I never buy anything with cash. For the last 5 years, I have tried to make all of my purchases using a credit card or debit card. This requires me to enter the transactions into my personal finance software (I use Quicken). If a transaction is in Quicken, I can easily run reports to view where I’m spending my money.
Since I never use cash, it does me no good to have it. If cash is on me it gets wasted on something like:
- vending machine candy
- gas station food
- girl scout cookies
- etc etc etc
About three years ago, I emptied a huge “Orange Juice” bottle. The orange juice bottle sits in my closet and every day when I get I home, I dump any spare change into it. Now, when I say spare change, I’m talking about any literal change or dollar bills that happen to be laying in my pockets. Sometime I drop ten-dollar and twenty-dollar bills, but typically its just singles or change.
Last month I decided to empty it and take it to the bank. I dropped the change in an automatic change-counter and deposited the bills. It worked out to almost $300.00. Now that isn’t a ton of money but it was a nice surprise. I didn’t work for it; It’s like reaching into your pocket and finding $300.00.
You Should Try It
This is an easy task. Just go out and purchase a nice piggy bank. If you don’t want to purchase a piggy bank, do like I did and empty a big orange juice (Sunny Delight) bottle. I know a lot of people like to have cash on hand but the truth is: you don’t NEED cash. It is almost an unspoken rule that businesses must accept credit cards (or debit cards) and even if they don’t, you always have an ATM near by.
I just started using Mint.com after reading about it on techcrunch… I think its got a one up on Quicken and I love the fact that its web based so I don’t have to keep up with backups or be stuck with accessing it from only one PC. Plus its free! I usually save my change the same way you do but I tend to cash it in sooner
Mint.com and Wesabe.com — that’s a whole other post… I was hyped to use both of them. But, after I started using it (simultaneously with quicken), I noticed that I couldn’t add transactions myself…
Yeah, it’s cool that it will automatically download my transactions, but what about the transactions that haven’t cleared yet?
So, my mint.com balance might say $1,000. But, if I wrote a check for $400 yesterday… it wouldn’t be posted on my account.
Mint.com would let me assume that I could spend $1,000. When, in reality, I only had $600.
So, its really good at looking “backwards” but until they allow me to enter transactions, I’ll stick with Quicken.
$300 is a lot of money….I hope you did something really fun with it, or used it to take Amy somewhere really really nice. I think the whole cash issue is personal. I know you like all those graphs and stuff that shows you what categories you spend your money on, but Cash actually keeps me MORE accountable than my debit card. I have little envelopes in my purse for Groceries, Restaurant/Entertainment, and Disposable. This way, all of the money in my bank account is for either bills or savings. When I’m out of, say, disposable money, I know that I’m not “allowed” to use my debit card to purchase something I want, not need. I do collect change and small bills though. I use it for “spending money” when we go on vacation. One time I saved $500 in change alone.