Spare Change

What do you do with your spare change? Do you realize your spare change can be used as a source of savings?

As kids, most of us grew up with some form of a "Piggy Bank". As we get older saving money seems to get more sophisticated. In today's tech savvy society we have swapped cash for debit and credit cards. Most transactions are electronic and deposits into our savings, frequent or infrequent, are the same. Using a "Card" provides benefits such as cash back, points, miles, rewards, etc. Lord knows, my cards get a workout!!!!!

Every so often you do need some cash. For Jacky and I, cash is usually used for the neighborhood corner store, haircuts, cab fares, etc. Dollars usually get used until they're gone, but what about the coins? For years Jacky and I would have coins scattered around the apartment, at work, or in the car. One day we decided to better organize our life and chose to start with organizing our spare change.

We both went to College in Atlanta, the home of Coca Cola. While there, Jacky purchased a three foot tall replica Coke bottle from the World of Coca Cola Museum. It was designed to be used as a "Piggy Bank" and we decided to take advantage of it. In May of 2003 we made a promise to each other that at the end of the day, whatever coin currency we had in our pockets we would deposit it into the Coke bottle. The plan was to see how long it would take to fill the bottle and then see who would be the closest in determining how much money was inside. Whoever came the closest, would decide what to do with the money.

Living in NY and not having a washer and dryer in our apartment, quarters are a premium. At times we were tempted, but we did our best not to dip into the "stash" we were accumulating.

As the coins in the bottle grew, so did we. The bottle moved with us from Brooklyn to Mount Vernon when we purchased our coop and although we are blessed to have great jobs with base salaries and bonuses we still practiced depositing our coins in the Coke Bottle.

Well, on February 15th, 2009 the bottle was 75% filled. At this point we had duct taped the bottle several times as the coins were beginning to bust out of the sides. We decided to" cash in". We were worried the bottle would not last long enough for the coins to reach the top.

Although I am very conscience of how I spend my money I felt that spending my time trying to roll all those coins was not worth it and we decided take the coins to a Coinstar Machine understanding there would be a 8.9% fee.

You can find Coinstar machines in most grocey stores, so we headed to Stop and Shop. On the way there we made our guesses. Jacky's guess was $350.00. I was less optomistic and went with $225.00. Well a third of the way into depositing the coins into the machine we had to readjust our estimates as we already surpassed $200.00 and it was very clear we would go beyond $350.00. Jacky's second guess was $550.00, mine was $600.00.

The great thing about Coinstar is the screen will display exactly how much of each coin has been deposited. Our grand total was: 19 silver dollars, 4,526 pennies, 1,269 dimes, 707 nickles, and 1,557 quarters, or more easily put $615.76.

I don't care who you are or what you make, 615.76 is real money and you can do something with it. It took six years, so on average every year we saved over $100.00 in pennies, nickles, dimes, quarters and silver dollars.

The lesson learned is no amount of money is too small to save. Pennies turn into dollars. The next time you just throw the change in your pocket on your dresser, desk at work, or in the car ash tray remember that down the road that same change can be the spark needed for the vacation, new purse, watch, or shoes you've been saving for. Don't forget, you can also put the money in the bank.

So you are probably wondering what I decided to do with the money since I had the closest estimate. You already know, we put it in the bank.

Stack your Chips.

King of Cash