Over at AskMetafilter, a user wants to know what to do with all his pennies.
I have a lot of pennies. They accumulated over the past twelve years. I need a permanent solution to this problem other than a big jar. What do you do with your pennies?
My favorite answer so far — because it’s handy and prevents you from accumulating new pennies — is this:
Carry around four pennies with you at all times; whenever you make a cash purchase, you can always give the cashier a couple of extra pennies instead of getting a couple of extra pennies back. Once you get into the habit, it’s not so hard; I successfully got rid of two years’ worth of pennies this way over the course of about nine months.
Andy Rooney hates the penny, too.
[AskMetafilter: Going Penny-Crazy]
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I just roll my pennies and take them to the bank. I know it’s not much, but I don’t hate pennies. I don’t have a lot of change anyway because I use loonies and quarters for laundry, and twoonies for the bus. Plus I use debit a lot. Yeah, I’m in Canada
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I read somewhere (thought it was here, but maybe not) about Coinstar machines that take a cut of your change if you convert it into cash, but don’t if you convert it into a gift card. They’re in a lot of supermarkets. I got my boyfriend to do that for an Amazon card and bought it off him. Voila—his office, car, and dresser have been cleared of years of coins ($86), and I got a textbook for the evening class I’m taking, with a little left over for next semester.
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I have a Little Sister (as in Big Brothers Big Sisters) and we save up all our pennies (and other small change) for outings or projects to do together. I just started teaching her how to sew and so one of the things we save up for is fabric and notions. I admit I’m too lazy to roll them; I take them over to the Coinstar at the supermarket–usually at the same time as I take my bottles and cans in–and then we save the redemption slips in a jar instead.
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A few years ago, I wrote alengthy essay about this subject. My conclusion was that it wasn’t worth your time to do anything with change smaller than nickels.
But times have changed since I wrote that, and I see more local bank branches with free, automated change counting machines lately.
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With increases in commodities price, specially copper and nickel, a penny costs quita a bit more than one cent in materials alone. You could melt them and resell the metal (zinc, thinly plated with copper), but of course that is illegal. In the UK, that is happening so often the mint is switching to copper-plated steel instead.
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I don’t normally post links to my own site in other people’s comments sections, but since someone asked about using coinstar for free:
Use Coinstar for Free
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Check with local banks that have change-counting machines to see if you can use them without being a depositor. If not, and you know someone who does have an account with that bank, have them bring them in. There should be no charge for that person to get them totaled. My bank actually allows me to bring the receipt from the counting machine over and deposit it directly into my account. Very handy if I don’t need the bills.
For me, nothing I do at the bank is more fun than dumping my change into that counting machine. It’s like playing a slot machine you know is going to pay you off. I used to bring my change in every week and put the paper I got back into my emergency fund. Later, after I made a conscious effort not to buy lunch near work as often, I dropped the non-quarter change (much less of it as a result of that frugal change) into a glass milk bottle. (The quarters I save in a ceramic “WE ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU” coffee cup for laundry and poker night.) When that milk bottle fills, it’s darn tough to heft!
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There are also many charitable organizations that collect pennies as a fundraiser (although I can’t think of any specific ones at the moment).
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Growing up my parents had a fairly large plastic piggy bank. I remember it had a sticker on the bottom that said “hold $600 in quarters”. We’d let it fill up with my parents change, and then we’d use it for something fun.
The pig would usually end up with about $400 in it. We ended up taking trips with that money, buying a 10 man tent (parents + 8 kids), and other great stuff. Our parents always let us kids vote — though they had veto power in case we tried to get something lame.
Maybe it was because we lived in a small town, or maybe my dad just knew the guys at the bank, but they never charged us to get the money counted and deposited.
Now that I’m married, my wife and I put our change in our own piggy bank, and use it for fun dates and holiday presents. I think it’s pretty lame that most banks charge so much to use their counting machines. No small town love I guess.
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My daughter’s school and our local New York Public Library branch participate in Penny Harvest (http://www.commoncents.org/0tools/pennyharvest.html). During the year I collect all my pennies, and in the fall I give them to Penny Harvest.
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You can get rid of ‘em 780 at a time by taking them to the post office and using them in the stamp machine. Then use the stamps to mail stuff. Its like getting free stamps and cleaning your house at the same time.
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JM:
Have you done this? wouldn’t 780 pennies choke the machine?
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It’s how I buy stamps. It does take awhile to get them all in one by one though. I find that unless I’m the only one in there, its better to see if people want to go before you before stepping up and taking 5-10 minutes to put them all in. Also, if you put them in too quickly, for some reason it doesn’t accept some of them. But just get them out of the coin return and try again. I think the hopper is pretty big so I don’t think you have to worry about crashing the machine or anything like that.
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Pennies. Virtually all vending machines do not accept them. Excepting the post office as it appears! Being of middle income, I consider them a waste of time. However, I load up a few in my pocket and try to spend them during the day’s transactions. Sometimes I dump off a dozen in the “take a penny” bins in convenience stores. I’ve even rolled them down the halls at work for amusement. Until a memo went out from the maintenance dept asking people to “be mindful of dropped coins as they are damaging our vacuums”.
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