One of the easiest ways I find to save money and for it to not be a noticeable change in finances, is to save the humble £2 coin.
As someone who works in both cash and card, it can often take a while for £2 coins to appear, but they soon add up to quite a substantial amount especially if you save over time. Each year I start with an empty pot, having paid my £2 coin stash into a savings account, and it is surprising how quickly the savings grow!
The challenge rules are very simple:
– all £2 coins must be saved (unless unavoidable)
– when the tin reaches £100, the £2 coins are paid into a savings account
The reason that I don’t leave it all year before paying in the coins is that I’m a bit uncomfortable about having big sums of money sitting in our house, and also I want to earn a bit of interest on the savings, as it all adds up!
My aim this year is to save £300 in £2 coins. At the half way point, I’ve had £116’s worth, so I’m behind target. But, the best thing about it is that I don’t notice it. A coin here or there into the pot doesn’t make a lot of difference, but it adds up over the year. This would work well with the €2 coin or the $5 note.
Do you do this? How does your system work? I would love to hear about it in the comments below!
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I do this! It’s mostly easy except, for example, when you pay for some small item with a £10 note and get four £2 in your change! Suddenly you have no money left 🙂
Yes! That’s annoying when that happens – what do you do then? I try to save them 🙂
I’m doing this challenge too! I’m so saving 50p coins in addition to £2 coins as I find I don’t get enough £2 coins to save! I think I’ve saved about £30 so far but I’ve only joined the challenge at the beginning of May this year so I’m quite happy with what I’ve saved so far 🙂
£2 coins plus 50ps will add up fast in no time! 🙂
I just save all my loose schrapnel, anything smaller than 50p. At the end of the day/week I chuck it in my jar. When the jar is full I normally have about £50 in there. Although my new jar is 3 times bigger than my old one!
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment 🙂 Do you pay it all in once your jar is full? How long does it take you to fill?
All of our spare change (USD) gets split between each of my kid’s piggy banks. It really does add up over time!
Do you do anything with the change in the piggy banks after a while? Or does it get spent? 🙂
I’ve heard of people doing this with $5 bills (since I am in the US). I think it’s a great idea. For me, I don’t use cash that often, so it would take a long time to accrue anything significant.
Fair enough – do you do your budget purely using cards?
I should do the same! It can be a pretty funny thing to do 🙂
I wish we had $2 coins! That sounds great!
Thanks for stopping by – love your blog! The nearest thing for you is the $5 note I think, but not quite the same thing.
I usually save all my loose change every couple of days I’ll empty my purse and throw my twenties, tens, fives and coppers in a pot. Going forward I think I need to start saving £2 coins. I’ve started throwing my loose change in at the self serve tills lately instead of saving.
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this is cool. i have seen this on moneysavingexpert as a challenge that many people are doing. an alternative and easy way to save change money is what my friend did back in the day when Abbey National were around. they had a ‘save the change’ feature on their debit card e.g. you pay £4.50 for something and it would round up to £5 by saving the change of 50p into a linked savings account. that is actually how my friend saved towards her first house deposit! Anyway, I recently discovered Lloyds Bank are now offering one of these systems. cool, but possibly not worth switching accounts just to get that feature? unless you’re desperate to save in many ways I s’pose