If You Save Pennies and Coins – Is That Just Another Way To Lose Your Money?

Get too many pennies, nickels or dimes in your pocket or purse and you carry a heavy load. It’s annoying. Pennsylvania has a tax rate that requires pennies when you pay with cash. It’s exciting to look at the pile of coins you have collected, maybe there’s even enough for a large delicious pizza or nice sandwich night out for two or three.

Our grocery stores are becoming one-stop shopping and convenience centers for whatever you need. That’s good and not so good. One of the “amenities” I have spotted lately is a free-standing mechanical bandit-type coin sorter where I could bring my stash of coins [mostly pennies and nickels]. It counts what you have and gives back paper money in return. It certainly looked like a great idea UNTIL you realize you lose somewhere around 9 or 10 percent of it for the service.

My frugal side [the one that saves pennies and nickels] said, “I’ll wrap those myself”. It isn’t necessary to buy the wrappers, some banking institutions will still give you wrappers. You could also ask for a few when you go into stores where the clerks know you – they might also have them to wrap coins when they balance out their registers.

You don’t have to count each coin by hand yourself. You can make it easy if you buy a coin sorter. The coin sorters are rather cheap and will save you money. You can find them as educational toys for kids; you can also find them on eBay. Searching on eBay on 4/30 under coin sorter, or coin counter or coin counter tubes, some nice possibilities came in at under $10 including the shipping. There were some very economical varieties for the sorter and shipping that were around $5.00 Just change the sort function at the top of the listings to: price, lowest first and you’ll probably find what you need very easily.

It’s also possible to ask your banking institution if they will run your coins through their sorter for free – some do this as a little perk to their regular customers, but you have to ask as one of them I found that did this limited it to a certain time and day.

Those you wrap yourself can be exchanged at you bank for paper dollars or just deposit them into your checking or savings. Stores that know you might also take some of the wrapped coins simply because they know you and because they too need the change.

If you take back paper dollars for your coins, put it in a special envelope marked for your pizza or sandwich night out. The plus or minus 10% you didn’t pay will help to leave a reasonable tip for some hardworking waitress.

Hedging My Bets Doing The Math

“In the good old days” of the previous century and longer ago than I will admit to, you could purchase electric appliances – toaster oven, refrigerator, calculator, washer and dryer, even gas furnaces and they would last 20 years and much more. My mother once had a refrigerator that just wouldn’t die. It was 45 years old and still working when she sold her home and bought another. My upright freezer is still going perfectly strong and it’s about 35 years old.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case with today’s new and “improved” products. It seems that all of them are preprogrammed to self-destruct or become obsolete in a much shorter period of time. If you read the “warranties” on various items it’s likely you might also buy a separate insurance policy for it as well. You would spend a lot of money over the years paying for these policies, especially if every major appliance is covered.

My family tends not to purchase the insurance, although we have occasionally purchased items that should have come packaged with pictures of big lemons. We basically get our money’s worth on purchases without the extra insurance. It’s a gambler’s risk. And this is where I gamble. Mostly, however, I win.

My philosophy on purchasing anything for our home, especially any item with a large ticket, is never to pay full price. If you search, it is on sale somewhere, or it will be if you can wait. Our busy lives make it painful to spend time searching for the best item at the best price. It’s a penny pincher’s life.

We normally also duck delivery costs by imposing on a busy relative or friend with a truck if we can’t haul it home ourselves. Since we will repay favors when they are in need, we just have to coordinate everyone’s time to get it done.

Calculate your savings on the sale price, delivery cost and insurance. If you are financially able, establish a separate bank account and save what you would have spent. Then add to this account the additional cost of insurance over the term that the policy will cover. The total of these amounts (for all your purchases) plus a little interest can be surprising.

If your refrigerator or other item doesn’t quite live to an expected self-destruct date, you still have the money you put away to help get something you want. It’s also possible that you might not use or need it until you want something new. In any event, you are in control of your cash. That’s the important factor here.

Always read the warranty information, get full information on the price of the policy and what it covers, consider the alternatives and what ifs. Do the math and make informed decisions about how you will spend your money – or not.