I’ve made it a habit that at the end of every day, I empty out whatever change is in my pockets, and only keep the folding money on me. I am aware that we are also in the position of having $1 and $2 coins, which tips the balance a little, but last time I checked, it was after about 4 months of collecting, and there was something over $150 in there. More than half of that was in silver (5, 10, 20 & 50c).
We then put those notes that result from the coins into another jar, which we use to buy things we did not expect to have to buy. Pizza if we cannot be bothered cooking, donations to door-to-door charity people, etc. This is currently sitting at around $200. It got a little emptied over Xmas.
Yes, I know I could put that in a bank and earn interest, but then I would not be able to buy pizza.
I’m too poor to accumulate too much change, but we do have an old bank with separate boxes for each type of coin that we use to sort any coins that accumulate. My son always steals the quarters, and I regularly take the pennies, nickels and dimes to work and trade them for bills when I do register counts in the morning. Saves us a trip to the bank just for coins. Occasionally I’ll accumulate about $10 worth of coins just rolling around in the bottom of my purse, especially when my coin purse spills. I think it’s great fun to dump out my purse and find all this treasure I didn’t realize I had!
My mom, on the other hand, has never let any money float loose anywhere, ever, in her life. She is the woman holding you up in line while she re-files all her bills in dollar-amount order in her wallet when she gets her change. Heaven forbid that there be a single in between the twenties, even for a minute. She is also the woman who pokes around in her coin purse to find the exact change, or the change to make the change even…you know what I mean, the 7 cents you need so that you’ll get back a quarter. I’ll do this sometimes, too, but only if I can do it quickly and get out of the way. She doesn’t care how long it takes, she does not want to accumulate change. This is also the woman who spent three days moving everything in the kitchen (she’s 80, nothing happens fast) because she dropped a coin and wasn’t sure where it rolled off to. She even had me laying on the floor, poking around under the oven drawer for her, and was seriously considering asking me to move the refrigerator, since the yardstick hadn’t yielded any results. I told her I would pay her a quarter to just forget the whole coin drop had ever happened. She finally found it over by the door, under a shoe, and it was only a penny. My daughter had told me to just drop a coin on the floor (after day two) so I think it might have come from her!
On the bright side, this has been a very tight week financially, and I have two doctor’s appointments with two copays this week. I was puttering around in my bedroom the other day and found $21 tucked into my pincushion box! I was so giddy I did the happy dance! I usually try to tuck a few dollars around the place in case my son calls while I’m at work, needing a few dollars for dinner. But I had forgotten all about this stash, and he never found it in his customary search of all the usual stash spots! It paid for one of the copays, since that doctor can’t take my Flexible Spending Account credit card. Woo Woo!
It’s a glass wine bottle. I helped someone move once who used to be a bartender, kept her tips in it, and didn’t want it anymore. That’s all I know of its history.
I keep a change cup; I never carry cash (it disappears too easily and seems much easier to spend than having to use your debit/cheque card), but the boyfriend regularly empties his pockets into it because he hates carrying around coinage. The quarters are cannibalized quickly for laundry. The nickels seem to linger, though. None of it ever survives long enough to add up to anything substantial. I’m too broke to just let money sit around, even if we just get a bunch of it together to go buy a bottle of Coke or something. It gets used.
It probably also has to do with me being uber-organized, so the “money spot” is some specific place and I don’t have a random money-stashing habit where it can be forgotten about.
I keep a few stashes of coinage around. I have a five gallon jar that I fill up VERY slowly (about every 3-4 years) but it holds about $1000 in straight coins. Once it had almost $2300 in it, but there were a lot of bills in there too.
I slowly transfer money into it from the coffee cans in the closet, which are the big Maxwell House style cans. I guess they hold just under a gallon. Whenever it’s full, I dump it into the big jar.
The medium can gets filled from my earthernware change tray on my dresser, which fills up every two weeks or so. Takes about 8-10 trays to fill the coffee can.
I have a little ritual that makes the money add up a lot quicker. Whenever I transfer money from the tray to the can, all the $1 & $5 bills in my wallet/pockets go in the jar too. When I transfer to the big jar, $10 and $20’s go too.
That adds up to a hell of a lot more cash. Of course, I promptly forget about it until something like a full tray or this this thread reminds me. It’s all habit from my bartending days. I used to work at a bar that didn’t like us cashing in change and small bills because they kept so much on hand.
moi and I have a 5-gallon water jug that we hope to someday fill. Not looking forward to carrying it to the bank, though. I don’t carry change, and we finally got a washer and dryer so we don’t need the quaters for laundry. It’ll still take quite a while to fill, I imagine.
The first year Mr. Beckwall and I were together, I must admit that we were horny youngsters in love. Every time we had relations, each of us put $1 into a medium sized box. By the time Sept. rolled around and we were leaving for a trip to Europe, we decided to check and see how much fun money we had to spend. Does the amount of $700 impress anyone?
He still rocks my world. We just don’t do the fun money anymore.
I once cashed out $350 before a trip I took with a buddy of mine. Paid for the skiing, and the boozing for the weekend. This was slightly after we had purchased our house, so much of the potential change was subjected to the washers/dryers in the apartment building that we lived in.
Since then, I’ve been saving all my coins (I empty the pockets every couple of days), and I’m sure it’s a much larger number than this… I use it for “fun” money. My current batch of change is headed towards a new archery bow in a couple of years. (If I could save 600 or so, that’d buy a kickass setup).
It’s just a little each week, but it adds up, and it’s never missed.
When I went to Vegas, I wore this large heavy coat will gambling. It got warm so I switched to a lightweight windbreaker. When I got home with my modest winnings, I discovered two hundred bucks in my coat. Sweet!!
I don’t carry change, and we finally got a washer and dryer so we don’t need the quaters for laundry. It’ll still take quite a while to fill, I imagine.
