Too much spare change!

I have a HUGE bucket of spare change that I keep telling myself that I'll bring to the bank (never happens). I've started putting $1 in change in my pocket every time I go out. So, if I buy something for $12.18, instead of giving the store $13 and getting back another $0.82 worth of change to add to my bucket, I use $0.18 worth of the change that I stuck in my pocket.

Now, I realize that most women already do this with change in their pocketbooks, but this will really have a benefit with guys.

Give it a try! Start chipping away at your change bucket!

That's alot better than paying 8% to Coinstar, or sitting hunchbacked over a pile of change while you roll it one painful coin at a time.

Pay your kids five percent to roll the coins for you. Let them learn math, percentages, working on commission -- all at the same time!

That must have been you in front of me at the checkout line yesterday.

After being stationed in Germany for 3 years (no pennies given as change on-post), I had a temporary "penny phobia" for about a year when I got back stateside. For some reason, I had to spend every penny I came across as soon as possible. I soon discovered that U.S. postage stamps were about the only coin-op machine that took pennies.

Needless to say, people hated being behind me in line when I purchased a $7.80 book of stamps one penny at a time!

teaching kids the wonders of working on commission? ichiroy would have a heart attack! no doubt he would fear the children would slip a penny here and a penny there into their pockets to pad the commission to 6.257%. as a result, they would no doubt pursue worthless employment in financial services as a result of your diabolical scheme, puck! what a shameful idea!

To gain a HUGE bucket full of change is a good indication of poor spending habits. I had a friend of mine who piled up change all the time. He would "break" bills five times a day buying fast food, candy bars, coffee, etc.. Think about it. If you only spent money when you really needed to how much change would you accumulate? I just rolled $9.40 a few months ago.. the last time I rolled coins Boy George just had a new album out.

bjk, that is clearly not a valid point. you could not buy a Boy George CD today with only 9.40. and he isnt all that popular anymore.

I just dump all my spare change into Coinstar once or twice a year and donate it to a non-profit, like Unicef or Red Cross. Means I don't get to spend it, but hey, I think there's a tax write-off in there somewhere...and the karma points. :)

Actually I would say a bucket full of change is a good indicator of excellent spending habits. It tells me you are using cash as opposed to a credit card.

I purposely don’t spend coins as a savings technique. We roll our coins every 5 years or so and generally end up with over 1k. My son will in fact do the next rolling. It is a sign of the times when people think it is too much work to roll money.

I purposely don’t spend coins as a savings technique. We roll our coins every 5 years or so and generally end up with over 1k. My son will in fact do the next rolling. It is a sign of the times when people think it is too much work to roll money.
Ah, but now you are falling into the money jar trap. Although you are saving, every buck you set aside in the beginning has now devalued by about 15% due to inflation's bite over 5 years. Of course, you still have 85% more than you did if you didn't save it...

I find that philosophy almost comical when it comes to a change bucket, but to be fair pennies can add up. Also it is nowhere near 15% as that number only applies to the money saved in the first year.

Yeah, I'm a bit surprised at the concept that rolling change is a waste of time, or beneath somebody. Daddy taught me to respect money! And there's something very relaxing, very Zen, in dumping a pile of change on the floor in front of the TV, and spending a few hours rolling them up.

Just because you use a credit card does not mean you have poor spending habits. Becasue I do use a card the problem stated in this thread isnt very relevent to me.

The other reason I dont have this problem is I dont feel bad about paying with coins. Some one was with me one time and they were embarrassed becasue I bought something for 3$ with quarters dimes and nickels.

Actually I would say a bucket full of change is a good indicator of excellent spending habits. It tells me you are using cash as opposed to a credit card.

I purposely don’t spend coins as a savings technique. We roll our coins every 5 years or so and generally end up with over 1k. My son will in fact do the next rolling. It is a sign of the times when people think it is too much work to roll money.

