Monday, January 11, 2010

How do you manage your spare change?

Dh and I use a cash budget. Coins accumulate quickly and are quite heavy in my purse. We keep a glass vase in the living room to dump change. When full the vase is equal to $50-$60. Usually its filled up once a month. We could roll all that change and put it in savings. But we don't. We use that as fun money. Coinstar charges 8% of your coins to use their service. In less you buy a gift certificate with your coins. Which is exactly what we do. Sometimes we use it to buy a movie gift card, sometimes old navy, or amazon. Frequently we use it to fill up our Starbucks card. Hubby and I decided if we don't need the coin money for something (clothes, bark collar refills, or a Lowe's project gift card etc.) we will spend half the coins on Starbucks, and half on something else. I'll do a post on how we keep our latte love somewhat frugal, but a latte is a nice treat. Even if you have a latte machine at home. . . .

That is our method for coins. Buying a gift card saves us the time of rolling the coins, and it allows us a little extra luxury. A little bit of fun. Other people will choose to spend their coins for savings, debt, or needs. That is fine too! We use ours for fun because it helps keep us from feeling deprived, and lattes are YUMMY!

1 comment:

  1. We separate our coins by denomination, and the dimes go into the oldest's savings account, the nickles go into the next child's, and the pennies go into the youngest's. If/when we have another child the new baby will get the pennies and everyone will move up a denomination.

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