Spend Your Coins To Help Stretch Your Dollars

Many financial experts recommend switching from debit or credit purchases to cash-only in order to better see how much you’re spending and how quickly. Using credit or debit cards makes it easy to forget how much money you’re spending on a day to day basis, so switching to cash only causes you to become more aware of your financial situation (see Do Credit Cards Increase Spending?). There’s also another overlooked benefit of using cash – it typically gives you more coins in your pocket! Here are two options from using coins to help you stretch your dollars:

Option One: Spend Your Coins

Think about what you normally do with coins. Most people toss them in the bottom of their purse or in a bucket and forget about them. Change ends up under furniture, in coat pockets, the ash tray in your car. More often than not, loose change is forgotten and doesn’t get used the next time you make a purchase.

If you make a conscious effort to use your change when making a purchase, you’ll use less dollars. You’re spending the same amount of money, but because you’re using some of your change, it isn’t going to “waste” just sitting in a mug on the top of your dresser or getting lost under the seats of your car. When you use coins, you don’t need to hand as many dollars to the cashier, which means more dollars stay in your pocket. If you did this on a regular basis, you could literally save the money you use in coins in a savings account to notice the difference.  Just don’t go overboard like this guy did!

Option Two: Save Your Coins

The other way to help stretch your dollars with coins is to make a conscious effort to save them. Take all of those little hiding places for coins (your coffee mug, ashtray, coat pockets, etc) and save your coins in one place. On a regular basis, such as once a month, roll the change and bring it to the bank to deposit into your savings account. You may be genuinely surprised at how much change you accumulate each month when you save it all in one place and not let it get lost.  I roll probably $200-300 per year in coins, and I do the vast majority of my business on my cash reward credit card.

If you’re going to save your coins, you may also find that you use cash more often in order to get more change back. You won’t notice the difference much in your day to day spending and budget, but at the end of the month when you deposit the change you’ll see a difference in how much your deposit is.