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Kris and her sister went “thrifting” this afternoon. I tagged along. While they shopped for cheap clothes and kitchenware, I hunted for personal finance books.
Thrift shops and used book stores are outstanding places to find self-help books of all sorts. If you arm yourself with a list of the titles you want, you can usually find three or four good books for about ten bucks. I made a fine haul today, including Po Bronson’s What Should I Do With My Life?, which several readers recommended during our discussion about choosing a career.
Speaking of which, last month Penelope Trunk at Brazen Careerist wrote that “do what you love” is bad career advice. “No job will make your life complete. It’s a myth mostly propagated by people who tell you to do what you love. Doing what you love will make you feel fulfilled. But you don’t need to get paid for it.”
In other topics, Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity doesn’t often write about the psychological aspects of money — he’s more of a nuts-and-bolts guy — but earlier this week he shared four ways to make it harder to spend money. He suggests that you:
- Keep track of everything you spend.
- Hide your credit cards.
- Tell somebody you’re spending (so they can keep you in check).
- Make it a game — when you want to buy something, try to buy it for less.
Finally, here’s a fun story from the Frankfort (Indiana) Times. Self-described penny pincher Paul Brant recently purchased a brand-new 2008 Dodge Ram pickup truck for $26,670. In spare change. Brant had been saving his change since 1994. This is a fun story, though it doesn’t quite add up — he’d have to save nearly $200/month in change to make this work.
I’m off to start that Po Bronson book. It looks interesting…
This article is about Spare Change Saturday, 12th January 2008 (by J.D. Roth)
January 12th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
I’d have to disagree with the ‘do what you love’ is bad career advice” comment.
If you do what you truly love, your work will shine and the people that work with you will appreciate your attitude, which only means good things for you career wise - whether you own your own business or are an employee.
January 12th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Speaking of spare change, has anyone else here been hassled by their bank for bringing in rolled coins? My bank gets all weird when I bring them in. They even ask me where I got them. Is it unusual to save spare change? Why are they so antsy?
January 12th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Unfortunately, he had to feed the Coinstar machine $28,500 to get $26,670 in currency, plus it took him 50 days and 50 hours to put all those coins in the machine.
January 12th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
I hate that Paul Brant story. Hate it. Wasting all that delicious interest to have his money sit around in jars. And then on top of that to waste what he saved on an “asset” guaranteed to lose a third of its value in the first year.
This is the very definition of “penny-wise, pound-foolish”.
January 12th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
@Andrea:
I bank at a credit union, and I occasionally take coins in if I’m going in to make another deposit. Most of the time they are cool about it, but one time the guy refused to do it and said it was against bank policy — that if I wanted to deposit coins I’d have to roll them and drive to the only branch in the area that was authorized to accept rolled coins (which would have been greatly out of my way since the branch is in a suburb).
This led me to throw a royal snit right there in the bank, because I was trying to deposit $3.60 in DIMES — I didn’t even have enough dimes to roll. We went round and round about it until he finally caved in and deposited my dimes since I was starting to yell and demand for a manager.
Well really! I have a line of credit and over $12K on deposit with that credit union and I can’t deposit $3.60 in DIMES?
The next time I took coins in (another small amount), I was all braced for a fight but the teller didn’t even blink an eye.
January 12th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
@Andrea: Do you bring them to a regular bank, or a credit union? I haven’t deposited any in a few months, but I certainly would like to continue rolling my coins. I hate to have them jangling all around in my wallet, so I dump them in a jar until I’m ready to roll. I hope this isn’t being phased out!
January 12th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
@Andrea - I’ve never had a problem bringing rolled coins into banks for exchange. I’ve done this with WaMu and Wells Fargo. Your bank should not have an issue with this. If the do, I’d suggest shopping around for another bank or at least just taking your coins elsewhere.
January 13th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Banks and even credit unions in my area have a fee for depositing or withdrawing rolled coin.
My credit union has a sign posted with all sorts of misc fees and there’s something like a 25 cent fee PER ROLL.
The store where I work loads up on coins every Friday - $500 in quarters, plus other denominations in smaller quantity - and we do pay a fee
January 13th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Another great tip is going to your local library to get books. At least in my neck of the woods their is an inter-library exchange so if a book is not at a current library, they will order it from another one and notify you when it arrives. Great way to read books without spending a penny.
