Two years ago, I was shopping for our weekly groceries in the Asian grocer near our house. In one of the snack aisles, there were a bunch of adorable animal-shaped coin jars stuffed with delicious jelly pudding. If you are Asian, you’ve likely seen those around before…
I don’t normally make impulse buys but the fact that they were:
- cute
- practical
- filled with mango pudding snacks
I had to pick one up. I chose a teddy bear shaped pudding + coin jar. The pre-tax total was $4.99.
I remember thinking, “Well…I just bought an overpriced jar of pudding because it was cute. With the coins I could have saved instead of buying a coin jar. That’s irony! :\”
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Table of Contents
Fast forward to 2 years later…
Earlier this week, I was looking for something in the bedroom and tried to lift off the teddy bear change jar on our filing cabin to look in the back. I immediately noticed how heavy the teddy coin jar was. The jar was only half full but it felt super dense. I’m not even sure where all the change came from. We are a credit card reward hacking family. Using cash has always been an afterthought after swiping and Android Pay.
“Hmm, I wonder how much is in here now.”
I untwisted the Teddy jar and started counting how much coinage action we’ve collected over the years it’s been sitting on the filing cabinet. The mango pudding inside is long gone.
I was expecting maybe $100-$200 dollars in there tops from the looks of it.
Nopeeeeee!
“HOLY BATMAN, there’s almost $640 in here!!”
(It was like $638 something)
Even though it was only 3/4 full, there was the small denomination of $1, $5, $10, $20 bills and 1 forgotten $100 in there…collapsed under all the coins. The opening at the top of the Teddy is for coins but whenever I did have extra cash, I inserted the cash by folding it small and dropping it in any way. Eventually, the coins that followed ended up covering the paper bills and I forgot about them under there.
This is where all of the household’s loose change goes. I didn’t think we had so much in loose change. I mean, it has been about 2 years of casual collecting but still…
It’s like finding a random $5 in your coat pocket but this is better by a hundred times over.
All of this money “saved” for an initial set-up fee of $4.99. That teddy coin jar sounds like a straight-up bargain now.
How We Did It
Well, I’m not too sure myself where all this money came from but that’s what makes piggy banks so brilliant. It’s just a money hole you drop coins into. I bet top dollar anyone can do the same thing with similar results if they haven’t yet.
- We dropped any and all change found on the ground into the coin jar. Even if they were just pennies and dimes.
- We also put change we had into the jar as a means of organization. My husband and I always found loose change to be annoying so we compiled all physical cash to be in one place.
- We bought and sold things on Craigslist. Teddy was our ATM machine since most transactions on Craigslist are cash only. I remember selling a sofa for $500 and buying a love chair for $300. I remember selling off my crockpot, neck massager and 8 gallons of fabric softener I got for free and didn’t need. The large paper bills added up quickly.
- Over Christmas, we found a stash of my husband’s coin collection from childhood. There was some dollar sized coins from the “tooth fairy” as well. All of this boosted the value of teddy’s net worth too.
- Magic! We magically forgot that the jar even opened and just kept dropping random coins around into it. The teddy was only getting fatter by the day.
Day by day and year by year, we put in scattered coins, loose dollars and random change back into the jar which grew itself to a big $640 with absolutely zero effort on our part.
We all have loose change around somewhere in our dominion. We’re a credit card loving family and it even breaks down our plastic card ridden barriers. I can’t even tell you where our coins come from and how it gathered so quickly in just 2 years. For us, the money was never meant to be saved but it turned out to be one of the easiest ways we’ve implemented savings ever! Despite the cliche of having piggy banks and the inconvenience of coins, a piggy bank is actually one of the most powerful, easy tools out there to force a non-saver to save money!
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An Analogy
Yeah, I’m getting there, you know what the analogy is?
Mango pudding is always worth it.
Forming saving habits is the foundation for wealth building. Silent and smart choices add up in the end and make a large difference later. How insidious!
I guess one could argue we should have kept a closer eye on the jar and invested the money. With how the stock market performed in 2017, we could have seen 20% gains if we invested every cent of that jar’s contents. But hindsight is always 20/20 and I don’t feel more than 3 ounces of regret. Hey, I didn’t even know we had that extra $640 laying around a few days ago!
