A Penny Saved

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Sometimes I can be a bit anal retentive if I can use that phrase here. I keep a coin jar as most people do. One for "silver" coins and one for pennies. And even though I rarely use cash, I do keep cash on hand often and do sometimes use it over using my debit card. When I do use it, of course I am always generally receiving coins in change. All of it is promptly tossed into the coin jars. My bank does allow me to cash in my coins at no charge, including pennies. You just take them to the bank, toss the coins into a counter, it generates a receipt, you take that to the teller and they either give you your money or you can deposit it. Whatever you like. With the pennies I like to "buy" them back and will sometimes even use them when I use my debit card. "I have ten cents in pennies and I want to use these up. Can you ring that first and I will put the rest on my debit, please," I will tell the cashier. This is never a problem. What do I mean by buying back the pennies? There is a self car wash just up the street from my house. They have a coin changer. I will sometimes take a dollar there, get four quarters, take them home, and pull 100 pennies out of the penny jar, put the quarters into the "silver" coin jar, and voila! I am done. AND in a sense, I have inadvertently actually saved an additional dollar. This is just another example of ways we can force ourselves to save money. It seems like more work, of course. But when it is habit such it is for me, it's just the way things work and so it's not work at all to do it this way. (Picture credit: @andriaperry)