And I agree with the tip above regarding spending cash to psychologically reprogram your spending habits. It is much harder to spend physical cash than a piece of plastic. When was the last time you paid for a large item in cash? I’m sure many have not and many credit card companies try to make you fear using cash. They mention that you don’t have a record or if you lose it you will never get it back. Well most major stores give you a receipt and unless you are buying on the black market, then you don’t have much too worry about.
January 13th, 2008 at 4:49 am
The pitfall of ‘doing what you love’ for a living is that you don’t always have the proper objectivity to handle the day to day interactions. I worked in a “dream” field for many years, and the number of folks who could not handle critical feedback was astounding. They thought that because they loved what they were doing, they knew best how it should be done, and would respond horribly to any requests to change their work. Not to mention that over time, you start to look at something you used to be passionate about as something that ‘has to get done’.
It’s much easier to remain professionally detached when you are merely interested in what you do.
January 13th, 2008 at 5:11 am
My bank, Commerce Bank in NJ, has a coin counting machine in each lobby. It’s free.
January 13th, 2008 at 5:22 am
>>Tell somebody you’re spending (so they can keep you in check).
This is a piece of advice that gets used a lot, and it always makes me feel a bit uneasy. I think allowing your friends and family to be the ‘bad guy’ is not a good idea, and for some could get really out of hand. Self-discipline gives you control, a feeling of success, and no danger of going back into your old ways if you part with the person who is keeping you in check.
I personally wouldn’t want to load that kind of responsibility on a friend or family member, i’m sure they wouldn’t enjoy questioning my decisions or slapping my wrist every time i get weak and try to buy 5 DVD sets in a week. I know it’s easier to be strict when you’re accountable to others, but really we should be making these changes for ourselves alone, so that’s the only person we should be accountable to.
January 13th, 2008 at 5:46 am
I save all my change, and deposited 281 dollars in rolled coins on Friday. I belong to a credit union, and they always accept my coins. I don’t roll pennies. One day I’ll take them to a machine, but now I have them in a beautiful glass piggy bank. $281 dollars was the amount I saved in one year. I’m not a big cash spender though, so depending on how much cash you spend, your saved change could be higher or lower.
January 13th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Wow, didn’t expect to see that. Frankfort is my hometown (I even delivered the Times for 8 years growing up). Funny enough my dad works at Mike Raisor, is also from the class of 56, and is also retired from Chrysler. I’ll have to ask him about this guy - I’m sure he knows him and will have heard about this (if he wasn’t there when it happend).
Hilarious.
Also it looks like he may have cheated a bit on the “Spare” part of spare change. From the article:
“After that, while he continued to stash away his quarters for the eventual purchase of his next vehicle, a couple tellers at The Farmers Bank notified him that they had plenty of rolled, gold dollars available, if he wanted to buy them. He did.”
I’m wondering if he picked up a few extra bucks per month that way. (buying them by the roll) Chrysler pays ridiculously well, so he’d probably have the money.
January 13th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Another item to add to “ways to make it harder to spend money” is to always pay with cash. When I am disciplined enough to do this I usually find that I am much more careful about spending.
For one thing it cuts out impulsive buying - because if I haven’t planned ahead I won’t have enough cash to buy what I impulsively want.
When I do plan ahead and have adequate cash I am usually much more careful about what I pick up to buy - I’m worried I will run out of money and be embarassed at the check out line. So I tend to buy less crap, especially at the grocery store.
And finally when you are at the register and are counting out those twenty dollar bills it hurts so much more than when you just swipe a plastic card and go. If $20 = 2 hours work (which it does after taxes), I’m thinking as I’m counting out my money 2 hours, 4 hours, 6 hours, 8 hours!!! I just bought 8 hours worth of groceries!!
January 13th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
I tried letting my spare change accumulate for a while, on the advice of a friend who did that. I figured out that the way he amassed enormous sums in change was that he never spent ANY change. He ALWAYS broke a bill for every purchase (and this was back in the days before debit cards, so mostly everybody paid by cash or check). OTOH, I made kind of a game out of paying for things in exact change, so I rarely had much to put in the jar at the end of the day. I think it would certainly be possible to accumulate a lot of money by always paying with a bill and then setting your change aside, but I’d rather have it sitting in my account earning interest than spend more than I need to just to get back change for my jar.
January 13th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
We’ve gone to cash for all our regular living expenses, and our method’s pretty easy to use.
We just get the cash out at the beginning of the month and put it into a labeled envelope. We have four envelopes: food, gas, pets, entertainment.
Empty envelope = no more spending.
