Who needs to count coins?

[RetailWorkhorse]

I let BofA do that for me. You don't have to have a minimum in your savings account if you do their Keep the Change thing and I don't have to carry anything but my emergency cash.

^-.-^

...hey, no fair, my BofA charges me for my savings and I've had Keep The Change since I got the stupid thing. I have to have a minimum of 300$ before they stop taking out a maintenance fee.

[Chromatix]

An interesting variant of that is the membership/loyalty cards that the two major chains run here.

Effectively, I have a separate bank account with my supermarket. When I spend money at a participating store (and there are a *lot* of these), regardless of how I pay for it, the total amount spent is tallied up at the end of the month. If it's over one of a series of thresholds, a percentage of that is returned to the account.

So in theory, I could use the second bank account as a "found money" savings account.

Unfortunately, one of the reasons I opened that account was to gain access to a more available payment method. The Visa Electron card my "main" account uses has a number of extremely annoying limitations, which prevent me from using it in actually quite critical situations. So I have to transfer "real" money to the second account and use it for those situations.

[Andara Bledin]

...hey, no fair, my BofA charges me for my savings and I've had Keep The Change since I got the stupid thing. I have to have a minimum of 300$ before they stop taking out a maintenance fee.

You might want to check to see what your account rep can do for you. I just opened this one up when I changed bank accounts, so it might be tied into something I have going on there, too, but I don't think so.

^-.-^

[Pagan]

Well, I assure you this girl was 100% American born and raised. So that isn't the issue.

It's sad, but I'm not surprised. I've been running into more and more people younger than me that can't read my analog watch. Or, when they ask me what time it is, don't know what I mean by, i.e., "a quarter of 3".

I used to have a friend whose father had told her throughout her childhood that she was stupid. And while she very much wasn't stupid at all, she believed she was. Very sad, and it made me want to find and beat the shit out of her dad.

I've got an ex like that. His sister was the "smart" one and she was the one that was going to be going to college. He was supposed to go in the Army. This was according to his parents. Well, with one thing and another, the Army wouldn't take him. I spent many an hour trying to beat it into his head that he wasn't stupid.

[Primer]

The ex used to drop all his change into a coffee mug. When it filled up, I would count it out and give him paper money for it. I was the one at work that always had change for the vending machines!

I worked a third job on weekends and some nights for a few years at an emergency animal hospital. I learned early on to get my weekly paycheck on Friday, get it cashed next door at the bank, and get it in an assortment of smaller bills. It would never vary that people would bring in big bills to pay, and there was nowhere to break them during "business" hours. I was our change fund. It was not unusual for me to be carrying more than $500 in cash on a regular basis. I'm still comfortable with large amounts of cash, but prefer not to carry anywhere near that much if I don't have to.

[Indigo]

My mom got myself, my fiance, my older brother, and his fiancee each piggy banks for easter and told us to start saving for our wedding. We laughed about it at first, but my hun and I have made a point to empty out our pockets / purse and put the change in the banks. So far we've got over $30 - which isn't bad considering how rare he's over and how rarely I carry cash. I plan on opening another savings account and just putting the money in there until we need it for our wedding / new apartment.

[ralerin]

I don't really get why people save up large jars of change, other than for the fact that they're unable to not spend money if they don't know how much it is.

I'm in the same boat as a couple posters here. I keep three seperate coin holders-one for everyday, "loose" change, like pennies and whatnot; one GIANT jar in quarters that I'm saving for my hypothetical apartment, and a small bowl to place the quarters in in the meantime. Once I save up a reasonable amount of quarters, I split the amount in half (extra quarters go in the bowl) and stick half into the quarter jar and half into my purse.

To be fair, I find dealing with American coins (1-5-10-25) more difficult than the repeated 1-2-5-10 sequence used on this side of the Pond.

I'm actually more nervous about using British pounds than I am about anything else for when I go to the UK next year. I have this horrible feeling I'll screw it all up somehow and I'll be laughed at. Plus the 2 coins annoy me already.

[Cazzi]

If you end up in NW England & I run into you, I promise I wont laugh.. I'm terrible with other countries money

The £2 aren't so bad, they've been out for a while but I'm still getting used to them

[Magpie]

Or, when they ask me what time it is, don't know what I mean by, i.e., "a quarter of 3".

Am I going to get laughed at if I screw up my eyes tightly and convince myself that they're just used to a different region's phrasing? (I actually have needed to confirm whether a certain phrasing means before or after. But not since I was a teenager).

[Pagan]

Am I going to get laughed at if I screw up my eyes tightly and convince myself that they're just used to a different region's phrasing?

You could do that, but some of them I know for a fact were born and raised in New Mexico, same as me.

[Magpie]

So getting laughed at was me being optimistic.

[Chromatix]

I'm actually more nervous about using British pounds than I am about anything else for when I go to the UK next year. I have this horrible feeling I'll screw it all up somehow and I'll be laughed at. Plus the 2 coins annoy me already.

Well, here's a tip from an experienced Sterling user. Get a wallet with two decent-sized coin compartments, and room for notes, cards, etc.

Use one of the compartments for 1p, 2p, 5p and 10p coins - that's your small change. You can easily distinguish between these four by colour and size - the 1p and 2p are copper, and the other two are silver.

Use the other compartment for 20p, 50p, £1 and £2 coins. These are the local equivalent of quarters and dollar bills, so you'll be using them a lot for mundane things. The 20p and 50p are both silver, polycurved coins; the £1 and £2 are both round and have letters and milling on the edge. The £1 is brass, the £2 is bimetallic with silver on the outside.

Notes will usually be £5, £10 or £20, but you might also get £50 notes depending on where you get your money. I either fold notes into quarters, making a thin roll in effect, and put them in groups along the length of the note compartment, or keep them flat and just sort them by size. Each note value is a distinct size and colour - blue, brown, purple for the first three. Don't be surprised if £5 notes are extremely well-worn, since they are used heavily for breaking £10s and £20s, and therefore don't go through the bank very often - but you are also likely to get £2 coins in your change for notes.

Because coins are used a lot, and a wide varity of face values are available, it's actually quite uncommon for a shop to run out of change in Britain. So if you're having trouble making exact change, err on the high side and don't worry about it. Just try to use some small change before your wallet gets too overstuffed to close properly - British shops are also inordinately fond of X.99 prices.

[Pagan]

So getting laughed at was me being optimistic.

I thought you meant about pretending that they were from somewhere else and so might have had an excuse.

I wouldn't ever laugh atcha!

[Magpie]

I thought you meant about pretending that they were from somewhere else and so might have had an excuse.

I wouldn't ever laugh atcha!

No, I was pretending that. I wasn't laughed at, my nice illusion was horribly crushed. Don't worry, I still love you .

[LadyAndreca]

We have multiple coin jars, being saved for different purposes.

- a quarter jar for laundry
- a penny jar, general savings
- a non-penny jar (kept seperate so we can easily grab a handful of coins for parkway tolls), general savings
- a piggy bank for coins from our wedding year, eventually to be used on a honeymoon
- a jar for hubby's brother's birth year, eventually to be given to him as a gift when full
- a jar for hubby's and my birth year

The penny/non-penny jar tend to total around $50 when both are full, and are generally used on college textbooks in the fall. The piggy bank has about $18 in it currently, and I've never counted the birth year jars. Those started out as 'college fund' jars hubby's parents had, but were stolen when the house was robbed when he was in middle school. His parents never started the jars again, so he did himself because he thought it was cool.