Tim and I both have a long history of saving our change. When we got married, he brought with him 3 large jars that he had been using to sort and save his change in:
We’ve never filled them up; they hold a LOT of change! Also, Tim is adamant about keeping a bunch of change in each of our cars. He has several stories of having to cash in his change to buy a couple of gallons of gas to get him somewhere, etc.
Me, I have always had a piggy bank and collected change. Growing up, money management was taught to me by my parents from a very young age. I saved my pennies. A penny saved is a penny earned. I took part of my birthday or Christmas money and put into my savings account at the credit union. My grandmother used to keep an old glass jar on the nightstand (by the bed where I slept when we came to visit). When we’d go there, I’d run back there to see if there was any change in the jar (there always was!) for me to have. I’d pour it out on the bed and sit and count it and then get all excited about having money that I hadn’t expected. 🙂
Anyway, Tim and I have been rolling our coins and taking them into the bank since we’ve been married. We don’t have as much change as we used to. We tend to put more on our debit or credit cards than we did when we were first married. We just don’t spend cash as much as we used to, so we don’t have as much spare change as we used to.
I knew we had not cashed in our change in a while, and I’ve been seeing this Coinstar machine at my local Kroger. I tried to talk Tim into letting me take the change up there and getting it cashed in. He wouldn’t hear of it though, once he found out they charged a fee for it. Duh. They have to make money somehow! But, he was right, and instead, we decided to buy a small, cheap coin machine at Walmart to keep and use. We bought this:
It was only 10 bucks at Walmart, and we bought a package of the pre-formed coin rolls, and we were able to sort and wrap our change in no time. We rolled a little over $100 worth one rainy afternoon a couple of weeks ago. I took it to the bank, and updated my spreadsheet. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that we have cashed in a little over $1000 dollars in change in the 10 years that we’ve been married.
So, the moral of the story is – save your change! It really does add up. And if you want to borrow our coin sorter and roll your change, just let us know. We’d be glad to help you out! 🙂
Can you recall what you GOT with the money!?! 😉 My husband is just like this. I think it’s great! Keep on chachinging!
I would have been the same way as Tim about that coinstar thing, I wouldn’t have wanted to pay them money! Can’t believe you rolled that much or have done that much over 10 years, wow. We used to have a lot of change as well, Don would collect it in the ashtray or console of his truck (because it doesn’t get used for anything else!) and would bring it in once in a while and put in a bag inside. He’s been known to get somewhere and have no money and maybe some place in the boonies that doesn’t take credit cards and he would count out change from his console and pay that way! Sometimes I hated being at Sonic and him trying to pay all in change! We had the kids all help roll it once and we probably had close to $100 but that is the only time we kept up with how much he had. Guess we should round ours up again and keep at it!
My container is much smaller but when is full, I take it and do the Coinstar thing and use the money towards my grocery bill for the week. It makes quite a dent usually. 🙂
Great idea…I need to buy one of those coin sorters. DH always wants to use the coinstar machines, but I freak out about it. I won’t pay them to do it when I could do it for free and it makes me happy…I’m wierd, what can I say. Stacie
Hey, I am just like you guys. I remember sitting at the kitchen table on Sunday afternoons and rolling money with Daddy, Dodie.
Anyway, last time I rolled my money, my bank told me I didn’t have to roll it anymore, just bring it in bags, they have a sorter and it will spit out to them how much they owe you. I had also contemplated buying a machine to roll it and now am glad I didn’t.
I never tracked over the years how much I made. Just saved and spent – like usual !!
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