The cost of groceries
For a few years, I’ve collected loose change of mine, and when it gets to critical mass, it’s time to take the change in.
I used to take pleasure in rolling my coins, counting them out, and of course, finding pleasant surprises such as wheat pennies or foreign change.
That’s before the evil invention of the coin counter. One year, I got lazy and took my change to a bank. For a fee, they’d use their machine and presto, no more coin rolling.
Then coin machines popped up in stores. How easy is that? Throw your coins in, try to put the rejected coins back in, and watch the counter neatly tally your coins, even dividing them into pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half-dollars and dollars.
I never put half-dollars or dollar pieces in there. I like them too much when I get them randomly in my change. I also tend to hang onto new quarters and nickels, though I’ll easily spend a new quarter in a pinch.
Yesterday, I cashed in what had to be my biggest load of coins ever. Maybe because over the last year and a half, I haven’t had to pilfer from my coin collection to buy so much crap. Like pops or candy from the vending machine, or even for lunch. And because I haven’t been so poor.
I use an old margarine tub — a small one. Once it became close to full, it was very heavy. And because I was lazy, I continued to toss more coins in, to the point where they’d sometimes fall off.
I cashed them in yesterday (after having lazily put them in a bag for almost a week) and enjoyed watching the machine do my work for me.
The machine takes a fee, more than what I was accustomed to in Michigan. Still, I got $56, which was enough to pay for a load of groceries for a 4th of July meal, and with $8.16 leftover. Which was a good thing, because I’d forgotten my wallet. Worked out well. Go grocery shopping, and get change back. Which I immediately put back into the tub to start again.
We have various containers of change sitting about the house, probably at least thirty to forty dollars worth, but I can’t bring myself to use one of those change machines to sort and count it. I know the fee is not high, but I can’t bring myself to pay a fee for a machine to count pennies. It’s stupid–I am profligate with my money in other respects–but it just seems ridiculous to me to charge a fee for this service.
And it pisses me off that most banks won’t accept margarine containers of change anymore. Or else they charge you a fee, too, for counting it. Now that gets me angry. It’s a bank! Counting money is what they do! You’re telling me they don’t make enough money charging poor people $25.00 overdraft and bounced check fees, so now they have to charge for bringing in large amounts of change, too? Urrgggh, that makes me mad.
Just this morning I was thinking that I ought to cash in our spare change and claim it as my personal coffee fund. But like Matt, I can’t bring myself to use a machine that takes about ten percent of what I put in.
I used to spend hours at my mom’s kitchen table rolling pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, always given a cut of the total (pretty high, as I recall, maybe as much as 50%). Those were happy times. Brainless coin rolling. Do I have time for that now? No way! Maybe Elliot will do it for me one day, but for now he can’t count that high and he still likes to put coins (and rocks, and paper clips) in his mouth.
It is pretty ridiculous to charge a fee. However, the machines are offering things like gift certificates to Amazon, where you don’t pay the fee. I can easily envision spending all that money on books, but I don’t have it in my hand. I weighed the thought for a minute and decided I wanted the money now. That, and I’d forgotten my wallet.
And Matt, you’re right about banks. They like to charge you for everything. ATM fees are my favorite. Get you with your bank and the other bank. And my bank charges me a fee to use a teller. Last time I checked, that’s their damned job! Luckily, I’m one of those people who doesn’t ever need to use a teller, but before I got my ATM card, I needed to deposit my paycheck, and they *charged* me to do it. $5. It wasn’t my fault that it takes two weeks to send you an ATM/debit card when you open a new account. What was I supposed to do? I moved across the country.
Anyway, Dawn, what you say reminds me that the last time I rolled coins, I think I did enlist the help of my stepbrother. I didn’t give him a cut, though. I think I just sold it to him as being fun. Heh heh.
Someone clearly has red her TOM SAWYER (I’m thinking of the white washing the fence scene early in the book). Who says classics don’t teach life survival techniques?