From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: misc.consumers.frugal-living
Subject: Re: Coinstar - how to skip the coin counting fee
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 02:47:51 -0400
Message-ID: <00cpk1hncbhdasmvp879b4omm369a2ie3r@4ax.com>

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 04:29:14 GMT, larry <noone@home.com> wrote:


>If you have a retail store or restaurant nearby, ask them if
>they would like to swap bills for your change.  We had a
>Pancho's across the street and they told us to bring over
>change anytime.  They actually PAY their bank to get change
>and at $1 for $1 it was a deal, and they used lots of change
>every day.  We always rolled it, but we had to do that if we
>took it to the bank too, and put our acct number on each
>roll.  I know we had several times that we swapped over
>$200, and didn't come close to filling their coin mechanism
>that made customer change.

I was going to suggest that too.  I'll almost always buy change from
my customers.  My bank doesn't charge me for change but buying it from
customers saves me a trip to the bank.

I've watched the gnashing of teeth about rolling coins and just wonder
if anyone besides me knows how easy it is to roll coins at home with
the aid of a simple plastic coin counter?

The coin counter is either a bank of 4 clear plastic tubes (got mine
as free promotions for some magazine I subscribe to) or one plastic
assembly of 4 tubes.  Each tube is marked for capacity and has a
"full" slot.

Once the coins are separated by denomination, simply dump in a handful
of coins until the tube is full to the slot.   Shake the tube to empty
out extras above the slot.  Then push a coin roll down onto the stack,
turn the tube upside down, shake out the rolled coins and fold over
the end.  It took me longer to type this than it does to make a roll.

I buy the round rollers at the office supply store because they save
me a lot of time over the flattened ones the bank gives away.  They're
quite cheap, plus when I recycle coins in the restaurant, I save the
intact roller to reuse.

I dump all my loose pocket change into a bank on my dresser and use
the coinage to buy Christmas presents.  The bank holds several hundred
$$$ worth of coins.   Using the method above, I can sort and roll all
those in less than 30 minutes.  Fire up an audio book and the time
flies :-)

John