January 13th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Not to restart the perennial flamewar about credit cards, but lately, I’ve found that I can control my spending better when I *only* use credit cards instead of cash. It’s about trackability - when I take out cash, it vanishes out of my account as a trickle over the month, and unless I painstakingly record every receipt (which never happens), I lose track of how it’s spent. My credit card, though, I can check up on every couple of days, see exactly how much I’ve spent during the month and, more importantly, on what - and then whack myself in the head when I see that I’ve blown $8 on lunch ten times over the past 30 days. This month, I bought a pricey new lens for my camera - and every time I look at my credit card history online, I see that huge charge from Amazon, and I feel a little foolish for it.
For me, at least, cash is the most dangerous way to spend money, and I’m saving much better since I started actively avoiding it.
January 13th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
@MJ-I do the same thing as your buddy. The cashier often asks if I have change, and I pretend to scrounge around and then say, no sorry. Plus..if I see change on the ground I always pick it up. If I had the change sitting around in my account, I’m sure I would spend it, so I don’t mind having a semi-emergency fund in my house. Plus..robbers aren’t going to cart out hundreds of dollars in change. They probably wouldn’t even take one roll. If I’m ever REALLY broke, I can always use change, but so far, I haven’t had to use it.
January 13th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
I use a regular bank, but I’ve been going there for 30-odd years and have a lot of money there. I don’t know why they hassle me about coins. The coins are rolled, added up and numbered! I do all the work for them!
January 14th, 2008 at 1:19 am
Link in your comment on blogger
opps can’t delete comment been trying to figure out how to post a url behind a link and it worked. If you want to know the code click through (or jd just delete)
January 14th, 2008 at 5:42 am
If your bank won’t accept rolled coins or charges you a fee to take them (I would “change” banks < grin >), you can always take them to a local grocery store. I’ve done this many times and struck up a friendship with the store manager as a result. He never refused because it made his life a little easier. Many times, it’s all in how you ask. Other times, you just have to ask at many different stores.
January 14th, 2008 at 6:21 am
coins are legal money and it strikes me as a tad illegal for banks to refuse to accept them or to charge a fee. Stores can not refuse cash and I would bet that any decent lawyer would be able to take care of that situation at a bank pretty quick- in fact, I bet just the threat of legal action would take care of it.
January 14th, 2008 at 7:34 am
@Andrea:
Others have also told me they’ve had problems with their bank not wanting to accept coins.
January 14th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Here in the midwest, its seems the banks don’t even blink when a customer brings in change — there’s a counting machine behind the teller counter and they dump in the change and add it to one’s account.
We save change all year and turn it in on New Year’s Eve day. My husband always “wins” because he saves all his change, while I keep my quarters in my wallet to use in transactions… I’ve also been keeping a separate bank of “street money” for a number of years; and “compete” with a friend who also saves street money. We think we can see a trend — street money is less available as a recession nears (like now!). Not that there’s ever a lot; in 2007 I only collected a little more than $7.00. BUT, I don’t go out of my way to look for it. The bank teller who counted my street money for me last last year said that one guy brings in large amounts every week after home football games (we live in a college town) from the tail-gating parking lots…
January 14th, 2008 at 10:08 am
My grocery store (Dominion) has a change counting machine. I just dump it there.
Re. the career advice from Penelope Trunk, I think she totally missed to boat on that one. Imagine spending 40 hours a week doing something you hate. Wow. What a waste of a life.
January 14th, 2008 at 10:30 am
“I hate that Paul Brant story. Hate it. Wasting all that delicious interest to have his money sit around in jars. And then on top of that to waste what he saved on an “asset” guaranteed to lose a third of its value in the first year.
This is the very definition of “penny-wise, pound-foolish”.”
I thought the exact same thing while reading it. All those years of nickel and diming to save and he throws it away in one fell swoop. If he’d bought a one-year-old car and deposited the change into a savings account instead of paying to have the coins counted at the end, it would’ve been the equivalent of several years of coin hoarding. Not to mention that a Dodge pickup is going to cost more to run and repair than a better vehicle as well.
The moral here should be that taking care of the little things only works if you use the same rigor to take care of the big things.
January 14th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Ron #4 and Aleks #27, right on. I went to http://www.edmunds.com and optioned up a 2008 Dodge Ram with a crew cab and the usual add ons for $26482 True Market Value. Then there is a $5000 rebate that brings it down to $21500. If you were also armed with the knowledge that the full-size market has a lot of new, stiff, heavily-rebated competition, and the Dodge Ram is an older design with a re-design coming out next year, the actual transaction cost should have been a lot lower. Why bother. Assuming he actually does need a full-size pick-up, he’s better off letting someone else take the depreciation since his ego clearly isn’t wrapped up into having something brand new. Sigh, I’m sure the dealer was more than happy to cut the price close to their invoice and walk away with the rebate.
