The worst thing is some of my friends here in Taiwan actually throw the 1NT coins (about 4c Australian) away on the street because they consider them so annoying! Another friend and I just about race to pick them up. Actually, what happens is that because there are such coins, things don’t get rounded off to the nearest 5NT like they do in Australia since it got rid of the 1c and 2c coins. So, my friends get 11NT change, throw away the 1NT, buy something later for 11NT, but only have 2 x 10NT, get 9NT change, and throw away 4NT. So, they’ve actually ended up paying 16NT for something that was 11NT, a mark-up of almost 50%! It may seem trivial, but they’re also the same friends who have all sorts of problems with consumer debt and live pay to pay.

Likewise, some people throw receipts away here. Receipts have lottery numbers (to encourage people to demand receipts so the government can collect tax), and the biggest prize is about 80,000 AUD, which is nothing to be sneezed at, but people throw them away still!

http://www.daveramsey.com/etc/cms/index.cfm?intContentID=3461

… all I am suggesting that you do is take the loose change from your pockets at the end of each day and throw them into a jar.

Since this is how I ’save’ my parking money – with my ‘gold’ coins ($1 and $2 in Aus) – and silver coins for my kids tram money, I’m not suggesting anything that I wouldn’t do myself

I have a rough idea of how much I will need every month for my living expenses. I have mini-budgets (e.g. food, entertainment, etc.) within my budget. At the start of the month, I withdraw all the money for that month. Then, I try really, really hard not to withdraw anything else for the rest of the month.

In this way, I don’t have a lot of change left over because I don’t take it out of my account to begin with. If you don’t take it out of the account to begin with, then you can’t spend it. That’s my philosophy.

For me, I do actually manage to avoid spending almost any of the found money I come into. If it comes in directly as cash, then I put it aside for next month and don’t withdraw as much money next month.

Just like you Adrian I automatically empty my 1$ and 2$ coins into two Money boxes. Probably in the last 2 years I have saved over $1500 in coins only.

However saving does not make you rich. Not doing anything with your money is just as bad as not saving in my opinion. Putting money in the bank is no longer safe, inflation eats up and interest rates fluctuation means literally zero return after tax.

Particularly if you don’t have nearly as much of a desire to spend more money at the moment, your satisfied with your home, cars, clothes, eating out rate, at the moment etc..? Is there some other negative ramification that comes from this?