How much pocket change do you leave the house with in the morning? None? A set amount? a handful? What do you do with change at the end of the day? Put it in a piggy bank? Save it for tomorrow? Is pocket change obsolete?
I don’t leave the house with any loose change, and whatever I get through the course of a day goes into a jar on my dresser.
Sometimes I’ll raid it for quarters, but generally I just let it all accumulate until I have enough to justify depositing it at the bank.
I’ve been saving mine for about 2 years now. I save all my silver change in a giant jar – It’s probably about the size of a gallon milk just and it is 80% full with silver change. I figure there must be at least $200 in there, possibly double that. Some rainly day I’ll roll it all up.
The pennies I throw into another jar and when that fills I take it to a coinstar machine in the grocery store.
Ditto, except I don’t use a jar, I use a 60 oz. beer bottle that I got somewhere. That makes it pretty impossible to raid change from it. It holds over $200 when full, which is pretty sweet as I fill it about once a year.
I also have “silver” and “penny” containers. I keep them right by the front door on an end table, where I empty my pockets each afternoon when I get home. There’s a third container with Metrobus tokens and Metro cards, too. My employer pays for my bus fare to work in $30.00 cards, once a quarter. I can exchange two of these cards for five $12.00 bags of ten tokens.
Anyway, I bring two bus tokens with me every day (whether or not I expect to get a ride home with Jurphette). If I don’t have any singles on me, I’ll grab a few quarters off the stack for small purchases. Generally, however, I only visit the ATM when I’m about to make a purchase, and as soon as I can after visiting the ATM, I make sure I’ve got a five, a ten, and a few singles handy. If I’ve got the right small bills on hand, I save them for when change is inconvenient, such as splitting a check at lunch, or tipping nicely (without having to round up to the next $20).
I leave for work in the morning with no change.
Durning the day, I only pay for things with bills. If I buy something for $2.04, I give the man three bucks even if I have change in my pocket.
It all goes in the big-ass jug when I get home. Over the course of a year, it usually amounts to roughly $1,000. It gets deposited at the beginning of Christmas shopping season. 
I keep my change at home in a toilet bowl shaped coffee mug. Rather than have it overflow, I try to spend change during the day when reasonable. I hate to have a lot of change jingling in my pocket all day, so I leave the house with some where around 43 cents in change. 43 cents gives me 1 quarter, 1 dimes, 1 nickel, and 3 pennies. When I buy something say for 53 cents, I’ll give the cashier $1.03 so I can get quarters back and not pennies. It’s fun to watch the post-calculator generation squirm to figure out the change.
I suppose it depends on what your definition of “with” is. q;}
Pocketwise, none. I hate having change in my pockets… the compulsion to fiddle with it is nigh overwhelming, and that just don’t look right from the outside!
However, I have a large change collection in my vehicle at all times… this is where my pocketchange goes when I’m out and about. If I remember, that is.
Whatever change makes it back to my actual apartment goes into a big glass mug I keep for just that purpose. Except for the quarters… all the quarters get picked out and dropped into my backpack. Hey, it’s hanging nearby, good place for it.
Once in a while, this mug of change goes to the coinsorting machine at the grocery store. I ALWAYS pick the quarters out before using this machine, because that’s where they really make their money, relatively speaking. They take a fixed percentage of whatever coins you run through, and give you the rest as a receipt you can trade for cash. Fine, you want 8% of my pennies, and you’ll count 'em for me, deal. Pennies suck, and I’m not going to spend all day rolling up $3 in pennies. Take this $0.24 and do it for me, that’s a good deal.
But quarters… that’s another matter. Pluck four quarters from the batch, and you not only have a full dollar, but you keep them from taking $0.08. Make a $10 roll and that’s $0.80 (Nearly a dollar, for you bad-at-math types).
So I spend a few minutes, plucking out the quarters and dumping them in the backpack before I let the machine sort the rest. I might do dimes too but dimes, well, they’re a bit harder to separate. That’s what the machine’s for.
Anecdote time:
I used to have a roommate who was obsessed with loose change. I don’t know why, but he ALWAYS kept his change. And I mean always… when he moved, he had… let’s see… a big bag of dimes… several coffee cans and jars of assorted change… several shoeboxes full of assorted change… and piles and piles of change on the various surfaces in his room. He probably still has most of it… reminded me of a dragon, with his huge horde of coins. We tried, frequently, to convince him to roll it all up and get rid of it, but he wouldn’t budge. 'Course, he did have a point… if he ever needed money, he could just go to his stash and pull out enormous amounts of rolled coin. Saw him do $180 for bills once, and it barely dented the stash!