I guess our literal penny-pinching nature has finally paid off and our frugality has been rewarded.
Now the delightful surprise has worn off, time to figure out what to do with it…
What to Do with Loose Change
Every cent saved is a great cent but coins are very inconvenient. Not to mention they are too heavy to carry for casual spending and no one wants to be ‘that guy’ at the checkout counter rummaging their pockets for the exact change.
The first thing we will do is to keep some cash on hand for emergencies like earthquakes and power outages (knock on wood). After that, there is not much reason for us have a 10-pound change jar full of quarters like we’re 8 years old again so we have 5 main options:
1. Organize it, roll it up, to the bank you go
Most banks require their clients to roll up the coins themselves before accepting them. Banks are not required to take your change if they don’t want to do so. Policies will differ branch to branch. My best advice is to call up your local bank for the details.
Banks do not charge fees for depositing rolled change but the actual rollers for the coins will need to be purchased separately. If you want to avoid the tedious process of sorting coins, there are also coin sorters available for additional costs.
Credit unions are a different animal depending on which one. Some credit unions may not take any coins, rolled or not, but they might offer their own coin sorter for a much lower fee (like 3%) than commercial coin sorters that charges 10%+
2. Organize it and pay down debt
No matter how bulky and inconvenient coins may be in the era of credit cards, you can’t hate on the money. If you have any debt, organizing and throwing any extra payment amount towards the owed principal sounds like a beautiful, smart thing to do.
3. Organize it and spend it
The amount in our teddy coin jar was a surprise that none of us expected. Since the coin jar was never tracked, it’s a definite extra in the budget books, which means it could be spent and not missed.
4. Locate a coin counting machine near you
Do a quick search of coin-sorting machines nearby and you would be surprised how many of them are around. We’ve lived here for a couple of years now and I have never recalled seeing any Coinstar machines until my dad pointed one out at the grocery store we frequented! Whoopieeeee!
The catch is: Coinstar machines take a fee of 11.9% for all transactions that transfer to cash. That is a hefty fee! I would be handing over $65 dollars to Coinstar alone for a one-time sort! But the good news is Coinstar machines forgo the fee if you transfer the balance to a gift card instead. The Amazon gift cards are available on Coinstar which makes it very convenient because an Amazon gift card is as good as cash in our house. Coinstar minimum is $5 for gift cards and you cannot load more than $1,000 – full gift card options and details here.
5. Donate it
Coinstar also skips their processing fees for nationally recognized donations organizations. The selection is limited to 7 of the following:
- American Red Cross
- Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals
- Feeding America
- The Humane Society of the United States
- Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
- Unicef
- United Way
- WWF (World Wildlife Foundation)
If there are no Coinstar machines and it’s a hassle to deal with, drop it off at any charity of your choosing and they would gladly take it. Some charities might accept foreign coinage as donations as well. Plus you would be doing some all-around good of course 🙂
Readers, do you keep a coin jar/piggy bank? What do you do with your loose change?
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Ahh I love mango pudding too! In fact, I bought a similar jar at Great Wall about a month ago and finished everything in a week lol. I still have the jar at home. I thought about putting rice or sth in that jar but got lazy.
Mr. FAF and I usually put our coins in a pouch. When it’s full, he’ll use it for road tolls or some random car-related fees. I gotta start on this project when I come home today. Money’s calling!
Lol we even finish our pudding within the same time frame. Took me a week too!
Woah, $640 is awesome! I used to do the same when I was a waitress. I’d put all the change in a milk jug and by the end of the summer, I had a few hundred extra dollars I hadn’t counted on. I’ll have to try this again! 🙂
Haha neat!!
I think we need to get a piggy bank or maybe a cup because I’m not sure where all the extra change from some of the “cash only” restaurants go to lol. This is a great idea!
A simple cup works!
I love this Lily! My fiance makes so much fun of me for picking up spare change in the street. But it’s free money despite the small $$$. And clearly, it adds up. I began my coin “collecting” by picking up tails-up pennies for luck. Then I just decided to pick up everything. I once felt terribly for having to pass over what appeared to be like a dollar in coins that were in a puddle of a water (and possibly urine). That was painful, but I thought the ensuing related health care costs might have outweighed the benefits.
