Turns out one of our local grocery stores has self-serve checkouts where you just toss the coin part of your payment into a little bin, rather than having to feed the coins in. So I've been having fun gathering up all the loose change from here and there around the house, and using it to buy stuff.
Just a little fun thing to do - a little amusing distraction- absolutely nothing to do with my being unemployed for the last five months and our current financial situation. Really!
Today I (well actually "we" but JTM was too mortified to actually participate) thought it would be a bit of a lark to take the contents of the giant penny jar, dump it into a freezer bag and take it to the store to and use buy a turkey for Easter (only .99/pound - one per customer!). So there I was, as discreetly as possible, reaching into my very heavy purse for handful after handful of pennies (and other copper-coloured currency from many lands) to slip surreptitiously into the bin. For what seemed like hours.
After a while the cashier lady who tends to the self-serve lanes decided to get in there with me, saying encouraging things and helping shovel the rejects back into the hopper. Which of course, didn't draw any extra attention to what I was doing at all....
Then about halfway into the $70 transaction, in which I had deposited about $15 in paper money and the rest mostly in pennies, the machine gave a little squeal and started flashing some rather obscene error codes.
A manager was called, the various parts of the machine were opened, and inspected - very similar to the process of clearing a paper jam from the photocopier. A big fuss was made. (Oh God, nothing to see here, people. Really. Just move along now. You too, sir. I mean it!)
Once the machine was all cleared up and ready to go again, I'd lost my enthusiasm for the whole venture and just paid the rest with my debit card.
This battle may be over, but the war is not won. I may have set my sights a little high today trying to score a large piece of meat with my ghetto moneybag, but I am determined to keep spending those pennies, one bottle of pop or can of corn at a time, until they're gone. And until they are, just call me Ms. Moneybags.
I love this post! And I am a big fan of getting rid of that change. I think it helps me keep my body weight down, too, whether it's from lugging the pennies or just one of those Feng Shui things. BRAVO! I have kept my changed down by paying for my morning coffee with it. I take out my loonie, then pay the rest in change. I try to only give them 10 pennies a day so that they don't spit in my coffee. The key is to have it at the ready before you get to the register.
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