Counting My Pennies

  • About
  • Contact
  • Extra Money
  • Popular Posts
  • Toolkit
  • Privacy Policy

Money is money

March 6, 2009 By Megan Smith

I’ve started keeping a change jar on my desk.  It’s mostly filled with nickels and pennies, with the occasional dime.  I put it there because our vending machines just suffered a price increase – sodas are now $1.35.  People are more likely to have a dollar and a quarter than they are to have 35 cents rolling around.  After a couple of coworkers borrowed quarters and then returned with 15 cents, I just started a “give a penny, take a penny” style jar, only designed for those errant nickels and dimes that we can so rarely find.

Well, it’s become a penny jar.  Sure, it’s got other change in it, but a number of people have just started dropping their pennies in after lunch because they don’t want to carry all that “useless” change around.

I’ve decided to start an experiment.  I’m going to see how much money ends up in this jar by the end of the year.  It’s unguarded, so someone could come in and take a handful of pennies  (or the whole jar).  But it’s also out in the open for anyone to drop their change in.  No one’s asked me what I’m going to do with it – in fact, I haven’t said that it’s for anything other than shared vending machine change.

I’m wondering how many pennies are going to be in the jar by the end of the year.  As I don’t feel like it’s my money, I’ll either use the money to buy candy or something for the office or maybe just exchange it for nickels and dimes and help out the vending machine change scroungers.

They’re only pennies, but they add up.  I don’t use that much cash in my life and I still see my change jar slowly filling.  Of course, I end up dumping that into a Coinstar machine and getting Amazon.com gift certificates a couple of times a year.  This time, I’m going to see what we can manage to save.

Megan Smith
Megan Smith

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.

Filed Under: saving ideas

Comments

  1. Matt says

    March 6, 2009 at 9:49 am

    That’s a great idea! I keep a change jar on my desk as well but I work at home and nobody else contributes to it.

    I worked in an office once in Colorado where we saved all our soda cans. There was no deposit on them so most people just throw them out. Every once in a while one of the guys I worked with would take them in to be recycled. The recycling company I guess paid for the cans and when he returned them he would come in with bagels for the office the next morning.

    It was really nice and unexpected! I bet if you did something nice for the office your coworkers would appreciate it!

  2. Steve says

    March 6, 2009 at 8:08 pm

    It’s great that you are practicing what you preach on the title of your blog: Counting Your Pennies 🙂

    We have a coin storage machine, but since we never carry money, it is not very full. There is a down side to not carrying money, though: I read somewhere that we tend to spend up to 30% more when using plastic, even debit cards.

    What am I thinking?!

  3. Terri healthymoms says

    March 8, 2009 at 9:46 am

    One wonders how long a penny will be worth a penny
    but we are counting our pennies as well Literally and figuratively 😉

    Terri
    http://healthywealthymoms.blogspot.com/

Trackbacks

  1. Weekly Link Round-up | My Financial Recovery says:
    March 6, 2009 at 11:49 am

    […] Counting My Pennies is literally looking to count her pennies (change jar at work). […]

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter


Our Most Popular Articles

  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of saving money? What are the advantages and disadvantages of saving money? by Megan Smith
  • Another MLM Gone – AdvoCare Changes Business Model by Megan Smith
  • Billie razor review Billie Razor Review by Megan Smith
  • lularoe dani LuLaRoe Dani – Another Don’t Buy by Megan Smith
  • What is the billie razor customer service number What Is The Billie Razor Customer Service Number? by Joe Wallace
  • Can You Earn Money Selling Young Living? by Megan Smith




Great Investing, Simplified: Get Stock Advisor for Just $99/year!

Survey Junky

Archives

Categories

Copyright © 2022 · Runway Pro On Genesis Framework ·