XOXO
Heather
LOL!!! Hahahaha that’s hilarious. Well, I agree with that decision. I picked up a penny on the bus and it was sticky…hmm..
Ew!! PS I scored today. Quarter on the bus. I literally had to do a sly foot slide beneath the person sitting next to me to get it. But I did. I was also at a bar celebrating a friend’s birthday and someone had dropped like $2 in change. I saw all of it glistening in the strobe lighting and picked it up. No shame! And hey, since me and the fiance had just spent like $100 in drinks, I needed to make some money back! #FrugalFail
Haha ooooooh! A quarter!! Those are hard to find!
Haha, this is a great story. Coins are the bane of my existence. You’d think the US would follow the lead of other countries and at least rid of pennies 😛
My local credit union has a free coin counting machine, which is awesome. Apart from that, I usually dump coins into the car to use for parking or tolls. They’re also good for the bus if you don’t ride frequently enough to get a pass. I wish I could pay for everything by credit card, but sometimes this world is still cash-operated!
I agree on pennies. There was talk of a phrase out a few years ago since it cost more to produce them then they are worth!
What an awesome surprise!
We attempted to do a similar coin change jar a year ago, but we simply didn’t stick with it. After hearing of your results after 2 years of dropping money in, I may have to revisit this!
The two years just flew by!
Wow $640 that’s amazing! I had done this a while back throughout college solely with change in a big mason jar. Last year I finally took out the (really heavy) jar and found I had close to $100 solely in loose change! I was pumped.
I still have a small jar I’ll collect loose change in, though there is not much in there at all as I’ve rarely paid cash for anything since college.
It’s so heavy, I barely could pick it up! I guess that’s how you know there’s definitely over $100 in there!
Hahaha! Cool story! I don’t really like loose change either. I usually keep it in my car center console storage compartment and use them for parking meters. Perfect use for them.
I have been in your situation where I somehow accumulated a ton of coins. When that happens, i usually take it to Trader Joe’s or some other grocery store to buy food. I might hold up the line by counting my pennies, but people don’t seem to mind. Yeah, I’m that guy…
Oh parking meters is a great idea!
No cash at my house anymore. If I carry any, somehow my kids always end up with it! So I stopped carrying cash. No cash no change no piggy bank:(
Wish I found $640 in my house!
Lol not at all attractive to robbers at least!
Wow, Lily!
First and foremost, I have to say that I love your teddy bear jar. It’s way TOO adorable… I probably would’ve bought it even without the mango pudding. The pudding is just a bonus haha…
Overall, that’s awesome how you managed to accumulate that much with your loose/random change. My fiance did something similar where he randomly threw loose change in a massive protein jar and over the years, it just piled up like magic. He had no idea that it would add up so quickly. Sadly, he actually forgot about his jar… It was me that found it! So, we concluded that this traditional trick does work!
BTW, we ended up using it as some spare emergency fund/change now. 😀
P.S. I wish his was massive protein jar was a massive teddy bear jar instead, lol!
Lol I was just about to say how cool it is to use protein jars instead because those tub things are huge! Think of the payout!
Man, our empty change jar might get to $100 but then I take it to our bank’s coin counting machine and deposit it! I can’t wait two years. But that is super awesome! I love any time in general when I hide money from myself!
That would have been the smarter thing to do. We just didn’t pay attention!
LOL! Love this!
My family used to have a huge water jug full of coins, every couple of years we would take it to the bank and get rewarded with MULA.
Great tip Lily!
Lol “Mula” baby!
We have a teddy bear coin bank I’ve had since I was a little one. Both of the kids have their own banks (the 3 yr old got a save/spend/share but doesn’t quite get it yet).
The wife and I will split however much is in our own bank. When the thing is full there is usually about $40-60 in it. That money just goes into our allowances for us to buy our own things with.
Ohhh that’s really smart! So the coin jar is basically y’alls blow money!!!
