Thank god retail banking is back. It used to be impossible to return carefully saved piles of change for crisp dollar bills. Back when we taught school, we learned this lesson the hard way when we tried to return nearly 75 pounds of change that the children had saved up over the course of a year only to find that we needed to roll all of it into paper sleeves before the Chase Bank would even look at us. It took the children over a week (and cancelled lesson plans) to wrap up all the change.
Now, Commerce Bank is the new saviour of change. You can bring in your piles of change - unsorted - to ANY BRANCH and pour it into their PENNY ARCADE. The Arcade will give you a receipt which you take to the counter for the FULL VALUE of your change. No percentage, commission or other extortionary terms are taken out (see many locations).
That's our New Year's haul at top, $27.43 (not including quarters, which we use regularly). MGR
PS. See Comments: Commerce Bank changed Carla's life too.... (forgot to mention)
Like I said in an earlier post, Commerce Bank changed our change-cluttered lives. Go CB!
I seperate my change having quarters in one container--for laundry of course. And in a jar all other spare change. I try to not use my change all day, and instead break bills--and put that change end of day into the jar. When I cash in my change jar, even getting up to $40, I put that into savings that I try not to touch.
are there self-serve change machines still around in supermarket vestibules? i used to dump my change into one at union square.
My husband and I recently cleaned out our change collection from the last couple of years at a Commerce Bank... and it came out to over $700! A little pocket change every day adds up... but we still can't afford the new sofa I want....
In this *great* book I have, The Expert's Guide to 100 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do, Suze Orman wrote the short thing about how to save money. It basically comes down to never spending your change, ending up saving $20-$50/month, and putting that money into a Roth IRA. Very smart, short advice.
There are also the Coin-Star machines in New Jersey, at local supermarkets.
Yeah I'm in Jersey City. Coinstar takes out a fee.
I lug my change to Commerce instead. Every penny counts right.