saving loose change (merged)

scheming_gypsy

quoia wrote:

So you easily turned £300 into £272.50 without really a second thought.

You appear to have money to burn and I can't quite see the point of you wasting your time on a site like MSE looking for a bargain where you might save a few pounds, when you haven't got time to count a few coins.

In order to earn the £27.50 you so rapidly discarded, assuming you pay taxes and NI at the normal rate, you'd have to gross about £40. (Nearer £50 if you are a higher rate tax payer)

That's like getting paid £20 to £30 an hour for the time it would take you to do it all through a bank.

The last time I did this was after a month long charity collection at my local pub.
I collected the appropriate bags from the first bank I found myself near to (within a minute or so) without making a special journey.
Took under 5 minutes to obtain as many as I needed.
It was a 2 gallon bucket that was almost full to the brim but it only took an hour and a half to sort and bag up.
£493 and 72 pence if I remember correctly - nothing over a 20p piece.

I knew that I'd be taking it to my bank, a branch of NatWest, but waited until I had some cheques to pay in. Get these fairly frequently from send away Try Me Free & Money back offers or similar so I didn't have to make a special journey just for the coins.

Branch had no problems taking them and the whole deposit took about 10 minutes. When I told them what I needed to deposit they even opened up another counter position so that it would not inconvenience others.
Overall less than 2 hours of my time to bank almost £500 in coins.
Would still have taken me an hour or more of my time to use the machine at ASDA and they'd have charged me almost £40 for the priviledge.

Only the other day in ASDA, whilst I was being served by customer services, I witnessed 2 individuals spend about 15 minutes feeding the CoinStar a quantity of coins that eventually totalled UNDER £80. It rejected quite a few and these had to be put in the hopper a 2nd time and then 3rd time etc..etc.. until most had been consumed. At the end they still had a few coins that it had no intention of accepting.

and your point is caller?

It takes a hell of a lot longer to count the money. I've done it many times before and it takes a fair few hours to seperate them and count and bag them.
You get cheques regularly? well done cos i don't so i'd have had to make a special trip to the bank like i said.

I didn't know how much money was in the bottle to start with so it wasn't a great hardship to lose 20 odd quid that i didn't have in the first place.. In reality it cost me a bout 2p a day over the 3 years it took to save the money..

Suzz_2

Some interesting and valid points here on both sides.

Personally I think Asdas are ripping people off - you have to look at the leaflet carefully to find out there's a charge. They could have it for free or a much smaller charge, being as it pays out in vouchers.

What I don't understand is how people accumulate so many coins ?
I spend mine. If I buy a drink for say £1.04, I hand over just that. I never have more than a about a dozen coins in my purse.

Tom_Jones

Suzz wrote:

Some interesting and valid points here on both sides.

Personally I think Asdas are ripping people off - you have to look at the leaflet carefully to find out there's a charge. They could have it for free or a much smaller charge, being as it pays out in vouchers.

What I don't understand is how people accumulate so many coins ?
I spend mine. If I buy a drink for say £1.04, I hand over just that. I never have more than a about a dozen coins in my purse.

It's NOT Asda's that are 'ripping' people off but the people who site the machines at such supermarkets. Asda's probably only get a nominal ground rent for the siting of the machine

Magentasue

I hardly use cash at all on an everday basis. When the coins mount up, I keep a few silver coins for parking, a couple of pound coins and put the rest in a coin pot. Haven't decided what it's going to be used for but it won't be going to Asda!

Bogof_Babe

Shop at your local Co-op, Spar or whatever mid-week - they don't mind taking change, and at least you have the groceries to show for it.

We find newspapers are another good way of getting rid of up to about 25p in 2p and 1p coins. If you pay the rest in silver they don't raise eyebrows.

Agree with the poster who said it's about time these were phased out, especially the 2p's as they are so bulky. No doubt this would cause a ripple of inflation though.:rolleyes:

ReductionQueen

Some of the posts in this thread had to make me check that I was still on MONEY SAVING EXPERT.COM. WHY would anybody WANT to waste 7.5% of CASH when they could sit in front of the telly one evening and count it, put it in bags and take it to the bank. Banks HAVE to take ALL money that's legal tender, even exchange old notes for new ones.

Has none of the people posting how good these machines are, and that the bank's don't like small change, been behind somebody depositing a shop's takings of £500 in change? What else would shop keepers DO with small coins other than put them in a bank account?

How can anybody who signs up to a website called MoneysavingExpert.com say that they DON'T MIND paying 7.5% of thier hard earned cash for just having it counted? If any bank did that, there would be an uproar! I just don't get it........

sunflower_2

but for some people - it costs them to go to the bank

e.g. bus fares or parking & fuel

so they may be actually saving money by using the machine

also - people hav different ways in which they like to save/cut spending so we cant really comment on what people do with their money

one person may scrimp and save all week but then choose to have a good night out on a weekend
does the fact that they spend money on alcohol mean they cant call themselves a money saver ???

and are money saving expert members not allowed to purchase a flash car when a cheaper one would do the job just as good?

Magentasue

Yes,I know,Sunflower. You're right, of course, but ... seven and a half percent is what you might pay to BORROW money, not to have it counted!

chudies

hi
you might want to buy this:

http://www.robertdyas.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10051&storeId=10001&productId=45251&langId=-1&parent_category_rn=11651

but only if you collect lots of coins!

cheers

ReductionQueen

sunflower wrote:

but for some people - it costs them to go to the bank

e.g. bus fares or parking & fuel

so they may be actually saving money by using the machine

I find it hard to believe that you could spend say £7.50 on bus fares, also that anybody who saves small change up never passes a bank. This also seems to highlight the fact that it's the better off end of society that seem to 'choose' options like this.

also - people hav different ways in which they like to save/cut spending so we cant really comment on what people do with their money :

True, but this is hardly a difficult one not to do, and not cutting an essential item. If some of us will go out of thier way to swap credit card balances over every few months to avoid interest, avoiding these machines is a no-brainer.

one person may scrimp and save all week but then choose to have a good night out on a weekend does the fact that they spend money on alcohol mean they cant call themselves a money saver ???

I don't think that using a money counting machine is an example of scrimping and saving!

and are money saving expert members not allowed to purchase a flash car when a cheaper one would do the job just as good?

This is hardly the same thing, but with the exception of 'not allowed' this is actually true...........