Money Matters: Change

The enormous bird is cooking so I'm putting the finishing touches on this post.

I know you're eagerly anticipating wedding details, but I've decided to start with the more mundane part of a wedding. Paying for it.

Kate and I have exchanged several emails about money this past year as we've both been watching our pennies.  I've been a bit remiss as I'd said I'd post about my own thoughts. So, stealing my title from Kate, here we go!

When I was seven I bought a plastic bear bank. Unfortunately, I quickly learned how to get the money back out. The bank sat mostly neglected (or robbed by me) until I was gathering money for my initial college money. I cut open the bank and... 80 dollars!

While I was away at college my mom dropped change in the bear and then it moved with me to Alaska. When I was going on a vacation while up there, money was tight so I opened the bear again and... nearly 400 dollars!

About six years ago, when I was really strapped for cash, I realized just how much money we spend in change and never even think about it. A quarter here, a dime there - it's actually quite a bit of money when you add it up. So, when I was back on my feet, I decided that I would stop using change at the store and just use another dollar. I found that if I thought about an item as costing $4.00 instead of $3.59, I was more thoughtful about whether to purchase something.

At the end of each day, the change would go into the bear. I actually use my credit cards quite a bit so I'd estimate that only 1/3 of my purchases are in cash, if that. Two years ago Partner bought me a machine that counts the money and bear has been a bit neglected. [this is all context for later]

With paying for a wedding on our own, money got a little tight and we were (and still are!) minding our pennies. I also mentioned that we were doing an eclectic wedding. Which means we used a lot of non conventional labor (a digeredoo-playing chef, for example). We paid for a lot of things in cash. Good news: no long term debt. Bad news: no way to spread out the cost. With the wedding around the corner, we've been looking for money around us. Hello Mr. Bear.

A couple weeks before the wedding, Mr. Bear and I got started. Years ago for a "guess-the-amount" challenge, Partner weighed one pound of randomly mixed U.S. change (pennies, dimes, nickels, and quarters) and got an estimate of $13.00/pound. So Mr. Bear and I started with a weigh in.

 

So, we have a tentative value of $611.00.

I decided to invest in a change sorter and bought some coin wrappers. And then Mr. Bear and I sorted and wrapped.

And sorted and wrapped.

And then we were done!

 

I discovered that there were very few pennies. A couple years ago I started segretating pennies and would use those so I only had silver change.  And for some reason had quite a few quarters.

In the picture above, is the change from just a third of my purchases over about 4 years.

Mr. Bear's total: 736.50.

When we added in the change from the counter that Partner bought, we ended up with $819.00. We couldn't be happier as this money that would have been lost one quarter at a time, has ended up paying some important bills.

Change matters.

Randomly, at the end of this post, I also found random foreign coins that snuck into Mr. Bear.  It was fun to see several reminders in one place. 

From the top: 1 euro cent (I haven't actually been to Europe since the change...); 5 kopeks from Russia; an old U.S. one cent coin; CAD 1cent; a Finnish coin; a coin from [Western] Samoa; and one more Canadian cent (I've been there several times).

If you're celebrating Turkey Day, I hope that you have a wonderful day.  I'll be back soon with the more exciting aspects of the wedding!

Comments

[kate]

I'm so glad you posted this!! Wow, that's amazing. Especially as you don't have the one and two dollar coins that we have up here! That is really cool, and what a great way to pay for some of those cash wedding expenses.

[Heather]

*likes* this :) that is truly amazing!!! you have inspired me to try this again.

[twelvedaysold]

A while ago I blogged about putting pennies into a piggy bank I have when I was saving up for my bike (the nickels and dimes were separated to pay off my library fine, and the quarters for laundry). It really adds up!

Can't wait to hear more details!

[melissa]

yay for you! that's a very impressive total!

love the bear-on-the-scale shot - very funny!

[Rachel]

I'm glad you posted this...I loved when Kate posted about change as well. This is freakin' amazing! I'm pretty frugal somehow (nobody else in my family is) in general. But the thing I thought of when I was reading this is that I almost always use a debit card. For one, I find that I'm more mindful of spending if I use my card rather than cash. But seeing what you've done here has me considering switching behaviors a bit and doing a mega coin collection...because 'finding' $800 is pretty spectacular! ;)

[Rue]

Wow. Just wow. I love your reminder of how all those little bits add up. We should definitely start a jar for tadpole.