“I’ll probably get some crap for this but I just toss my pennies in the trash or out on the street when I get them as change.”
There’s an awesome book titled, “The Millionaire Next Door.”
The authors interviewed (as I recall) about a 1,000 millionaires looking for common traits. One was that they always picked up pennies. The reason wasn’t that pennies had value, but that picking them up represented a mental attitude of not leaving money lying around. I’ve been buying repossessed houses. I have a total of four including the one I’m living in. Two of them and several others I went into to inspect for purchase were scattered with coins, mostly pennies. But in the one I’m living in, the former owner left about $20 in coins inside and I found another couple of dollars in the sand driveway exposed by the rains over the years.
Other traits included, the average car was bought used and was now 10 years old. They owned outright modest homes in modest middle class neighborhoods. They generally owned their own small business. (I can’t recall the others off hand.)
But, because of that all-important attitude, I always pick up pennies.
Live within your means, and put some money away from every paycheck. Rule Number One of “investing.” Without this, no other money strategy or plan will ever work. None.
Just doing a mental calculation here and I figure I might toss an average of three or four pennies a day in the penny jar, usually at the Dunkin Donuts when I'm getting my coffee. But let's round up to 5 pennies a day, just for sake of argument.
If I saved 5 cents a day, that would come to $18.25 in saved pennies a year. I guess for some that would be worthwhile but on average, I save triple that amount every single day between my 401k and other savings/investments. Yes, that about $20,000 a year for those who do the math. So adding that $18.25 a year would increase my savings by .000925%.
If I did collect those pennies, think about the time involved to roll them up and take them to the bank. Is it worth $15-20 of my time over the course of a year? I think not. It's actually foolhardy. Sort of like driving to a store 20 miles out of your way to take advantage of a $1 coupon. You burn more gas getting there than what you save.
So this isn't really so much about being wasteful but demonstrating that need that we need to do away with the penny entirely and round everything up to the nearest nickel. Think of all the money and time that would save us all.
By the time you’re a millionaire, chances are you are picking up a cent without having to pay the .4 cents taxes on it. Every ten pennies is like making 14 cents because it is tax free.