Adding Up the Small Stuff for Retirement |
Posted: April 17, 2019 |
In today’s society where money can be easily placed on a card and then used anywhere, it’s hard to find people with cash in their pockets. Some people carry a twenty-dollar bill, or maybe around fifty dollars for emergencies or small purchases, but most of the world’s moneyis connected to plastic cards and online apps like Paypal and Vimeo. But there’s one benefit of paying in cash that could fund vacations, pay off college tuitions, or allow someone to make a guilt-free splurge - the spare change that is the result of breaking a dollar. No one really uses change anymore unless they are doing laundry, parking, or paying to use a payphone or other outdated item. However, all those spare coins rolling around in the glovebox or the bottom of your pocket have value, and they add up quick. Especially if you want to save for retirement, the spare change could be a major buffer that allows for some cool benefits. Figuring out the worth of coins Let’s say that a person A goes out and buys a daily newspaper every single day from their local stand. Now the paper costs $5.50, and person A always has to break a dollar. Let’s say he pays $6 every day, leaving him with 50 cents that he saves. If he does this every single day for seven days, he ends up with an extra $3.50 in pocket change at the end of the week. Not too much to be happy about, but if he continues to do this, he’ll earn an extra $14 dollars a month. That translates to $168 extra dollars, all earned passively, in a year. Here’s the cool part. That’s just one of the income streams. Imagine if that person A also bought a cup of coffee every day and came home with 60 cents. That 60 cents a day is $4.20 per week, $16.80 a month, and $201.60 per year. That’s almost $400 extra dollars in a year, just by saving spare change. What could it do? The next time someone gets tempted to just use a card to avoid all the spare change in their pocket, they should consider what that change could do. All that extra money could be spent on something fun or saved yet again to form the basis for a college fund or a retirement plan. Start small with savings, because it’ll all add up.
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