Sense to Save

Coins can be snowflakes

If you’ve ever read Paid Twice’s blog or new site, you know that she looooves to add "snowflakes" and "snowballs" to her debt. (Check out her snowflaking primer here).

It’s a great concept, and it actually works. Whether you’re trying to eliminate debt or build up an emergency fund or scrape together a down payment for a house, taking even small amounts of money and concentrating it toward one effort at a time is a great way to accomplish your goals.

Shane and I are building our emergency fund right now. We’re aiming to save $10,000 as quickly as possible, and hopefully we’ll achieve that by the end of August. We’re making progress, but it’s always good to come up with even more money to throw at our ING Direct savings account.

So, I have a simple "snowflaking" idea to share.

Submitted for the approval of the snowflake society: Raid the piggy banks!

I’ve mentioned before that I can’t stand to use filthy cash. I much prefer debit cards or even gift cards (everyone loves a gift card, yes?). Yet, I still have a few jars full of pennies, nickels and dimes just sitting around, with no purpose and not achieving any sort of goal.

I’m going to raid our piggy banks and my car and I’m going to gather all the loose change I can find. I’m going to keep the quarters for laundry, but everything else is going to our emergency fund.

If you’re willing to pay 8.9 cents per dollar, take your coins to a Coinstar machine. If you redeem your coins for an e-gift certificate, they’ll waive that fee.

Or, if you have the time, you can roll your coins and take them to your bank. I don’t know if all banks have a rapid-counting machine, but it’s worth checking into. I just called my bank, and they don’t have one of those machines. So, Coinstar is the best option for me in this case.

If you have a bunch of coins sitting around for no reason, why not put them in your bank? Or throw them at a debt? (Cha-ching! is the sound that will make) or use it to get a gift certificate for something you need to buy.

I’m going to head out the door in a few minutes to try this now. I estimate I’ll find $15 in random change. I’ll let you know what I find.

Update: I am quite proud of myself! The total was $15.08 plus a Canadian nickel. Not bad! To give you an idea of what $15 in change might look like, I put the money in a small butter tub. It was about 80 percent full or so.

I changed my mind about opting for cash. I chose an Amazon e-certificate instead, and saved myself $1.34 in fees. I’ll just transfer $15 from my regular bank into the ING account so it’ll be the same difference. 

I’ll use that gift certificate plus a $25 Amazon gift certificate I got from my credit card company, and I’ll put it toward the purchase of a wedding gift.