Finance Board

May 2005
Cardboard works great for weed control in the yard or
garden. Lay out the flattened cardboard first making sure to
overlap it by at least six inches. If the weeds are very
established or if your weeds are more like small shrubs, do
a double or even triple layer to ensure nothing grows
through. We found that it is best to wet the cardboard with a
sprinkler to soften it before applying the top layer of bark
mulch or gravel so the cardboard will settle in and smother
all the weeds completely. In as little as one year the
cardboard will have composted into a rich loamy soil while
the weeds have been killed off by lack of sunlight and air.
Simply top off the bark mulch periodically as it too breaks
down over the years.

July 2005
Vinyl shower curtains reused make good drop cloths for
painting projects. In the garden they can be used as row
covers for tender spring plants (when a cold night
threatens). Like costly landscape fabric use curtains to
control weeds in garden beds. Cut an X at each plant
location, plant, then close the X around the plant stem.
Cover the entire sheet with rocks, gravel or bark mulch.

October 2005
Promote reading in your community, reduce clutter around
your home and your contribution of waste in the landfill, save
a buck or two and benefit a charity while you are at it. Just
how are you supposed to do all this?
Management of used books and magazines is a very
environmental and community conscious thing for people to
participate in. Extending the life of books and magazines is
easily accomplished by taping the binding and edges of the
covers.

Go through your closets and bookshelves and look for all
the used books and magazines that you no longer read. Any
library, shelters for the disadvantaged, hospitals and
missions are all places to consider for donating. Use the
key words ‘book donation’ in a search engine to find places
to donate to. Here are just a few sites:

http://www.betterworldbooks.com/

http://www.asiahousinternational.org

http://www.sabre.org/books/bookorg/bkdn_toc.htm

http://www.loc.gov/rrr/amed/afs/alc/bkdncte.html

http://www.ala.org - lists contact information for
organizations that distribute used books.

http://www.nationalbook.org/bookdonations.html - lists
places that accept book donations.

Dave and Lillian Brummet, authors of the book Trash Talk,
offer a free service called Tip of the Month where visitors can
learn new reduction and reuse ideas that will save money
for the household and office on their website.

~ Lillian and Dave Brummet, authors of the books Trash
Talk andTowards Understanding.
http://www.sunshinecable.com/~drumit

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Hundreds of thousands of people place their extra change into a jar or bank every night when they return home thinking that they are saving money. In reality, the dynamics of saving coins has changed over the last 10 years so that by placing your extra coins in a jar, you may actually be losing money. This is the new money jar trap.

The money jar has been a classic way for people to save money for generations. The concept was easy. After coming home for the day, you simply empty out your pockets and put the coins into a jar. When the jar was full, you take it to your local bank, have the coins counted and place the money into your savings account. While this sounds simple enough, the savings generated in the coin jar may not be worth their face value depending on how you redeem the coins.

The problem with the money jar game is that banks and other enterprises have figured out that they can charge you for taking your change. If there is a way to make a buck, you can be sure that banks and others will try to take it.

Take the convenience of changing your coins at a grocery store. CoinStar and other businesses will take your change and give you a receipt that you can use for your grocery shopping, but they’ll also take a huge fee to do so. In effect, you are trading the face value of your coins for something worth less than face value.

More and more banks are also beginning to charge you to count coins if they will accept them at all. With the current rates that banks are paying on savings accounts, you’ll likely have to leave the money your received for your coins in the bank several years just to break even with what you initially had.

What this all comes down to is that for many, keeping a coin jar is the same as losing money. Where it once was a great way to add to your savings, it has become as wasteful as keeping a balance on your credit cards. We have come to a time where the coin jar can actually cost you more money than you save.

There are a few steps that you can take to make sure that you aren’t actually losing money when you think you are saving it. First, you want to make sure never to have your coins changed at a grocery or similar store. By doing so, you will automatically have around 10% of your money subtracted for fees.

Before you take your coins to your bank, make sure they don’t charge any fees for taking the money. The policy for banks varies widely. Some will charge for loose coins, but won’t charge if you roll the coins yourself. Find out what charges exist and if any do, consider switching banks. Credit unions are usually better at not charging fees for taking coins than banks.

If you can’t find a bank that will take coins without charging you, then use the coins in your everyday use. You’re much better off doing this that letting them sit in a jar where they will ultimately lose money for you. You can amend the money jar game to benefit your savings if this is the case.

Instead of saving coins, move up to $1 bills for your money jar. In this scenario, you’ll be doing exactly what you have been doing, but you’ll be saving $1 bills instead of change. You don’t spend any $1 bills you receive, but any coins you receive are fine to use. That means all purchases have to be made with coins or large bills ($5, $10, or $20 dollar bills). At the end of the day, you place all your $1 bills into your savings jar. Since banks will not charge you anything to deposit $1 bills, you avoid the fees your would get for the change and save even more money than with coins.

If you think that changing the game will keep you from saving, another way to change the coins is to take them to your local post office and use them to buy stamps out of the vending machines there. By switching the coins for stamps, you get 100% value for your coins which is better than paying fees to have the coins switched to bills.

In the end it’s important to remember that coins are legal currency and you can get full face value for them by spending them a little at a time. While a large amount of coins can be troublesome, there is no reason to pay a fee to have the coins deposited.

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Publishing Guidelines: This article may be freely distributed so long as the copyright, author’s information and an active link (where possible) are included. A complimentary copy of any newsletter or a link to the website where the article is posted would be greatly appreciated.

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Copyright (c) Jeffrey Strain. He is owner of Save Money Games- a website dedicated to decreasing debt through money saving games.

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