Have I found the most efficient way to get rid of spare change?

United Kingdom
May 17, 2026 11:44am CST
These days I use cashback credit cards for the overwhelming majority of my spending. But years ago I made a real mess of my finances and got so far into debt that nobody with any sense would lend me the price of a stamp. In those dark times, I went cash only, paying for everything in notes. The trouble was, I wasn't any good at keeping track of the change I received - and even worse, when I paid for something and the price wasn't a round number, instead of reaching into my pocket and topping up the payment with the change I had, I'd just add another note to the payment. Which then meant I got stuck with more change. So over the years, I ended up with a lot of small change in my house. Pound pieces I spent easily enough, but the smaller change kept accumulating. I've got better habits now, but that pile of change is still there, silently accusing me. From time to time, I've considered bagging it all up and taking it to the bank, but it's too much trouble, especially since the branch near me has closed now. In any case, even if I did that and put the money in a savings account, the interest isn't that great these days. An alternative that we have in British supermarkets is Coinstar machines. These offer a service where it you chuck all your loose change in them, they'll issue you with a voucher that you can spend in the supermarket where the machine is. Which sounds okay, except there are fees a 49p transaction fee plus an 11.99% processing fee - so if you put in say £5 of change, you'll get back a voucher for about £3.91. That's a fair-sized chunk. It's a maxim of mine never to lose money on a deal if at all possible. Another maxim of mine is to always make a profit out of any transaction if at all possible. So I challenged myself to think of a way I could get rid of all that spare change and extract as much extra value out of it as possible. What I came up with was to use the money for what it was intended for - buying stuff - but with a few simple extra steps to push a bit of money my way. It's best to explain what I did the other day: I've been feeling a bit rough for the last few days so I've been taking ibuprofen. I was almost out of that on Friday, and I also needed to go to the shoe shop to buy a new pair of slippers, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I packed a coin bag with a pound's worth of 2p pieces. After I'd done my business at the shoe shop, I nipped into the Morrison's supermarket next door to buy a packet of ibuprofen. As luck would have it, packets of own-brand ibuprofen were marked down from 50p to 35p, so that's a saving right there. I picked up a pacjket and went to the self-checkouts, as I didn't want to waste a checkout girl's time while I counted out coins. I selected one of the self-checkouts that takes coins and the first thing I did was scan my Morrison's More Card. The way Morrison's loyalty scheme works, if you scan your More Card, every item you buy in that transaction gets you 5 points. Then when you've saved up 5,000 points, you can trade that for a £5 credit. So that's not a massive amount per item, but it's something, and as I do most of my main shops at Morrison's it does add up. More Card scanned, ibuprofen packet scanned, then I paid, taking out that bag full of coints and feeding them into the slot, as normal. Here's the most important part, I kept the receipt after I'd paid. I have several apps on my phone which pay me to scan receipts. I've explained most of these previously in another post, but for instance there's an app called Clear! which accepts most receipts and pays 5p or 10p according to which shop the receipt is from - in the case of Morrison's it pays 10p. If you add up all the points I get from the other apps I use, which includes Shoppix, NeilsonIQ and Shop & Scan, that's not a massive amount of extra value, but for a small transaction like that it's better than the interest I'd get in a savings account. Plus in the case of Morrison's you can enter a short online survey for each receipt you have - if you win, you get £500 in Morrison's gift cards. That only takes a minute or two - I haven't won yet, but I might do one day. Going forward, I plan to apply this method any time I've got business near a supermarket - go in, buy something that costs less than a quid and that I'll use anyway, use one of the self-checkouts that takes coins, and make sure to squeeze whatever extra value out of it that I can by scanning the receipt. I'm keeping a bag full of coins in my car for this purpose. There's always something available in a supermaket that costs less than a pound, will store for a long time, and which I'll use in any event - tins of beans, instant noodles etc. So this is something that's easy to do and has multiple benefits - getting rid of surplus change, reducing the amount of stufff I have to buy on my main grocery shop, getting some supermarket loyalty points and the extra benefits from scanning. Multiple wins for the same effort. I wish I'd been this good at frugal living 20 years ago, I'd have been in a much better financial position by now. But I've learned. No more wasting money. The question is, is there any way I can improve on this method even more?
2 people like this
1 response
@RasmaSandra (97227)
• Daytona Beach, Florida
22h
Sounds like you have it all figured out, Living from SS to SS I only use a debit card and always count my pennies,
1 person likes this
• United Kingdom
20h
Cheers RasmaSandra, thanks for commenting.