I read about a savings experiment which included loose change, which for some reason I actually have. Don’t ask me how Miss Bankrupt has extra anything laying around but truthfully, I have change in the bottoms of my purses, in the car, on the dining room table. Everywhere. Once in a while I collect most of it and dump it into my daughter’s jar, which in the past has cashed out at around $300.00. According to this article on how to roll the change and cash it in, the average household has $90 worth of loose change laying around.
Well, my household is far from average and not counting the actual jar filled with change, I doubt I have 90 bucks just laying around. Maybe $50 if I collected it all and counted it, which I’m not going to do. The point though, is that there is extra money in my home that isn’t doing anything significant except smelling funny and jamming up my garbage disposal when I try to wash gum off it. (That’s another story, though.)
I am considering a loose change experiment to fund a savings account or when I have enough, to buy a savings bond or to invest in flying cars or something (it’s going to happen, I saw it on the Jetsons).
Here is what I think I need to do:
1. Allow myself a certain amount of cash per week. I don’t carry cash very often and this affects of course how much change I have left. You don’t get back money when you use your debit card at McDonald’s. This will also help me track better what I’m spending on frivolous stuff, which to my knowledge isn’t very much.
2. I need a deadline or date that I will cash in the change so I can kind of guage what I’m actually saving. Maybe I’ll try 6 months? So, this Friday I’ll get my allotted cash and dump all of my change each day until July 26, 2010.
3. I’m starting completely new so I won’t be adding to the change in my daughter’s jar.
4. I need to find a free place to cash in the change or see if one of my banks will cash it in without any fee, which I think they do. Some of the random machines charge a small fee which is a total waste of money.
5. In 6 months if it isn’t enough to do anything significant with, I’ll deposit the cash into my savings account until I’ve acquired enough and gathered enough information to figure out something better.
As my mom mentioned, I’m not getting any younger and I do need to take my savings seriously and like a child, I’m more interested if there’s some kind of game involved. I do have an IRA at work, but I have a feeling that most of that will go to my daughter’s college tuition. What then will I live off of in 20 years when I retire?
I’ll keep you posted, but I’m interested in what other people do to prepare for retirement. What do you do with your loose change?
One Comment
Some of the bigger banks have a “Keep the Change” program, where they round all your transactions up to the next dollar and deposit this into your savings account. If your bank doesn’t do this, most of them offer simple programs where they transfer the amount you chose monthly out of your account into a savings account. I have to admit if you took out even $25 a month (which is around $5 a week, equivelant to a meal at McDonalds) this could add up fairly quickly if you just let build.