It’s been almost a year since I went change-diving around my house–you know, that activity where you reach down into the bowels of your furniture to find loose change. I realize that searching your home for change makes you sound like a real cheapskate, but why let perfectly good money sit around when you could be doing something with it?
In our house, we have two jars where we dump our change at the end of the day. These are old-fashioned mason jars that I think we picked up at an antique store along the way. Anyway, one jar is for silver change and the other is for pennies.
I noticed this morning that those jars were looking kind of full, so I figured it was time to count my loose change. Also, I have a reason for wanting a little extra spending cash in my pocket: tonight is my friend Jen Miller’s book launch party for her book about the Jersey Shore. (The actual title is “The Jersey Shore, Atlantic City to Cape May: Great Destinations: A Complete Guide.”) The party, which Jen has deemed “lean and green,” is in Center City, Philadelphia.
Unfortunately, public transportation to Philly isn’t a viable option from where I live, which means I have to drive. So not only do I have to pay for gas (there goes my hope of making a tank of gas last for two weeks) but I’ll also have to pay for parking.
Luckily, a few years ago, when I was a contributing beauty editor for Philadelphia Style magazine and had to go into Center City on a regular basis (and the magazine wasn’t reimbursing me for my travel expenses), I discovered a cheap parking garage. I could park there all day for $6 (hope it’s still true). The only downside was the garage was a bit out of the way, meaning that if I wanted to get to University City or Rittenhouse Square, I had to hoof it. But knowing how much I love to walk, you should know that I didn’t mind the hoofing-it part.
I plan to park in that garage again tonight where I hope I’ll find parking still to be dirt cheap. Even so, that cost along with filling up with gas earlier than I’d hoped in the week, are the two reasons that I figured it was high time to count my change.
Boy am I glad I took the time to do it–in about 30 minutes time, I rolled $62 worth of coins. If you translated that into my hourly rate, it was worth $124.
I’m getting ready to go walk to the bank during my daily dog walk, where I’ll exchange my rolled coins for some greenbacks. Then, I’ll probably drop off some extra plastic bags at the nearby grocery store that collects them for recycling. But the best part is that I’ll be heading home with 62 bucks in my pocket that I woke up this morning not realizing I had.
What about you? When was the last time you counted change around the house? Why not take some time today to round up your change. How much did you come up with? I’d love to hear about it.
READ LEAH ON HOME GOES STRONG
Great idea. We’ve had spare-change fundraisers at school, and they always seem to raise a fair amount of money.
When you dropped off those plastic bags for recycling, you may have been able to drop by a Coin Star machine. The machines count your coins for you, and deliver the cash via the check out register.
Coin Star Does charge 8.9% charge on those coins, but you can get a gift card for participating merchants and they waive the transaction charge.
John
I had no idea that you could avoid the Coin Star fee by requesting a gift card instead.
I just did some research on that, and I found this link in case any readers here were interested in finding out more about that:
http://www.coinstar.com/us/WebDocs/A1-0-3-1
Me, I still like the physical act of counting and rolling coins. Call me Scrooge if you must!
Leah
Daisy:
My daughters’ schools often have these coin-collecting fundraisers, too. They call them penny wars, and the classes compete against each other with how much spare change they can collect. They usually end up with tidy sums!
Commerce Bank has free coin counting machines. You can use them even if you don’t have an account there — I got $50 last time.
And, hey, thanks for coming to my party last night!
We collect our loose change in a jar, and last month I rolled $190 worth! I posted about it here:
http://stretchingabuck.blogspot.com/2008/04/pennies-really-do-add-up.html
It is crazy how fast change really does add up!
Marcy:
$190? You go, girl!
Leah
[...] since our family became suddenly frugal, we have gathered up our spare change whenever we needed some extra dough. This usually occurred before going on a vacation or to an event. We figured if we could use [...]