Count

Wow - what a difference a job makes when it comes to finding change. Last year I did an experiment by saving all the pennies and other change I found and tallying them all up at the end of the year. I did the same thing this year. Most of 2007, my job entailed a lot of travel between a lot of retail locations. All of 2008, I worked in one building every day.

2008 total: $1.86

The breakdown:
.25 - 2
.10 - 9
.05 - 1
.01 - 41

I found a penny yesterday at Tops, so I'm going to save any found change again this year :)

I'm sure that my total would have been higher if I liked shopping and visited retail locations more often. As it is, I hate shopping and I avoid malls and the like as much as possible.

That being said, I had a very successful shopping trip today. I needed to pick up a birthday gift, and I needed a couple of turtlenecks and I had $50 gift card for JCPenney so I thought I would combine the trip to the mall. It turned out the JCPenney was having a fantastic sale. Thanks to the gift card and a $10 off coupon, I got for myself $182.27 worth of new clothes for only $1.04 out my pocket - how cool is that???? Maybe if all shopping was like that, I wouldn't hate it so much.