Harp and Thistle

The financial plan was firmly in place in 1994 and there were several things that we had adopted from consultations between the Dowty mob, a subscription to the Gordon Pape financial newsletter, detailed notes from numerous seminars (free cake!) and advice from Ken Miller, our financial advisor at the the time.

The nuts and bolts would have sounded crazy to me a few years before this, but we were at the point were we were borrowing money on a line of credit to maximise our joint RRSP contributions and usually after the investment deadline, most paydays were basically a wallet flush as we paid down the PLOC and our mortgage.

Karen and myself would jokingly say that we were broke, but financially, even before my jump back into contracting work, we were doing things right and the increased cash from job shopping would only accelerate the ending of the mortgage on our little townhouse.

If the PLOC was mostly paid off before we received our tax refunds from the RRSP, the remaining money would be paid directly off the principal of the mortgage. It really was a smart plan and indirectly forced us to "pay ourselves first" which of course is a Wealthy Barber reference and if you've never read that book, you should.

Ken Miller arranged another meeting for the Dowty investment group up at the local pub, the Harp and Thistle in Ajax, and once again, beers were quaffed and a lively discussion about money yielded another valuable nugget regarding our mortgage.

Ken advised that if wasn't the time for locking into any mortgage, and that we change to a variable rate. I remember that at the time it seemed a frightening prospect to "give up" the security of a locked in rate, but I respected his advice and the following week I was down at the bank for another "crazy" tweak to our plan.

In time I would call this evolving tweaking process by one engineering term that described an abrasive machining process to produce a precision surface.

Honing.