January 14th, 2008 at 11:36 am
My husband and I use cash as much as possible and throw all the change into the jar at the end of the day. I also pick up all change I find on the ground (found $0.14 yesterday!) At the end of every month, we roll it and take it to our bank (no fees or problems at my bank). We then transfer it to our high-yield savings account (on top of our regular, weekly transfers). Once we’ve met our savings goal, I’ll use it to ’snowflake’ debt. I agree, it seems crazy to just let it sit in the jar for an indefinite time period…
January 14th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
One thing that really helped me get my loose change under control was a simple, cheap coin sorter I picked up at a drugstore. Nothing fancy, but an all-in-one unit that keeps the loose change together and makes it easy to slide the coins into the wrappers. None of the banks around here (that I’m aware of at any rate) have no-fee coin counters available to the customers so the coin sorter really helps.
January 14th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I know some people may see putting spare change in a piggy bank as wasted interest, but it’s a mind-hack that helps some people.
I used to put my spare change in a 4 foot tall crayon shaped bank. I cashed it in once for $75. Then I started over again, and cashed it in when I got married. It was over $400 in honeymoon money!
I used the Coinstar machine at the grocery store, so unfortunately they charged a 4% surcharge, but when I got the receipt and brought it to the cashier he was like “Wow! I’ve never seen one this big.”
Maybe I could have invested it better, but it was also nice to just have some extra cash for the honeymoon. Plus it was a fun surprise, because I didn’t know exactly how much was in there. I had guessed about $200.
I pretty much don’t use cash at all anymore, so I don’t use the bank.
January 15th, 2008 at 10:42 am
I also disagree with the “‘do what you love’ is bad career advice” thing. I took a fairly big pay cut to pursue my dream job. I’ve had to make sacrifices and change my entire lifestyle, but it’s absolutely worth it. When there’s a will, there’s a way, and the first commenter is right - when you are happy with your life things just fall into place. Everything changes. Eventually I will be making more money as I move up the ladder, but for now I’m not sweating it.
January 15th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Agree with an earlier commenter that you can always get books at a library for free, but you do have to return them. Sometimes, I like to get books that I will want to reference over and over. Or that I think I want to hand off to friends and family to have them benefit as well.
So there are times that it is worth buying a book. Especially when you’re paying pennies on the dollar for it at a used book store. Speaking of which… There is always half.com if you just prefer to order online. Plenty of used books and some for great prices.
January 15th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Penelope Trunk’s career advice tends to be the exact wrong thing, so whatever she says, do the opposite.
They have great fun over on Dealbreaker.com deconstructing her terrible advice, from (yes these are things she recommends) dress sexy in the office, bury sexual harassment lawsuits, and don’t try hard.
January 16th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I think that the “do what you love (for a living)” advice and the advice not to follow that advice are both parts of the same bad paradigm which assumes that the financing scheme for one’s life, one’s daily activities, and one’s contributions to society must all come in the same package.
I’ve determined that, for me, they don’t. My current strategy — determine what I want my activities to be, set up or find paying work that enables me to do those activities WHETHER OR NOT THOSE ACTIVITIES ARE WHAT I’M ACTUALLY BEING PAID FOR. My contributions to the world are a wild card — sometimes for pay, sometimes volunteer, sometimes as personal projects outside of the “industry” associated with that work.
Concrete example: I used to be a personal trainer. I now train people I meet for free. I currently work in animal welfare, but I’ve determined that having more of my own animals in a larger home I hope to have someday will satisfy the animal need. I’m working on getting into business ventures that I don’t have to do full-time in an office but that I can do from within the life I want (in the big house with the animals.)
January 16th, 2008 at 11:49 am
The story about the idiot [sorry there is no other term for it] who saved all those coins, and let all the wealth slip away… If he had been putting those coins even into a BASIC savings account… GAH! Let alone the fact that he could have been trading those in for CDs and getting greater value… The fact that he wasted all the money using COIN STAR (i hate that SO much. I had never heard of a bank being pissy about it before reading these comments, tell you true)…
As to the “doing what you love” debate: My grandfather had a saying, “You can do two things for work: One is for money to do the things you want, and the other is to do the things you want, but you probably won’t have much money.”