Long before I became a homeowner, pocket change played an important role in my life. As an apartment dweller, I needed quarters for laundry and parking meters. Other change was useful if I needed to purchase something from a vending machine or, put on your time travel suits, to make a call using a pay phone.

Once we moved into a home, pocket change sort of became the metallic version of pocket lint: it was something you found in your pants’ pocket when you dug your hands in, and when you pullled it out, you carelessly tossed it aside. We no longer had any need for quarters, because we had a washer and dryer right in the basement, and could park for free in our driveway. At the same time, cell phones had become commonplace and pay phones were on the decline.

Then Bill and I decided to go all “moving on up” (cue “The Jefferson’s” theme song), and suddenly I realized that pocket change could be valuable again. Once I started looking for it again, I noticed it everywhere–on top of the dryer, in my desk drawer, and on the floor of the car, among other places. I bet that if we scraped together our pennies–and nickels, dimes and quarters–they would really add up to something.

This past spring I spent a day collecting all of the loose change I could find. I knew we wanted to roll all of the coins so we could bring them to the bank for paper dollars, so I had the girls help me put it into piles on the kitchen table. (Great math lesson, by the way.) Sure I could have brought the change to may local supermarket, which has one of those coin counters in it, but you pay a service fee to use that machine–unless you’re converting your change into a gift card. Me, though, I wanted the cold hard cash.

Then we started counting. It turns out we had $58. Fifty-eight dollars. Now, that’s no chump change. This pocket change ended up providing enough money for a half week’s worth of groceries. Wow!

Since I hadn’t counted pocket change since we moved, I figured it was a good time to give it another go.

Today, I uncovered $24. Not quite as good as the last bounty but not too shabby either.

Have you considered going on a pocket change hunt as a way of finding unexpected spending money? If not, I would suggest you give it a try. Then let me know how much you found. I think that when you’re living on a budget, you simply cannot treat pocket change as pocket lint anymore. In my mind that would be frugally foolish.

A couple of years ago I stopped food shopping at the nearby supermarket for a two reasons. I wasn’t convinced that it offered me the best prices, and I knew that its produce was less than perfect. So many times I would come home from grocery shopping, and a day later the cucumbers were mush, the cantaloupe smlled like a skunk, and the strawberries had mold growing on them.

I started driving 20 minutes out of my way to another supermarket where I felt the prices weere fair but, more importantly, I never had to toss produce in the trash.

Now that we’re living our suddenly frugal lifestyle, I’ve started to question the value of driving 20 minutes to grocery shop–especially when gas is about $3 a gallon. Last week, when the shopping circulars came out in the mail, I did a cost comparison of four grocery stores, based on what was on sale, and the old supermarket came out on top. Thinking convenience and about savings, I decided to shop there. Big mistake.

The watermelon I brought home, “fresh” out of the barrel, was crumbling in the middle when I went to cut it up yesterday afternoon. There went $5.99 in the trash. This morning, I cut up a cantaloupe (2 for $3.49) for my daughter, and there was that familiar skunk smell again. So into the trash that went. I noticed that the bread ($1.99 a loaf) I made for toast seemed a bit stale, too, though its expiration date isn’t until next week.

This was all a painful (in the wallet) reminder that while it’s important to save money, you aren’t actually saving any money when you a) have to throw out what you’ve already paid for but can’t use and b) have to go back out to replace whatever it was that you had to toss.

This doesn’t just happen with food, of course. My friend Allie recently decided to buy herself a new pair of prescription sunglasses, and since she fancies frames from an expensive, European-inspired store, she figured she would save a few bucks and get her sunglasses from one of those mall glasses chains. Sure, Allie saved hundreds this way, but the minimum wage workers employed there didn’t seem to understand the subtleties of lenses for people with an astigmatism (which Allie has) and so she’s had to go back to the shop twice now to have her lenses redone because they still can’t get it right. No, Allie hasn’t had to pay more money for these fixes but she’s spent plenty in the amount of time she’s had to devote to this inexpensive pair of sunglasses.

Bottom line: I’m all for saving money. But sometimes it’s worth it to pay a bit more. Now excuse me while I go to the grocery store I trust for a new watermelon and cantaloupe, and maybe a loaf of bread.