As regular readers know, I pick up coins (and sometimes bills) all year long. The found money goes into a vase my daughter got from the free box at a yard sale when she was little. At the end of the year, I round up the amount and donate it.
Last year my found money take was pretty paltry: just $5.88, probably due to the pandemic*. For example:
Work slowdowns/job loss might have made some folks more apt to pick up those quarters they dropped. When times were better, they just let ’em roll.
People weren’t shopping in-person as much, for fear of contagion. Fewer shoppers means fewer chances for dropped coins.
And since I spent a whole lot of 2020 hiding away from the invisible** threat, I wasn’t in the stores much myself.
To some extent, those things were still true in the past year. In addition, the country has been plagued by a coin shortage in stores and banks so folks were using less cash. Maybe that’s why I kept thinking that 2021 was going to be another low year for found money. Imagine my surprise when I counted up: The vase held $10.11 – almost 72 percent more than in 2020.
Generally I donate the rounded-up amount either to Feeding America or the Food Bank of Alaska. This year, however, I’m going to focus on hunger in the rural town where I grew up.
When I was a kid, our town wasn’t what you’d call prosperous. But everyone had jobs, usually because they farmed or worked at nearby factories. Many people also grew a garden and/or picked produce at local farms. Fishing (creeks, ponds and the nearby Delaware Bay), hunting (deer, duck, pheasant, turkey) and trapping (muskrats caught for pelts were sometimes eaten) were also common. (My grandparents never bought meat. Fun fact: I have eaten deer-meat sloppy joes.)
And now? The factories are closed, inflation is rampant, the population is mostly aged – and the little church of my childhood has a food pantry.
Charity begins at home
I remember the church raising money for other people, such as a nursing home and a ranch for at-risk kids. Now church members – and others in the community – might be going hungry. Or would be, if not for the food pantry.
That’s why I’m giving my found money to that church this year: to keep people I know from going without.
Yep, some of the men and women I saw each week as a child are still there. Any time I visit my brother, I go to our old church and familiar faces still show up every Sunday that they’re able. They still remember me and my family*** even though they’re in their 70s, 80s or maybe even 90s.
These days the pews hold only a couple of dozen parishioners, and sometimes fewer. Most are elderly and many seem quite frail. I wonder if they can still hunt, fish, trap, dig a garden or hit the pick-your-own places. I also wonder how far their Social Security or pension checks stretch when grocery prices are reaching for the rafters, and propane or fuel oil currently run an average of up to $3.68 a gallon.
Back in the day, elders might have had their grown children bring them fish, game meat or garden produce, or do most of the work in their parents’ plots. But as with many small towns, the younger people have mostly fled to better opportunities in bigger places.
That’s not to say that the worshippers I see have all been left entirely to their own devices. However, there’s enough need for the church to have to step in. Thus I’ve decided that my charity should begin at home. Sure, it’s been 40-plus years since I lived there, but it’s where I came up. You never really lose that feeling of home.
Again, the food pantry is likely also serving people I don’t know, either because they started going to church there after I left for good at age 21, or because they don’t go to this church but are still being helped. When Jesus said “Feed my sheep,” I’m pretty sure He meant all sheep – not just the ones within the sound of His voice.
Found money = fund money?
Here’s the 2021 take:
One $1 bill
15 quarters
35 dimes
14 nickels
116 pennies
The Coinstar machine was the source of much of the specie I gleaned. I also found coins (and a one-dollar bill) on sidewalks, shop floors, and in vending machines and the change cups at self-checkout counters.
What you do with your serendipitous specie (or folding green) is up to you, of course. Among other things, you could:
Donate it. That could be to a favorite charity, a personal cause or the collection plate at your house of worship.
Deepen your pantry. Once prices have gone up they probably won’t come back down, so buy at today’s prices for tomorrow’s meals. (Add more to your larder with help from the “groceries” section of my archives.)
Pay for something. The stores where I live are sharply limiting cash purchases, leaving only one or two lanes open for anything other than plastic. If you just want a can of soup or a pair of shoelaces, the merchant might be delighted to get a couple of bucks’ worth of change as payment.
Fund a going concern. Add it to your emergency fund, early mortgage payoff fund, retirement fund or any other financial endeavor. Or maybe start a shorter-term goal, such as a “next year’s holiday shopping” fund or an “I need new glasses soon” fund.
Use it as seed money. Don’t have an EF or any of those other endeavors? Start one with your found money. Fun fact: If you save $2.75 a day for a year, you’ll have $1,000. The $10.11 that I found is almost four days’ worth of this kind of saving.
Sure, that might seem slow. But look at it this way: Suppose you save nothing at all every day for a year. At the end of the year you’ll have…nothing. Remember that “save $2.75 a day” can also mean “find ways not to spend $2.75 a day.” The site archives can help you there, too.
Readers: Do you pick up money? If so, how do you use it?
* Man, am I sick of typing that phrase.
**It became all too visible in November 2020, when it killed my dad.
***The only one of us still down there is my brother, along with his family. That’s an odd feeling.
Related reading:
I am also the one that picks up money off the ground, eyes always scanning below the registers at the checkout line and checking the Coinstar machine. It gets saved in an old bank on my dresser, when I had debt – it went towards that – now that I am debt free, and maxing my retirement goals – I feel a need more than ever to give back as I am grateful to be in a good place. #KARMA.
