Wrap it up!

Typically when I think of good stewardship, money handling comes to mind very quickly. One of my most bothersome monetary puzzles was "The Thing".
It stares at you everytime you enter your room. Mostly pennies are inside of it, but you have a few nickels too. Maybe a few dimes. A quarter or two.

You know what I mean--it's "The Change Jar". The open item where you dump the change from your pockets, or purse, or wallet, or whatever holds it. The item you keep wondering what to do with, because well, you can't exactly take it to the store to dig through and count out the $23.70 you need. So it sits there. And you fill it. Little by little.

You could take it to a money counting machine--if you don't mind paying a percentage out of each dollar you put in. But since saving money is one of my favorite hobbies, I use a different solution--recycle it.

No, don't dump the jar in with the plastics to be taken to the city recycling place--but do take your jar and find a nice flat surface to work on. And you will need a bag of coin wrappers like these:

which you can get at Wal-Mart inexpensively. Or you might check with your bank and see if they'll give you some for free.

I like to dump out most of my jar, and divide the coins into sections, like nickels in one pile, dimes in another, etc. Then count out the right amount into each cartridge and fold down the top--like 50 pennies to make 50 cents, 50 dimes to make $5, and so forth. The great thing about this is you usually only do it every few months, depending on how long it takes you to fill your jar up. So it's not really that time consuming. Plus, it helps me cut back on how often I have to deposit money from my paycheck into my checking--my recycled change becomes extra money for checking.

Next, assess the amount you have after it's all wrapped up and take it by your bank sometime to deposit it all back into your account.

Then wait till your jar is filled up again and repeat.

And now to borrow and slightly alter the words of Benjamin Franklin: "A penny wrapped is a penny saved."

Happy wrapping--North & South is a great money wrapping movie, in case you wanted to know.