Froogie Boogie: Spare Change

Saving money by collecting your spare change is the oldest frugal trick in the book. It seems like everybody wants me to do something different with my change. Some suggest saving it up for a vacation or to sponsor a needy child, and the list goes on. I thought I had heard it all, then the other day Rachel Ray said you should save all your loose change to make a healthy food fund!? It surprises me that the money with the least amount of value seems to have the most worth when it comes to this concept of savings.

We have a couple coin jars here and there. My son even has a little plastic bank that he managed to break open the other day. So when I heard about this Coinstar deal* on the thrifty mama it actually got my attention.

There is a holiday special going on right now that gives you a $10 bonus for any amount of change over $40 that is put on a gift card. I didn't really expect to have that much, but I thought maybe I could round up some more quarters at the store. However, after gathering all the coins from around the house it turned out to be more than enough!

If you have saved up any change overtime I suggest giving this a try. Counting pennies can be a lot of work, so what I did was measure (or if you have a food scale you could weigh) one dollars worth of pennies to avoid counting to a hundred over and over. I found that 100 pennies measured out to about 3.5 oz.

In the end my entire stash of coins filled a cool whip container. So if you are curious as too how much change you have, gather it all up and if you can fill an 8 ounce container, you probably have around $40 worth as long as it's not all pennies.

Coinstar gives you a full report of what your total is and I turned out to have 98 quarters, 92 dimes, 64 nickles, and 521 pennies. I was able to get an amazon gift certificate for $42.11 and I already sent in for my $10 rebate.

*Offer ends December 2*