I maintain my change in a blue nylon bag that travels with me. The quantity of coins in the bag varies in a cycle.
For the week after payday, I generally have a fair quantity of folding money in my wallet, so I tend to pay with it and receive change back.
As the two weeks between paydays go by, the quantity of coins in the bag increases, and I start paying for lunch and other purchases under $5 or $10 with it ($1 and $2 coins are very handy for this–I often have more than $10 in change on me). I also reserve some for laundry.
Eventually I’m using the contents of the bag every day, and the higher-value coins start to disappear from it. If it’s a tight week, I’ll start counting out the lower-value coins. On occaision I will use nearly all of it.
Pennies tend to build up during this cycle. If enough of them accumulate that they obscure the other couns, I will remove some of them to a separate bag, and at long intervals that bag goes to Coinstar and I get a newspaper or a loaf of bread or something.
Then payday happens again. The cycle is repeated.
I just looked in my coin bag–I I have 2x$2, 1x$1, 1x$0.50, 15x$0.25, 7x$0.10, 6x$0.05, and 25x$0.01 in it, for $8.50 in total. This is pretty average. I can do a load of laundry, buy a lunch, and get a couple of drinks for that much.
Pretty much like Phnord…no change in pockets at start of day, tons of change in truck, more change in desk at work. At end of day, change goes into different containers: schooner glass for pennies, beer mugs for the rest. I roll it whenever the glasses get full, and take it to the bank whenever the drawer of rolled coin gets too heavy to open. Then the bills get put into the Vegas fund. 
Change from fast-food goes into the truck bin, which gets emptied whenever it threatens to overflow.
I didn’t realize that Coinstar was so popular! Here in NJ there is a bank called ‘Commerce Bank’ which has a free coin counting machine in the lobby of all their branches. Dump in your coins and the machine gives you a receipt. Take the receipt to the teller person and they’ll give you bills without taking a percentage. I haven’t tried it yet so I don’t know if you need to have an account with them. The machine is nice and low so kids can use it.
I leave with something between $0.50 and a buck, quarters only, for the express purpose of buying my morning newspaper. All other change goes into an old cookie jar to be cashed in later. With the mixture I get, when the jar is full (takes about 6 months), I have about $100.
Nope, no account necessary. You bring them the receipt, they give you cash, have a nice day.
They even make a game out of it – before you start, the machine asks you to predict how much change you have. If you’re correct (within 50 cents or so), you win a prize. I believe they give you one of their Commerce logo piggy banks.
I always laugh when I see someone paying 8% to use the CoinStar in our local ShopRite when there is a Commerce branch right across the street.
I haven’t seen any baks with coin-sorting machines around here. Perhaps I should try the credit unions…
If I go in there with 4 quarters, does the game still apply? I think with a few tries I could get that within 50¢.
I’ve often wondered that myself. Hey, if you want to make a fuss about it, they’ll probably give you one. It’s just more free advertising for them anyway.
Until this past weekend, I was walking around with over $15 in change in my purse. No wonder my shoulder always hurts!!
The only time I have change in my pockets is if I buy something for less than $20 or so and pay cash, and get coins as part of my change. Pennies, nickels and dimes go in a little plastic coin sorter, and get rolled up regularly.
Quarters go in this life-size plastic parking meter piggy bank I have. The pole part is a clear tube about 3" in diameter. I have no idea how much is in there, but there’s almost a foot of quarters. I’ll count it all when it fills up.
It seems I’m the only one …
I spend my change as I get it. Mr cowgirl doesn’t spend it, so there’s always plenty around, and I’ve worked retail enough to be quite good at counting out change quickly, so I spend it. I hate having handfuls of change, I hate going to the bank machine, I hate having to count it all at once … When I leave the house I grab whatever is in the little bowl that collects whatever comes out of our pockets; if too much, I take a good-sized handful.
It’s kind of a problem because I spend it so efficiently I never have quarters to do my laundry.
In Canada we have coins for $1 and $2, so if you never spend your change as soon as you buy gum with a $5, everything is dumped into your change jar and you’ve got to spend another fiver to get another pack of gum !
Count me as someone who spends his change rather than accumulate it.