One of the things on my to-do list this weekend was empty out my jar of pennies and nickels (dimes and quarters and dollar coins get spent) and take them to the local Coinstar machine. I need to buy some filters for my humidifier in preparation for the winter, and I’ve discovered the best place to get them is on Amazon.com, and conveniently, Amazon gift certificates are one of the options on Coinstar machines where you don’t get charged a counting fee.
Unfortunately, the Coinstar machine broke mid-count, so I couldn’t get my gift certificate and had to cash out, with the 8.9% fee. I was a little frustrated, but I wasn’t cashing in that much, so it wasn’t a huge deal. As I was walking out of the store, I was putting the money in my wallet, when I passed one of our resident panhandlers asking for help getting something to eat.
I walked past, then turned around and handed him most of what I had gotten for cashing in my change. After all, it was just pennies to me, money that was just laying around, but for him, it was worth a lot more.
Megan is a 30-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
That’s a lovely thing to do. Good on you 🙂
For real, good work 🙂 sucky about Coinstar, but i guess it worked out nicely!
Good for you! I think that was a good use of your pennies. 🙂 And doesn’t it make you feel good to help someone that way?!
Maybe the coinstar broke so you could give the panhandler the money … ?
It feels pretty cool to help someone out – you did good!!!
My wife takes the same route to work every time she goes in, and there is always a homeless person begging at one of the traffic lights she invariably gets caught at. We both feel that cash isn’t the best way to help someone like this out, so we decided she’d get some Subway gift certificates for her to give to the guy.
Next time she had to stop at that particular light, she put the cert’s in his jar. Imagine her surprise when they were thrown back into the car all wadded up…
I love helping people, but I struggle with the best way to do it.
Good on you and your generous heart.
That’s an interesting story, drofen. It’s an unfortunate situation, that’s for sure, but I agree, many times, cash isn’t the best way to help someone out. And unfortunately, I bet there are a number of people out there who would be overjoyed to get Subway gift certificates. But people like that make it that much less likely that others will help them out.
When dh has time, he likes to buy lunch/dinner for panhandlers he meets. It’s hard to want to give cash to someone who you can tell is a chain smoker who has drunk too much in their lifetime.
Good for you, though. Sometimes it’s better to hold back judgment and pray they use the money wisely.
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