So, it gets rounded up and donated at the end of year. I choose different charities each year based on local need/what is going on in the world. This year it went towards the Betty White Challenge, to help a local animal rescue. My total was also low, about $13 and change — but its free money, and every bit helps!
Every bit does help, indeed.
And hey, everybody: This is Cheryl of “Cheryl paid off her mortgage” fame. One of the ways she put extra money against the principal was to pick up found money. Her story is linked in this post, under “early mortgage payoff,” but I’ll leave it here as well:
https://donnafreedman.com/cheryl-paid-off-mortgage/
Do you have an address for the Betty White Challenge?
Thanks,
Not Cheryl, but…Originally I think the Betty White Challenge was to make a donation of at least $5 to the animal charity of your choice. That could include smaller local concerns. This article from Variety says campaigns on Facebook and Instagram alone brought in $12.7 million. I expect a lot more was donated without the hashtag — and I hope that some of those smaller local concerns benefited.
https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/betty-white-challenge-fundraiser-animal-shelters-facebook-instagram-1235160087/
Thanks for the info. I already send $50 a month to two different shelters. It’s on my heart to help furry little guys who can do nothing for themselves. So glad to hear that adding Betty White’s name to the campaign stirred people.
Can you give us the name of the food pantry, Donna? As you may remember, I live about an hour north of where you grew up and would be happy to make a donation.
How very kind of you! It’s the Fairton United Methodist Church, 20 Main St., Bridgeton, NJ 08302. Thank you so much.
I haven’t seen much change on the ground, but I’ve stopped picking it up. If it were a large bill I might go for it, but I don’t touch anything that I can avoid touching these days. Just got over a very light case of COVID anyway. I had all three vaccines, so I only had two days with cold symptoms. I am donating to our local food bank and to our local children in crisis charity. I think times are getting tougher and I want to help where I can.
You can wash your hands and the coins. No need to waste perfectly good money than can help others.
As I pointed out in “Filthy lucre,” it’s not as though I’m carrying these coins home in my mouth.
However, everyone has his or her own comfort level with dirt. And money is pretty dirty: Even when you aren’t finding it on the ground, you have no idea whether/how often it has been on the ground before. Which I guess is a potential argument for why picking up money isn’t too much different from being handed money in change at the supermarket.
Do what works for you, I guess.
I am wary of touching anything too! However, I cannot pass money on the ground. Too much a habit. So I use a tissue or something from my purse and sanitize my hands immediately. I have a sanitizer attached to my purse always at the ready. I do understand the hesitation though.
I think even if Covid ever goes away I will forever sanitize grocery cart handles and things like that. Looking back I’m surprised we didn’t do it before like during flu seasons etc.
I, too, donate what I find. We take up food goods/diapers etc at my church for a local Food Pantry. I have a set amount I spend on groceries each month to donate. I try to get the best bang for my buck on purchasing items for the Food Pantry by using deals on Ibotta, Shopkick and others as well as just keeping an eye out for appropriate items which are a good deal.
I donate free or nearly free stuff I get from Ibotta, Coupons.com and the like. However, I keep reminding myself — and would gently remind everyone else — that a group like Feeding America can get a lot more bang for the buck than I can. They buy in bulk — huge bulk — to the point where $1 in donation is the equivalent of five meals.
The same is true of my local food bank, which can stretch dollars a lot further. When I’m tempted to get the three packages of mac ‘n’ cheese for $1.25 after deals, I remember that the food bank/Feeding America could use that money better than I can. Unless it’s free or just a few cents, I funnel that money toward the folks with warehouse storage capacity.
Recently, however, a coupon/rebate/rebate deal meant I was paid to purchase sanitary napkins. Those went to the women’s shelter.
Very good point! On certain survey sites I do when it comes time to trade in my points I like to choose a donation to Feeding America and No Kid Hungry as my top choices.
Our running group always stops to pick up coins and we give them all to the same runner. She saves them up and gives them to a charity. Its been a tradition for years. However I was running alone on two occasions and found ten dollars both times, I kept it.
With found money or money we have set aside for charity giving we usually buy toilet paper and period supplies and donate them to the food bank. They get a lot of food donations but the need for TP and tampons and pads is great.
It is indeed. Sometimes DF buys these things at Costco and drops them off. I’m always on the lookout for deals; as noted in another comment, I have used coupon/rebate/rebate combos to actually earn a little bit back on boxes of period supplies. Such deals are definitely worth the trip.
Still picking up change and donating it, along with spare change I get from any cash transaction. The total is usually $80 to $125 for the year. I also donate to a local church food pantry. I admire organizations like Feeding America, but the pandemic has made local hunger much more obvious.
Nice to hear from you, Nancy. And that’s quite the annual contribution!
Thanks for this article. Time for me to check that found money bank and see what’s in there.
Lots o’cash, I hope.
Pennies 48 48 cents
Nickels 6 30 cents
Dimes 15 $1.50
Quarters 5 $1.25
No paper money.
Total = $3.53
I think I will top it up and send it via food store gift certificate to a relative who recently moved after losing a job.
Thank you for this article!
Thanks for reading it.