Keep the Change

Last year I noticed that my husband would leave a ridiculous amount of change and sometimes dollar bills (or if I was lucky, five or ten dollar bills!) in his pants pockets. I would always find the money in the dryer and get all excited because my attitude was totally one of finders keepers! Well, last April I decided to start a little challenge and save all of the change and bills that I found in the wash for 1 year and put it all in the bank for Andy. Of course, at the time, I assumed I would open a savings account for Andy long before now... but... well, this blog wouldn't exist if that was how my life worked!

So, now, 10 months later I finally made it to the bank with Andy in tow, to open his very own savings account! Yesterday I emptied out his big white ceramic pig full of change and the glass milk bottle I had filled with bills. Now, I have never rolled change in my life. I don't know why I assumed this would be some major time consuming hassle, but I've always just dumped my change into the Coinstar machine at the grocery store... call me lazy. This just didn't seem like something the new me should do, and I didn't want to short change (no pun intended) my son's savings account. So I sorted all the coins, went to Walmart and got some change rolls and rolled all that money up myself. Do you know what? It only took me 15 min. to sort and 10 min. to roll. Live and learn I guess.

Well, 10 months into my laundry coin challenge and ... drum roll... Andy opened his savings account with $135! I'm sure my husband is kicking himself because he could have totally gone on a nice little shopping spree to Best Buy with all that coin! I'm surprised that I was able to keep from raiding that piggy bank for so long, because we are signed up for the Keep the Change program with Bank of America and it totally doesn't work for us. There is always some reason that I end up moving that money back over to our checking account. It never seems to get above $50 or so. Just now I looked up what our keep the change total is over the entire length of time that we've been signed up for the program... it's $2,988.38. Gulp. I'm kicking myself for not having the same discipline with that account!!!!! It's hard to see it spelled out that way! Okay, so lesson learned. If I can keep from raiding the piggy bank then surely I can keep from transferring that money back into our checking account! I guess it's just easier to click the mouse a few times on the computer than it is to pull that darn rubber stopper out of the bottom of the pig!