Spare Change
@rosettaresearch (1285)
United States
March 13, 2007 5:56pm CST
Saving your spare change is a great way to build up savings. You take all the change from everything you bought that day, and put it in a jar at night. People usually don't use exact change. You have that extra money laying around that you don't even miss from your budget. So, in the jar it goes, when the jar is full, you take it to the bank and voila -- you got a significant amount of money already saved.
The big problem with this is that hardly anyone uses cash anymore. You just run your debit card through a machine, punch a few buttons and you have paid. No fuss, no muss, no change. Ooops.
Having to go through your receipts or even your bank statement to figure out your "change" can be a pain. Who wants to spend all day converting all those payments to whole dollars and figuring out your change? Yet, that is money you are just missing out on. Chances are your budget would not miss it if you had physical control of the change. Yet there it sits. Unless it is in interest bearing account, it does nothing for you.
Well, there is hope for those of us who prefer debit cards to cash. Over on my blog is the solution. http://www.tlagpto.blogspot.com
3 people like this
5 responses
@wildhorse (1293)
• Egypt
14 Mar 07
This is a nice idea but as you said we don't get many spare change nowdays, I keep it at home as i don't like to carry it around but it never grow to a usable amount to deposit for savings.
@rosettaresearch (1285)
• United States
14 Mar 07
That's why I had my brilliant sister develop a spreadsheet. The "change" is still there, you just gotta figure out how much it us. Then you would be amazed how much you have.
@shaz6611 (951)
• Australia
13 Mar 07
I like to do this also but lately it seems that it no sooner goes in the jar that it comes out again, usually on something for the kids like a special lunch at school, casual day or pocket money. I suppose it's a good thing that it's there in the first place. I love the change jar.
1 person likes this
@rosettaresearch (1285)
• United States
13 Mar 07
While it is good that the money is there in the first place, perhaps you could add a couple of dollars each month to the budget for those special things that always come up. Put that money in an envelope and use that for the things that come up. Then, the change jar is just for savings and not touched (plus the change from those special things goes into the jar too).
Not that it is wrong what you are doing either. The jar is for what you want it for. But, using my system, I have saved over $20 this year already. I'm single and pretty tight with money, so I don't spend a lot. That is what I have done. Imagine what a whole family saving can do.
1 person likes this
@cjthedog64 (1552)
• United States
14 Mar 07
We use cash for almost everything. DH saves his change and I save mine in DS's piggy bank. DH just cashed out his coin jar from the last 3 months and had $159. That's not bad!
@mdarma (868)
• Singapore
14 Mar 07
Hi rosettaresearch,
That is a wonderful idea, we all should get on it immediately. (Sorry card users). Over the years, We may saved enough money to purchase something that we long wanted or who knows we could do some mini travelling.
Great idea Rosettaresearch
@alienation68 (103)
• United States
13 Mar 07
You know actually my family used to do that a lot. we would have a big 5 gallon water bottle and would fill it with all kinds of change, the difference with us is we saved it until we needed it. we moved a lot and when we got there and were waiting for my father to get a job we would cash it in for groceries. i think the last time we did it we had around 250$ in change. :D
