What Noisy Cats Are We

I used to talk about how great CoinStar is and how it made turning in your coins such a breeze.  I used CoinStar for years and always thought they did a good job at making people create $$ out of their spare change.  Then a couple of months ago I had an epiphany: Spare change is $$ already!  It’s not like it’s made into money by being filtered through the CoinStar machine!  CoinStar simply takes your money, moves it through a machine, and takes 9-10% of it away from you!  You’re LOSING money by using CoinStar.

Now, if your life is seriously too busy for you to sit down while you’re watching TV or something at night and roll your own coins, then this blog entry is for you.  In fact, this whole blog is probably not for you.  But if you DO have the time, then simply spending it rolling your coins and depositing them at your bank manually (we’ll get into what happens if you have an online bank only later…) lets you keep ALL of your spare $$!  No more lost money due to laziness.

Of course you probably don’t have any of those coin sleeves that your parents had in droves in the junk drawer at home.  But I found out today that if you ask nicely, your bank will just give them to you!  I have an old checking and savings account at Wainwright Bank and stopped in their Central Square, Cambridge branch during lunch today.  The teller was very nice and gave me a ton of rolls (tubes, sleeves, whatever you want to call them) for free.

I know that losing 9-10 cents on the dollar is not a big amount at all when we’re talking about small numbers, but it all adds up over time.  The point of my Watch Every Penny blog is just that, watch EVERY penny.  As long as being frugal does not take up too much of your time or affect your lifestyle much, a lot of the things I’ve been doing are simply a matter of changing wasteful financial habits.

That said, I’m gonna be rolling about $50 in change this evening.

Side note: Since I switched banks from Wainwright to Bank Of America, I have been charged $1 / month on my Wainwright savings account.  I found out today that I needed a minimum of $10 in that account to avoid being charged.  The bank customer service lady was nice enough to remove the two months of fees for me and I’ll shove $10 in the account just to keep it open for a while.  I love this bank, they just couldn’t do everything that I need done at BoA, and they aren’t national in case I move out of the Boston area.  If you’re looking for a great, simple, no hassle, fee bank and you live in Cambridge or Boston, please check them out!  I have nothing but good things to say about Wainwright.