Every couple of months our wallets wear out due to the stress of bulging coins on the soft leather. Often the cost of replacing a wallet varies from $10 to $25. We're wondering about ways to optimize this expense. One possible solution is to increase the life of the wallet. Another one is to do away with the use of a wallet! Since we need a wallet, we chose to go with the former one :).On close scrutiny we found that pennies dominated the coins' section of our wallet. So getting rid of the pennies would leave the wallet flatter thus extending its life. On that note here are some cool ways of getting the pennies out of our way:
Empty Them In A Money Jar
We can empty the coins from our wallet into a money jar every couple of days. Once the money jar is full, or every now and then, we can roll the coins and deposit them at a bank.
If we are short of time, we can take our money jar to a coin counting machine (available in super markets) and convert it to cash during a weekend grocery trip. Most coin counting machines charge a fee for their services. Another neat way is to pass the coins to our kids as a part of their weekly allowance.
The Four Penny Hack
If we don't want to lug the pennies around, the four penny hack can save us. However, we've to make sure that we have at least four pennies in our wallet. That will insure that we get back silver coins in change, rather than more pennies.
Let's say our bill at the drive-through is $3.86. If we hand the cashier a five-dollar bill and a penny, and we'll get a nickel, a dime and a dollar bill in change. On the other hand, if our bill is $2.29, and we offer the fiver and four pennies, we'll get back two dollar bills and three quarters. Great!
Convert Them Into Souvenirs
Most tourist spots have penny pressing machines. So if we want to get an image of the place we are visiting, for a couple of quarters and a penny, we can hand-crank the image on the copper penny. This is a nice way to get inexpensive souvenirs. And kids love them too :). For those of us worried about currency-defacing laws, penny pressing is legal in the U.S.
Other Creative Uses of Pennies
If we're creative, we can find beautiful uses for pennies and make some money too. For example, Danny and Jeff Haber created a portrait of Abraham Lincoln with about 2400 pennies. And then they went on to make another couple of them. Their first one is in their home, the second masterpiece was acquired by the Ripley's museum for $500 and they donated the third one to New Rochelle High School.
And there's more. USPS postage stamp machines accept pennies. So once in a while we can empty pennies into these machines for stamps. Now that's a nice hack if only netizens like us could remember what stamps are used for ..........
We look forward towards hearing about your penny hacks. Do drop a line :).
Image Source(s): iStockPhoto
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