This was not a good year for found money. In the last 12 months or so I picked up just $5.88.
Frankly I’m surprised I found more than a buck all year, given that I (and everyone else) stayed home a lot during the pandemic.
In addition, my gut feeling is that COVID-caused unemployment/fear of unemployment might also have made people clutch their coins a little tighter. It might even have made some folks stoop to pick up that dime they dropped at the cash register.
Or the dime that someone else dropped. Maybe more money was out there all year, but other people found it before I could.
That’s fine with me. I don’t technically need this found money, being one of the lucky ones whose job did not fade away in part or in full in 2020. The reason I pick up cast-off coins all year long is that I donate them.
As always, I’ll round up the donation. This year it’s going up to $30, which is what I sent to the Food Bank of Alaska yesterday after a Facebook friend asked everyone to donate to FBA if they could. Doing this reminded me that I hadn’t counted my found money yet this year.
Now I have. Here’s the total:
Six quarters
31 dimes
11 nickels
73 pennies
Again: Not much. Every little bit helps, though. Feeding America can get the ingredients for six meals for just $1.
Found money and you
Maybe your bad back makes it impossible to pick up lost coins from sidewalks, supermarkets or those Coinstar machines. Or perhaps you don’t want to pick them up, because it grosses you out.
But maybe times are tight for you right now, whether that’s due to the pandemic or due to the fact that you have student loans and a starter salary. If that’s the case, I’d suggest you give coin-hunting a try. Heck, everyone’s carrying hand sanitizer these days anyway, so you can clean yourself up right away. (If you don’t carry it, most stores offer it at their entrances.)
Save the coins (or paper money, if you’re lucky) for a year and you might be surprised how it adds up. Twelve months from now you can decide whether to:
- Give it to a worthy cause
- Build yourself a good deep pantry, which Liz Weston calls “the emergency fund you can eat” (for tips on stretching those pennies until Lincoln’s nose drips blood, see “12 ways to save money on groceries”)
- Put it in your emergency fund – and if you don’t have one, let the found money be the seed money
- Add it to your cash cache (i.e., your small-ticket-item emergency fund)
- Dump it into your Roth IRA or whatever retirement vehicle you have (every dollar does matter, and will make a difference)
Will you get rich picking up found money? Almost certainly not. But again, sometimes every dollar matters.
On the rare occasions when I don’t want to stop and pick up that penny, I remind myself that if I do, and if I find 99 more of them, then six people will get to have dinner that night. Pretty sure that matters.
Readers: Do you pick up coins, or leave them for someone else? And are you, like me, childishly happy when they’re heads-up because that means good luck?
Related reading:
We pick up coins whenever we find them. Like you, I haven’t found much this past year. Never heard that about heads up for good luck! About a month ago we saw an older gentleman pick up a penny in a parking lot, so I know some still do it. We haven’t been walking through town this past year for one reason or another, but when we did, there usually wasn’t anything there.
I take my walks around the three schools that are close to me. You would not believe how many pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters can be found. I add to my wallet and when they ask if I want to round up the cost for a worthy cause, that is where it goes.
ALWAYS pick up coins! Save in a bank on my dresser and count them at the end of year! Used to apply towards debt, but now that I’m debt free, I took your lead and round up a donate to a local charity. This year it was $26, and went to Feeding Tampa Bay!
We pick up coins. We always say the dimes are from my granny that has passed. We were donating before to homeless people, when we were down south but now with covid we havent traveled and in a snowy area so maybe once the snow is all gone , the coins will show up again.
Oh yeah!! I always pick up money! Got 2 pennies today when I stopped by Dunkin for a coffee (using a coupon of course) I immediately sanitized my hands and yes I was childishly happy!
I picked up eight cents today, which made me happy because my collection vase had been emptied.
We always pick up coins on our morning runs. And always give them to one of our runners who in turn gives them to charity. I’ve found ten dollars twice, which I kept because I was running twenty miles by myself.
I’ve always picked up coins and the occasional paper money since I was a child. When I read your article on MSN years ago, I decided to start saving it through out the year to help others. Thank you for inspiration….2020 was a scarce one for coins
Yay! Another reader from the MSN days!
I found eight cents today, so the collection has started with a bang.
I read you in MSN days, too. I happily pick up coins. I no longer go in gas stations and just use the card at the gas tank, so I am sure I miss out there. It seems there are fewer places I go and fewer coins, too. I never get them to a bank or jar, so I keep a running tally of what I have found.
