What do you do with extra change?  Do you plan your money out and spend that pocket change or do you drop it into a jar at the end of the night/week?

This is something I’ve been wrestling with for a while, while I would like to use all my change and have tried I always find loose coins somewhere or I have soo much change in my purse that it weighs a ton.  So we’ve decided to feed the pigs our change.  LOL and here’s how:

See that huge blue pig?  Well that “little” piggy wants to help buy a car for Shawn or something like that.  That is his piggy bank (it’s nearly bigger than the dog) when he gets money (milks the grandparents for their change) or finds money  (i.e. grabs it out of the coin return before I get it) he puts it in the pig and when the pig gets heavy mommy puts the money into his ING account.  Someday that money will help him purchase a car, an engagement ring or a house who knows.

The big beer bottle is our giftcard fund.  At the end of the day/week when we have pocket change that’s where it gets dumped.  When that gets full we head to the coinstar machine and exchange for a giftcard without any fees.  They have giftcards for Amazon and Lowes so depending on where we are in our lives we get a card to buy something we need/want that we would normally go without.

That is what we’ve been working with for months but another little piggy showed up last week.  See the little piggy all dressed up for winter, isn’t he cute?  I got him for .99 at Target on clearance.  Well that little piggy wants to go on vacation!!!  We currently can’t afford to save money for a vacation there are just too many other things that need to be done first but we can put a few coins a day in this pig and not really affect our bottom line.  Someday that little piggy will get to go on vacation it won’t be anytime soon but it gives us a goal and when I was at the store the other day we decided to drink water instead of soda and added that $1 to the pig.  This little guy won’t get fed to often but found money will be added to him so the 61 cents I found while cleaning yesterday went in and for quarter I found coming home from the bus stop this morning went in there too.  As I said that poor pig isn’t going anywhere soon to someday.  Hey a girl can dream right.

So do you have a piggy with high hopes??  What do you do with your change spend it all, save it all, feed the pigs??  I’d love to hear your take on change savings.