Saving Tips: Keep the Change

Have you ever thought that saving money is just really hard? What if you played a game with it! Let's face it, making things you don't particularly feel is fun into a game makes everything better. 

I told you that one of the best things we have done on this debt free journey, is go cash only! In this day and age I am very aware of how few of people actually see money let alone live on only cash.  That reminds me of when my son received a gift card to Target for his 8th birthday. He had no idea what he was looking at, he just thought it was a plastic card to him. We had to explain to him that they have money on this card and that he can pick out a toy and use this to pay. I mention this because no matter what our little ones are watching us VERY closely. Even when you don't think so, they are. Mine knew that money buys you things, he hadn't seen plastic cards before 

Ok, so back to making this entire saving money into a game. Since we mostly pay everything in cash, we get change from our transactions. We have a jar and just throw the change in there every day and then at the end of the month or year. You will be surprised at how much change you have. It's crazy! 

Years ago we decided to start this "keep the change" challenge and we actually paid for our family of 4 to go to Disneyland Cali for 3 days and 4 nights. That was over $3000 all in coins. Now before you start asking me if we took a bucket of coins to Disney, we didn't, but what we did do is teach our children how to count and roll coins. Honestly, most of my kid's friends don't know alot about coins. Meaning they don't know how much a dime is worth, nickel and so on. It is sad but true. 
This "keep the change" was a family project and we all chipped in. It was a great experience and I will never forget the kid's reactions when they knew we were getting close to our Disney goal! 

Don't want to deal with the change? That's cool I have a really great friend that every time she gets a $5 bill as change, she puts it in an envelope. Just think, that is the cost of a coffee at this point, so it isn't hurting her daily budget but when she had a couple hundred dollars after a few months, it was totally worth it! 

I know, most of you are thinking but I don't use "real cash", I have a debit card and that is the same thing. I will say, yes and no to that statement. I do have to say that when you have cash in your hand and you hand that DOLLAR BILL to the checker to purchase things, it stings. It does! 

How many times do you use a debit or credit card and the second you leave the store you forgot how much you just spent? I am totally guilty of this. When it is cash, you know! You also spend less when you use cash. It is because of that "sting" factor. 

With all of that said let's say you still want to use your debit cards. That's fine, let's figure out a game to help you save money too! 

Some banks back in the day were offering a "keep the change" type of program where they rounded up on all your transactions and transferred that into your savings account. You could totally do that. If your bank doesn't offer it, you could manually do that. It will take some discipline but if you just sit down and do it as you go it will get easier and easier. 
If you use a coupon for dinner or at the grocery store, take that dollar amount and transfer it to your savings account. 

I know we are going to do something similar to that with our Disney+ subscription. We are now getting it FREE for a year (you can too, check out the deets here). I am going to automatically transfer $7 into a savings account as if I am paying for this service. At the end of the year I will have an extra $84 in the bank. Not too bad for the price of one Starbucks coffee a month. 


Want to grab additional saving tips? Be sure to grab my FREE guide on 3 ways to save money


No comments:

Post a Comment