Change, Change, Change…

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.