I definitely pick up $—though lately, there has been a dearth as others have noted. The pennies go in one bank, and the other coins go in a giant baby bottle bank for Prince Charming’s (he is 2 years old) college fund. Interestingly, at several groceries stores lately the young cashiers have asked me if I wanted my change, when it was less than a nickel. Yes, yes I do want that change!
I’ve been asked that, too. Once I asked the cashier, “Are there people who don’t want their change?” and he said yes, there are. Pointed to the “leave a penny, take a penny” dish and it had nickels, dimes and quarters in it.
Last Thanksgiving I walked over to the nearby convenience store to get a newspaper for the Black Friday ads. I noticed a bunch of coins sitting atop the cash register and asked if that were the take-a-penny collection. She said no, just change people said they didn’t want — she leaves it there for schoolkids who don’t have quite enough money to buy a treat. I thought that was adorable.
I found a $50 bill when out for a walk on a cold day. I felt so guilty, thinking about who may have lost it. I donated to our local food bank.
I’ve been reading you and Liz since the MSN money days when I was a young punk paying my way through college and when picking up a penny really was the difference in a meal for me some days. My mom also taught us kids to look for coins and we would be so excited if we saw a dime. Now as a broke teacher who spends money on her class I still look for pennies because that can help me educate my little Chickies as I call them.
Another reader here from the MSN days. DH and I always pick up coins and a face up penny never fails to bring a smile to my face.
Also checking in as a MSN reader. I love it when I find money doing laundry. the rule is if you leave it in your pocket, then it is mine! I haven’t found significant money outside but I have found a (broken) gold chain in our office parking lot. I put it on the bulletin board for two weeks, then when no one claimed it took it in to get money for the gold. Got $40.
My wife picks up coins wherever we go. I used to be embarrassed by it, but not anymore. She’s pretty good at spotting them. My son is now embarrassed by her doing it, but we are trying to teach him the value of money, so what better way than to pick up money that no one else wants?
We put it in his piggybank and once it’s full, take it down to the bank and exchange for bills. He gets a kick out of that so I think he’s starting to get the concept 😉
Only $5.88? Ouch! I hope you have better luck this year, Donna.
I’m not certain how much money I found last year – between $20 and $30 probably. I don’t save mine up like you do, I cash coins in 2 or 3 times a year, which makes it more difficult to keep up with amounts.
So far, this year has been exciting because I finally found a $20 bill! I was feeding some stray cats at an apartment building near mine and went to their dumpster to discard an empty cat food can. The bill was in front of the dumpster, against the lip of concrete that surrounds that area. Someone had moved out and thrown unwanted clothing/bedding into it, not realizing they were literally throwing away money. I would have rooted around, searching for something I could use/donate, but it had already been a long day. Also, it was too cold and breezy. Dumpster diving has always been popular in this neighborhood, so I’m hoping someone else got to that stuff before it was hauled away.
Nice! That helps defray the cost of the cat food, anyway.
Absolutely will always pick up coins! Would love bills but I have never had the luck …yet!
Find a penny pick it up and all day long you’ll have good luck 🙂
Only found about $4 worth of coins in 2020; I think. Sent it along with some other money to daughter for her house fund towards end of 2020. Continued saving found money again for upcoming year. Last year joined a kind of a loose group that provides non food items to a food bank (on a kind of monthly basis). If I find food items at a bargain price, they get that also. I try and budget $5 a month for those items, but that goes farther some months when items are on sale, BOGO’s, coupons that are sometimes doubled, etc. Some months it is shampoo. One month it was a trunk full school supplies when there was a sale for 10 – 25 cents per item. Another month I found a bra sale, $1 to $3 each, so again spent more than $5 and donated that bag of mostly tween and teen bras and large size women’s bras. The food bank provides a lot of community needs, in addition to food.
I love the idea of providing non-food items — especially bras! That was very thoughtful indeed.
When I lived in Seattle, during the days of plentiful free-or-almost-free toiletries deals at the drugstores, I got quite a few things for free and dropped them off at a social services agency called North Helpline. In late summer my sister and I would go to the office-supply stores after church and load up on 1-cent pencils, 10-cent notebook paper and the like. They were always glad to see that; after all, if you can’t afford food you probably can’t afford school supplies.