For many years now Laura and I have had a saving strategy. Any loose coins get dumped into a large jar. Slowly, but surely the amount grows, and when we run out of space we deposit them. The saving part was easy – we never really missed the money itself, and we don’t need coins for laundry or necessities like that. Rolling the coins into denominations was a pain, until our credit union put in one of those automated coin sorters. The coins would accumulate to ridiculous amounts because we hated rolling them. Now, we tend to cash them in a bit more quickly.
We still save coins, but I’ve recently read about another semi-painless saving strategy. I can’t remember where I read it, whether on Lifehacker.com or some similar site, but the strategy goes like this…before you go to bed check your wallet. Take any five dollar bill and put it away somewhere. If you don’t feel comfortable robbing all of your fives, set a limit, say, up to $10 or two fives. Sit back and watch it accumulate.
…or so it would seem. The first day I started with a bang, tucking away $25. However, as it turns out, I rarely wind up with fives in my wallet at the end of the day. A week later and all I’ve had are tens and ones. I’ve even tried breaking twenties unnecessarily to get a five, but for whatever reason they don’t survive until evening. What I DO wind up with is a wallet full of ones and a couple of tens. Maybe I need to change my strategy.