Save money with your change
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I’m one of the millions who throw their change in a bucket at the end of the day, but I have always kind of avoided doing anything with it. Part of this is because my husband is enamored with the coolness of one day having a monsterous bucket full of change, but it’s also because my options were so unappealing:
- roll coins by hand (don’t think so!)
- buy a change sorter (it doesn’t seem like I should have to pay money to access my own money)
- use a change sorting machine (ditto… the fees on these things—in percentage form—are hideous)
However, according to this CNN article entitled, “Coinstar, Amazon hope to find a chunk of change“, the Coinstar machines will now provide an option to pay out in Amazon gift cards—with no fee. This works because they purchase the Amazon cards at a discount, so the difference between what they pay for them and the amount of change I put in is their profit. However, I get my full amount at Amazon.
Obviously this won’t work if you’re not interested in shopping at Amazon, but I shop there all the time, having purchased both the standard books and media type items as well as really out there (fly paper, anyone?). So for me, this is definitely a good deal. If only I could get Daniel to hand over the bucket!
Yeah, I remember seeing a commercial that they’ll do this OR give you a gift card for the various stores that have the Coinstar machines (like Safeway). Then you could use it for you groceries and such. A sweet deal!
I have yet to find these in my area.. the only ones I have around are the ones where you pay them 9ยข on the dollar!
My credit union will count the coins for free in their machine.
I think the Coinstar ones do typically charge about 9%. I’m not surprised that others are using this business model, too, since many people apparently use them, even at that steep rate. That’s the main reason I’m excited about this deal.
For others who are wondering about their location, use Coinstar’s machine locator. Look for locations that offer “prepaid card” as a service (in my area, about half of them do).
mbhunter–yet another way in which credit unions offer better service than banks! I haven’t been a credit union member for very long yet, so I’m a little clueless about some of their services, but the banks are starting to annoy me.
We had a deposit for our church bank account (my husband’s the treasurer); among other donations, a little kid had emptied out his piggy bank to give to the Katrina relief effort. The bank glanced at the coins and told us we’d have to roll them all before we could deposit them. (The kid was awesome, though! We ended up with I think 30 rolls of pennies, plus a few rolls of other coins.)
I can understand the Coinstar machines, etc., charging a fee because that’s their whole business plan. Banks, on the other hand… it seems like they’d want to make it easy to deposit money!
yay! for credit unions… good ones that is. there are some really really good credit unions and then there are some that give them a bad name.
we have found a way to get more for our change that face value… we let our friend who collects pennies go through them. he takes what he needs and pays face value for the common ones and book worth or better for others. so we get our change to work for us =). the remaining pennies are taken to casino with penny slots, cash in for free.
I’ve been looking for a way to save money and this loose change deal looks to be a great way to do it. I can finally stop that jangling in my pants and bags from all that change when I walk! Thanks!
i gathered up all the change in our house last night, and went grocery shopping… FIFTY ONE dollars…yay.!
By the way, IF you can’t find a machine, or don’t want a gift card or want to pay the fee, just go to the self-checkout line, and pay with a bunch of change…
this works really well for purchases under say 10 bucks. it takes a while.
i go at about 5 am in the morning, and stock up on diet mountain dews, and use my change to pay…takes about 10 minutes or so, but it gets “rid”
of the change and I get full value..
ncnblog.com
The machines at the post office take pennies… I go in there on a Sunday when no-one is around and buy a handfull of stamps with my pennies and change!
I love everyone’s creativity!