When it comes to personal finance, one the most talked about aspects of it is eliminating unnecessary fees. One thing is true though, that it’s hard to get the best of both worlds; value and savings. In most cases you get one or the other, while in rare instances you can get both the value and saving rolled into one. If you read any of my previous posts on savings, you would know the different ways that I save money. About a year ago, I adopted the concept of putting away my loose change into a jar. Rather than keeping it in my car and blowing it on coffee at Tim Horton’s, I decided to start collecting loose change.
Anytime I shop with cash and the change I get in return goes into this jar. This includes loonies, twoonies, quarters, nickles, dimes and pennies. Every few months I take the collected change and head to my local grocery store to feed the green monster. That’s right, the green monster I call it. Green monster is basically this gigantic machine, that takes all your change, counts it up (in less than 5 minutes) and in exchange gives you a receipt totaling the change you put in. You than take the receipt to any cash register and exchange it for cash in dollar bills. Pretty easy, huh?
Not so much. Like anything, there is a price to pay. I pay 10.9 cents per every dollar that the green monster processes. In this instance I exchanged $102 worth of change and paid $11.12 for the service. Sounds like a lot, but for $11.12 my time is more precious. Counting the coins and sorting them would have taken me roughly 1.5 hours. If I break down the fee of $11.12 over 1.5 hours, my hourly rate would equate to $7.41 per hour. Surely my hourly rate is worth much more than that. I wouldn’t even be making the mandatory minimum wage of $10.25.
So, after all is said and done, my time is worth much more than a $7.41 hourly rate. I rather enjoy treating my self to a lunch (which is exactly what I did) and the drive to the bank to deposit my saved changed that I accumulated for the past 72 days into my savings only account. Call me selfish and insane, but I think I said somewhere above that it’s pretty hard to get savings and value rolled into one.
What if you used the money for groceries, do they charge the fee then? I know some places operate that way, and only take the fee if you want bills back. What about choosing a gift card? The coinstar machines give you the same option, if you get a gift card you don’t pay a fee. I guess you would just have to find one near you to do that huh?
Eric,
I could use the money for groceries, but instead I want to feel the savings rather than re-spending the money. Gift cards are a waste of time personally, cash is king.
Ha ha, you’re talking to the wrong person about cash being king, Eddie. Believe me, I have no problem with your method if it works for you, since that’s what the most important thing is. I just think that if you can get a gift card for a place you know you will spend it, you can save the fee and get your full money’s worth. But like I said, if this is working for you then don’t worry about what me or anyone else says.
Eddie- “Gift cards are a waste of time…cash is king”
I’m going to call this financial dyslexia.
One way to avoid the fee is use your credit card for everything! Take the equivalent of the change and deposit it into savings. It is a lot simpler and you save the fee.
I am in the process of eliminating my CC debt, not take on more.
I’m not sure what your purpose for saving the change would be, but I wouldn’t be willing to part with that high of a percentage. You’re already expending time and effort just to save your change in a jar and then lug it to the store to be counted. That seems like a waste of time right there to me.
If your goal is to save this amount of money for some special purpose or a reward, why not just figure out roughly what the change adds up to on a monthly basis and do a pay yourself first direct deposit for about the same amount every month. Then you’ve saved yourself a bunch of time, money, and inconvenience and you still have the same amount of money saved up.
I would also echo krantcents in saying use a credit card and get the rewards to boot as long as doing so wouldn’t increase your spending. You should come out way ahead with a little discipline.
First off I don’t find an inconvenience, because I bring it with me to the store when grocery shopping. As for lugging it around, it weighs less than 3 lbs, so no lugging around. You walk in and walk out.
I do agree with krantcents, but I am trying to get out of debt not accumulate more, hence why I don’t charge anything on my CC.
Like I said in the post, we all got out ways of doing things, mine is this. It works for me and that’s all it matters.
As far as you not understanding a purpose, think about it lol….we all got a purpose. Mine is to eliminate my debt and save and this is my way of doing it. It works for me and that’s all it matters.
Absolutely, I agree. If it works for you that is the most important thing! Just found it odd you were doing an hourly rate calculation for your time to justify the cost when you could eliminate the entire process and save both time and money.
However, if it helps you be more disciplined and gets you out of debt faster, then it is absolutely worth it. The up side to psychological benefits can be hard to quantify but they are often the most important.
Does the machine you use offer gift cards instead of cash as an option? I know some of the ones around here do, and when you chose that option they don’t charge the fee. Sometimes credit unions will have the machines too, where you can get them changed for no fee.
It does not offer gift-cards, only cash.
I should look into credit unions if they have, I know most bank branches around me don’t have coin counting machines.
some TD and BMO branches downtown Toronto have a coin counting machine and you can use it for free.
Hi Robert!
Thanks for sharing that. I did not know. I should look into a few places here in Miss. if they have free coin counting machines.
What ever happened to when you have nothing nice to say dont say anything at all??? I think you should just drop your coin jar off at my house..hehe :-)
No problem, anytime!
I just forgot your addy, care to share the directions with me? :)