Image by slakistan via FlickrOn a week to week basis, I do not have a lot of extra cash lying around. Between the mortgage, the other monthly bills, and the daily living expenses, it pretty much takes about my whole paycheck. I do have a couple of little savings devices that I use for when I want to save for something special.The first one is a method that I read about in Neal Boortz's book "Somebody's Gotta Say It." In one of the chapters in the book, Boortz lays out the Dollar Bill savings plan. The plan calls for you to carry only carry currency in denominations of $5 or greater. All singles get put aside for savings. So, every time I have a group of five $1 bills, they go into a coffee can. It can add up quickly.
I also hate carrying around a lot of loose change. At the end of every day, I take whatever loose change I have and put it in another coffee can. My credit union has a coin counting machine, so whenever the can would start to get full, I would take it up to the credit union to cash them in for the extra cash.
Now, that extra change goes somewhere else. Ever since I got my Kindle, I have been actively adding content to it. In order to support that habit, I take my can of coins up to my local supermarket and cash them in at the Coinstar machine. Instead of cashing them in for cash and paying the service charge, I get Amazon.com gift certificates to add to my Amazon balance. These are little things, but they help me to treat myself every now and then.
I do the change saving idea too. I use my old spaghetti sauce jars and I fill them up through out the whole entire year. When we go to the beach, our big annual week long expensive trip, I cash that in and we play the boardwalk games and get souvenirs for the kids. It pays off.
ReplyDeleteI used to use an empty coffee can for my jar, but my wife gave me a big plastic jar that has a lid on it so that when you push a coin through the slot it keeps track of how much is in the jar.
ReplyDeleteWe are getting ready to head to the beach for a few days. My son used to love going to the arcades on the boardwalk to play skee ball, but the last few years he has refused to go in. Although he still likes going into Dave & Busters to play