The Dollar Bill Savings Plan
January 9, 2009 by kellys
Filed under financial matters, saving money
I am a HUGE proponent of saving your change. I usually save around $100 a year in just spare change. So when I was listening to Neal Boortz this morning, I find him very entertaining, I had to stop and think. He reminded me of a savings plan I had heard of before, the dollar bill savings plan.
The premise is that every dollar counts. When you leave the house in the morning, you put your spare change, $5, $10, $20 or whatever bills you have in your wallet. Now you are thinking about buying a paper and cup of coffee on the way to work. You use yoru change for hte paper and a $5 bill for the coffee. You put the change in your pocket and the $1 bills in your back pocket. They are considered “burned”. You are not allowed to spend them. This does a couple of things. Do you really want to spend $5 on a cup of coffee? You might not spend quite so much if you pay cash and it costs you more than you want to spend.
Then at the end of the day, you put all the $1 bills you come up with in a shoe box or envelope. Don’t count them. Just straighten them out. At the end of the month, you add up how many $1 bills you have and I bet you will be surprised. His room mate on a business trip did this every year to pay for a ski trip every year in Colorado.
Just another savings idea.
Great idea, I will have to tell my wife. Maybe that will make her want to go to starbucks less.