Penny Jars v Spending Loose Change

Free money?

"It's amazing how quickly it builds up."

How often have you heard that phrase?  It'll be after someone tells you that they throw all their loose change in an old whiskey bottle, or that they save all the 20p coins they get.

"By the end of the month, there's usually fifty quid in there!"  And that's free money, right?  It just appeared out of nowhere.  We can blow that on something frivolous, because spending the penny jar doesn't really count as spending.

I used to do that, but then I realised I was fooling myself.  This isn't money I've saved, it's money I've taken out of my bank account unnecessarily.  I've been to the ATM and drawn out £50 that was previously earning interest, when there was already £50 sitting in a jar at home.  Then I'd go and blow that money as if it were an unexpected bonus rather than something that should have been part of my regular budget.

So now I spend my small change whenever I can and as a result withdraw less from the bank.

But doesn't it annoy the staff?

Depends how you do it.  If you wait until all your groceries are through the till, then start counting out £27 in pennies, yes the staff will get irritated, as will other customers.  But then if you've got that much, you're still running a penny jar; it's just being kept in your pocket instead of in a jar at home.

If you pay the odd pennies, or a couple of pounds in loose shrapnel every time you buy something with cash, then you'll generally get one of two reactions: gratitude or confusion.

Gratitude is the most common.  Most places start the day with a certain amount of change in the till.  Then, as everybody pays with a £20 note, the supply of change dwindles.  Eventually they end up having to give people a big handful of 5p coins because they've run out of 10p and 20p coins.  Restocking their float is actually very helpful to them.  You'll very rarely see the coin sections of a till overflowing, but you'll often see them empty.

Here's a top tip from my years of working in bars.  You'll get served a lot faster in a busy pub holding a couple of fivers and and a handful of change than you will waving a £20 note around.  There are never enough fivers in the world and all the coins disappear into the fruit machines.  We need to serve you first so that we have enough change for the guy buying a bag of crisps with a £20 note.

Then there's the confusion.  Some people just don't understand why you've given them the extra coins.  The bill comes to 63p.  I hand over a pound coin and 13p in change.  They look confused: "no, it's only 63p, you've given me too much".  "That's so you can give me 50p change."  They look blank, but type it in to the till anyway.  Ching change due: £0.50.  "Wow, how did you do that?".  As Arthur C Clarke said, to those who do not possess it, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.  Sadly, some people don't possess elementary arithmetic.  Just tell them it's a magic trick and walk away.