BootsnAll Travel Community

For the last 2 years I have placed all of my spare change and loose bills that I have left in my pocket at the end of the week into a large water jug in my living room and I just recently went to the bank.... well sure enough I had $1,200 in there and all of it has already gone to my latest trip!

Wow...that is very impressive!!!

I have two things that I save in...one is a huge Vodka bottle from a Bar that i used to work in...and that only fits 5p piece's in...but when it's full there is about £70 in there...

And the other one is a HUGE plastic Budweiser bottle...and I generally put 1p and 2p's in there...but maybe I should take all your advice and start putting other loose change in there too!!

Well done and enjoy your trip!!

I do a similar saving method by having a "travel" bank account which I have arranged such that $25 a week is automatically transferred there from my main account. In this way I accumulate $1300 in a year and I never notice the missing money. This works best for me because with the use of credit cards and internet shopping, I rarely accumulate that much hard cash anymore.

This must mean you averaged about $12 a week into your water jug!

I heard some where that if you just dumped your change (not bills) at the end of the day by the end of the year you would have $750. I have this really cool change counting machine that locks until I have $10 in it. I put change in there every day. However, I don't save that much with change as I need it for laundry money.

Bank of America has an electronic version of the change jar. Their Keep the Change program rounds up purchases made with your debit card to the nearest dollar and puts the "change" into your savings account at the end of each day. They match 100% of your savings the first 3 months and then 5% each year (free money!). This is a great program for people who rely on debit cards rather than cash to pay for their purchases. My annual match this past year was $31 which means I saved over $600 in a year just by using my debit card. And I never even missed the money!

New Year, new way of saving

I started putting all my change into my big Budweiser Bottle (a plastic one) and hopefully by the end of the year that Bottle will be full up with lots and lots of money!!

I made about $35 this year with BofA's keep the change program. I really love it. I also have a bank at home that locks when you put a quarter in it and unlocks when you hit $10. I then roll the change and stick it into another jar that I have. The only problem with waiting all year is that you don't get interest on what is in the jar. I would sujest checking it every few months instead of once a year.

Get it out of the bottle and put it into an HSBC direct or ING direct account where you'll get 4.35-5.50 % APY.

I am doing the same thing, I have a 5 gallon water bottle about half full of change and the occasional $20 I throw in there. I really should put it in a savings account, but it's WAY less tempting to spend as coins (that I can't easily reach, lol) than it is as dollars in an account which I can withdraw. I do put the majority of my money into my savings account though.

I end up giving all that spare change away to charity but then again, that's also a necessity... but wow, I really have to start saving up for this trip to Rome...is that ING direct account thing available online? thing is ,. does anyone know of any global bank accounts online? I live in Israel, bank fees here suck, and what I want to do is find a global internet bank where my employer can deposit my earnings in shekel, the bank won't take an insane exchange rate (or none at all preferably but I'm sure such a thing doesn't exist), I have a credit card/ATM card I can use globally without fees, and whatever - the perfect bank account for the traveler. I will repost this in a new thread, methinks, as well.. thanks for any advice. -Fishfool @ The Reef Tank