Seeing as though most people (I assume) tend to use credit and debit cards for most purchases these days, cash tends to be far less “valuable” to have on-hand and, oh boy, let’s not consider keeping loose change around… talk about useless these days. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
In recent weeks–since our dryer broke–I found a new use for my change: to feed the local laundromat dryer! Until then I tended to just collect change whenever I used my cash and if I did anything with it I usually gave it to my kids so they could occasionally purchase treats at the store. Since they’re still young their eyes tend to “light up” when given such a gift. Fast forward a few more years and they’ll question me why it’s not twenty dollar bills. 😉
Before that my mother-in-law always wound up requisitioning my pocket change for the homeless or whatever she did with it. That’s fine. At least it went somewhere useful instead of the plastic cup I collect it in.
The question is, what else can loose change actually be useful for?
Well, for starters, you might consider stockpiling your nickels as they’re apparently more valuable than the face value and perhaps even more so for barter during SHTF.
You could, of course, save it up and years later do something positive with it like buy some useful preps, a new knife, adding to your food storage, or dare I say… start a college fund, buy a bond, or invest in the stock market… yikes!
Granted, there are more fun ways to use it from buying movie tickets or snacks at the movies to actually keeping track of how much you save and when you hit a certain amount (such as $60 dollars) go out to lunch or dinner. Maybe make it a treat time and take the family out for ice cream or yogurt or they prefer.
If your kids are young enough you might even be able to use it as bribery money (to do useful chores, of course) or other incentives such as to wash the car, clean the kitchen, bathe the dog, re-shingle the roof, or whatever works for you.
Of course, if you’d prefer to have dollar bills in your hand you can always take it to your bank or one of those change machines and for a price you can convert that “useless” change into likely even more useless dollar bills. 😉
The moral of the story is to NOT discount how useful loose pocket change can be and if you’re patient enough you can actually do something positive with it no matter what you choose that to be.
What about you? For what reasons have you kept and used pocket change?
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