Have you noticed that even BANKS are charging a “surcharge” to accept large quantities of change these days? (It’s not the ONLY way they are charging you to accept your money.) The “counting” machine kiosks in stores charge a hefty percentage as well.

As a result, I’ve not done much with my big basket of change. It just sits there and grows. I have made an effort to use the change that floats around in the bottom of my purse as I go, so less change is going in… but nothing is really happening to convert the change I have to the bills I need because I hate handing a cashier an overflow of change. It upsets the checker, it slows down the line, and it makes me look pathetic. There I said it.

But, I had a new idea… a way to use the change without putting a store employee to any test of patience and without losing a percentage of my perfectly good money to an automated system.

I’m going to be taking change when I go to the grocery store or any other place I shop that offers a self-checkout aisle. Those machines not only accept the change, they count it and don’t take a portion of it for the trouble. SCORE.

I may not whittle down the basket quickly, but I’m going to be doing it… just as soon as I decide for sure whether or not I’ll be breaking the law by using the old copper pennies as a way to cover my kitchen cabinets (any non-copper pennies will be fed into the machine). 🙂