Money Saving 101 #1

Money Saving 101 will be 1-2 short segments each week about ways to save money. 

Today’s topic is saving change. What do you do with that change in your pocket at the end of the day? Do you throw it in a jar? Do you keep it for spending later so you have exact change? I know a lot of people that throw their change in their cars and it sits there for years. I’ve also seen people that just leave their change in the little “take a penny” jars at the gas station or wherever they may be. Some people keep the spare change around for the times when they want exact change.

When it comes to change, I’m a saver. For a long time, I’ve been saving my change in a Nalgene bottle. It’s the perfect size for change and, with the BPA in Nalgene bottles, I didn’t want to use it for drinking. Whenever I clean out my purse or my pockets, I dump the change in my bottle. When the bottle is full, I take it to the bank and cash it out. Most banks will do this for free. If your bank doesn’t do this for free, the Coinstar machine at your local grocery store will do this for a small fee. Sometimes Coinstars will change out your money for free if you choose a gift card instead of cash at the end. In the end, I usually have $100 in my bottle depending on the type of change I put in there. 

My boyfriend has been keeping a large vase full of change for a long time. To put it in perspective, the change jar is a couple feet tall and at least a foot and half in diameter. When we counted it out, it was about 4 inches full. It took us a good hour to count and roll the coins into paper tubes for the bank. At the end, we had about $325 which my dear boyfriend put into his savings account. Not bad for just putting spare change in the jar at the end of the day! 

Side note: We discovered, after we had spent so much time counting and rolling the change, the bank will actually take the change without it being rolled. I’d check with your local bank to see what they say regarding whether or not your coins need to be rolled before you waste all your time. We were watching a pretty good movie though, so it wasn’t totally wasted.