My grandfather used to take a large container full of Canadian quarters to the flea market for purchases when we lived in NH. A little embarrassing, but pretty smart, considering the exchange rate in the 1980s between US and Canadian currencies.

another thing you may want to spare your change is giving it to charities like salvation army, american red cross, world vision something like that. Change sometimes are tedious to take but giving what you have is a gift from God.

I personally think it's a bad spending habit to use cash. I always use my credit card, but am very responsible and pay off my credit card in full every month. This has advantages such as paying only what you need to. If you use cash, you get change back and it just sits in a jar till you bring it to the bank or to coinstar and lose money.

So for myself, I use my credit card and only pay what I need to, plus I get free money through my credit card reward program. I usually keep $20-40 on me in cash in case of emergency when I am out of town and I go to a place that doesn't accept credit cards.

For instance, I have an 800 FICO score, use credit cards for everything, and just bought a new IPOD 80GB Classic with rewards from almost 1 year of using my credit card.

It sounds like some of you posters were stuck behind me as I paid my expressway tolls in pennies. But I have the electronic thing now, so all is well. Since we pay with our credit cards (paid off every month and earn points and rebates), we really don't have much change to collect. What we do collect is put in my two year old's piggy bank. We will open a bank account for her when we get a few hundred dollars in coins.

Many people don't know but you can use coinstar and choose a giftcard as payment and they don't charge the 8.9% fee. You can choose from J.C. Penney, Amazon, Hollywood video, Old Navy, Circuit city and many more. I know in my area you just choose which card and take it to the counter and they activate the card. No loss of your money to fees and you can pick a card for somewhere you buy at anyway so it is the best alternative I have found to rolling change. If you go to the coinstar website they list which machines in your area have this service.

That is good to know.

Of course, if you roll and deposit those coins into your bank account, you can spend that money anywhere you please.

I like the feeling of, "it seems like free money."

Years ago when I was stationed in Spain, my wife & I had a big empty wine bottle that we would throw our change into. After 3 or 4 years of saving change, I took it to the club on-base where they had a change-rolling machine (due to all the slot machines), and they rolled up all my change for free. We ended up with something like $460 and used it to pay for our trip to Naples & Rome (the airfare was the cheapest part of the trip... $10 each for the MAC flight to Naples!)

My wife & I continue to throw our change into a can, just not as enthusiastically as we used to. (ha, you could put any number of activities in the first part of that sentence! :) But the last time we cashed in our change was a couple years ago, and we spent part of an afternoon at the kitchen table using our daughter's battery powered coin-sorter/coin-roller bank to roll up a little over $300. Then we used the money to buy our daughter's Christmas presents.... including some new batteries for her bank.

I used to take it a step further and throw all my $1 bills into a bottle after I went shopping. I once had a teller ask me if I was a waiter. I told her I was a male stripper! :p

I have a HUGE bucket of spare change that I keep telling myself that I'll bring to the bank (never happens). I've started putting $1 in change in my pocket every time I go out. So, if I buy something for $12.18, instead of giving the store $13 and getting back another $0.82 worth of change to add to my bucket, I use $0.18 worth of the change that I stuck in my pocket.

Now, I realize that most women already do this with change in their pocketbooks, but this will really have a benefit with guys.

Give it a try! Start chipping away at your change bucket!
And once you've burned through your change bucket, you can prevent yourself from ever accumulating coins again.

I realized a while ago that I should never have more than 99 cents in coins. At the end of the day I empty my pocket (with coins, etc.) into a little dish. At the beginning of the day I put the contents of the dish back into my pocket. Whenever a purchase isn't for a round dollar amount, I use as many of the coins in my pocket as possible.

If you do that, you'll generally only have a few coins at a time.

haha...i really learned allot by reading your post thanks guys...

Have you ever considered buying a coin sorter that automatically puts your coins into rolls? This way you can take the rolls to the bank without much of a hassle.