I have a Chinese fortune cat piggy bank. Bought it for $8.99 at a Chinese grocer like 99 Ranch. It’s about the principal of saving 🙂 (and Chinese superstition for good luck and prosperity – so I stick a $20 bill in just for kicks.) Old people will call it something like, “so you’ll always have some cash.” This has resulted in serendipitously running into cash I forgot about :). I guess that’s how we hardcore savers never run out of money. Must be in our DNA.
It’s good to know that you have some impulse purchases too. Ah, so you are human too. I don’t feel so bad now that I don’t save 6 figures every year like you guys do, albeit I’m solo earner. But I was extremely impressed that your spouse could stand at Michaels and forego buying baking moulds when he really wanted them even though he makes so much money. That’s some ultra discipline. Maybe you can surprise him with them for his birthday!
Lol wait, to clear my name…that wasn’t an total totallll impulse buy! I waited when it was on sale ($5.29 originally) to get it. Who says I’m hoooman.
Nice! 600 plus dollars from a piggy bank is a lot of money. You could definitely use it for a lot of different purposes. The most I ever managed to collect from a piggy bank was about 50 bucks. I don’t have one now. I collect my coins in a big bowl that I keep on my study desk. I also mostly use credit cards so I can collect cash back and rewards points so the bowl never gets filled but usually, it’s enough for a couple cycles at the laundry.
Credit cards still work better. Our 2% cash back card has $1000 in it from rewards!
Great job! You’re just as nerdy as we are with the coins! We always underestimate what we’ve collected too!
We use two thigh-high Coca Cola bottle shaped piggy banks and we also stuff in some bills. The bills came in really handy once when a contractor finished a job a day sooner than expected. We hadn’t yet gone to the ATM to get cash for a tip. Mr. Groovy and I resorted to pulling out some bills with a pair of tongs. They were quite crinkled but hey, it’s still money.
.
Haha in cola bottles?!
Nice! $640 is no joke. Our kid has a piggy bank, but it’s empty. He traded it for bills and his envelop is in the safe now. He used to find a coin or two whenever we went out for a walk. Now he doesn’t anymore. I guess it’s because he’s more distracted now.
We don’t have a lot of coins these days because we use the credit cards for most purchases now.
Is RB40 Jr a good saver like you guys?!
I don’t know what gave me a bigger CMLT. You discovering $640 in your piggy-pudding bank? Or you preaching the glories of piggy banks to the masses? Bravo, Lily.
LOL! Very very CMLT!!!
I only had about $13 when I counted my bank. I researched coin machines, and definitely didn’t have enough for some rolls. The parking deck in downtown takes coins, so $5 went to that. I had a $1 library fine, and I still have to find a way to spend some of these pennies.
It’s cool yu guys saved so much!
Hehe thanks Jacq! There’s always small uses for coins, you’ll see, it’s still very useful! Gosh I love spare change <3
I have never purchased the paper sleeves to make coin rolls, my bank or credit union has always provided them to me for free when I’ve asked. I’m old school and like cash, so I get lots of change, and just like those apps that have come out that “round up” your purchase to the nearest dollar and save the change, I do it in cash by emptying the pockets at the end of the day and rolling the jar when it starts to overflow. Someone else on another blog had idea that on top of change you check your wallet for $5 bills and take every one and put it away and then check it after a few months. That can build up a substantial amount in short order. Finally, a comment to those who go cashless, if you live in an area that could suffer a disaster (i.e. earthquake, flood, hurricane, etc.) power outages and communication breakdowns are a real thing and you should have at least a few hundred in cash on hand because the stores and other services may not be able to take credit cards or electronic payments for a couple of days. You don’t always get the benefit of a warning. I used a version of the $5 out of the wallet to build our household cash to about $300 in case of sudden emergencies.
“Finally, a comment to those who go cashless, if you live in an area that could suffer a disaster (i.e. earthquake, flood, hurricane, etc.) power outages and communication breakdowns are a real thing and you should have at least a few hundred in cash on hand because the stores and other services may not be able to take credit cards or electronic payments for a couple of days.”
YES! This is important. Thank you. We hold around $200 with us in cash for natural emergencies – in our neck of the woods, it’s most likely an earthquake.
I didn’t even buy a piggy bank. I save my coffee cans and cut a hole in the lid to put the coins in. I save and cash it In once a year
Haha! Great job!