Time for a change

I picked up a few pennies as I walked down the hall this evening and I thought of my change jar. It's actually a tin, and whenever I have change in my pockets I'll dump it in there. It tends to accumulate, and periodically I'll take it somewhere to empty it. So with the change jar on my mind, after I dropped those two new pennies in I decided to count it. Why? Well, why not?

So I spread everything out on my coffee table, turned on the Red Sox game, and proceeded to sort. It took a while (from the 6th to the top of the 9th inning), but I got it done.


The grand total: $149.72

This immediately raises two questions:

1. How do I turn it into real money?
2. What do I do with the real money?

1. There's a few options here. I could check with one of the banks in town (there are two) to see if they have a coin counter, thus saving me the hassle of sorting everything again. It doesn't seem likely they'd let me do that since I haven't an account at either institution (they offer 0.25% interest on a savings account; do you blame me?). The other option is the Coinstar machine in the local grocery store. It's easy and fast, and I can apply it toward my groceries (like I ever buy them), but they take 8.9 cents of every dollar. It's true I'd still have $136.39, but I can think of better uses for the other $13+ than just giving it to a machine. Coinstar does have an option for free coin exchange if I turn it into a gift certificate, but I'm not sure I want that much money reserved for a specific store. So the answer to this question is still up in the air.

2. $149.72 is a lot of money, and I have no idea what it will be spent on. Maybe I'll post a follow up to let you know.