of the year, as an example, a small clause in the contract meant that we had to pay the lenders lawyers $250 to rid ourselves of the mortgage and in addition, a visit to the land registry office demanded another $50 to enable a clerk to erase our name from a board.

But, added "stupid taxes" at the end did little to surpress our joy at destroying that second mortgage.

A beer, or three, was had.

A week later, the lender called us at home, said that "we'd both made money" and we agreed, yet, it was obvious who had made more...