Generating pocket change again

Subway is my main stop for lunch on most days. In the past, I've usually paid with a debit card, however I'm starting to switch to cash. I see it as a win-win for both me and the franchise. With the cost of the daily special and chips coming out to $4.25, I get my lunch plus 75 cents, and the franchise does not have to pay bank charges.

Using cash instead of my debit or credit card again will be necessary to generate the pocket change I need to continue investing in my program. $43 deposits over the course of the year just isn't going to cut it.

Deposit

Tomorrow I'll have $43 to invest, thanks to my latest deposit. My last deposit of $73 on 4/18/06 was almost a year ago, meaning over the course of a year I've only generated $43 in change?!? This means that I'm using my debit card too much.

It just goes to show that this strategy is a slow process, you're not going to get rich overnight. But, the thing that makes this strategy great are the lessons learned:

1. It's not hard to start investing.
   
2. It's easy to save.
3. Large sums of money can be build over time.
4. (You fill in the blank)
   

This list could go on and on. In order to stay 100% invested, I'll be researching my next purchase. I should probably be building on my Chevron holding, but I'm not happy it's up over $74.

New addition to the family.

As most of you know, Altria (NYSE: MO) just spun off Kraft (NYSE: KFT) yesterday, giving current shareholders 0.7 shares of KFT for every MO share, that would be about 3.7 shares for me. I'm not sure if I should hold or sell right now, but for the meanwhile I'll be holding, even though the stock is down. In a small account where I'm trying to minimize trading costs, I'm trying not to sell as much as possible.

Trip to the coinstar

I made my latest trip to the coinstar machine last week. $12 and a few cents left over. With an additional $30 in quarters, I'll be making a deposit into by brokerage soon.

New high.

Thanks to the performance of Chevron (CVX) and Altria (MO), my pocket change has jumped the $1k barrier! No additional funds have been added since my purchase of CVX.

Recent stock purchase

With the price of gas so high, and the oil companies having record profits, I decided my latest deposit into my brokerage account should be invested in the oil business. Narrowing the field down to Exxon and Chevron, I chose Chevron. Aside from the financials, Chevron is the gas I use to fill my car, and I feel comfortable investing in the stuff I purchase.

Accumulating change

For the longest time, I stayed away from my debit or credit cards, prefering to use cash for my purchases. During this time, I was able to accumulate quite a bit of loose change over a short period of time. All the change from every dollar I spent would end up in my change jar, and eventually in my brokerage account.

Nowadays, I find that I end up using my plastic more than cash, which means that accumulating enough change to make a meaningful stock purchase takes quite a bit longer. My last deposit of about $74 took between 6 and 9 months, so long I can't exactly remember how long it took. When using cash in the same period of time would yield a deposit of $150 or so, almost double!

The past couple days, I've been eating out for lunch, yeilding 50¢ for my savings. As of today, there's probably about $3 in change, not much but it's a start.

Getting Started

The speed at which "loose change" can accumulate sparked my intrigue one summer long ago. As a 13 year old, I spent a month during summer vacation with my grandparents. Every night, we played quarter blackjack (with a $5 limit), and over that month I ended up with about $180 in winnings, all in quarters.

During high school, a good friend I worked with was a waiter. He used to receive quite a pocketful of change every night which he would dump into a huge pickle jar. Each month he’d take the jar to his bank and run it through the coin machine, ending up with about $100 in cigarette money. That’s $1200 a year, in change!

In turn, I saved my pocket change, and it became a habit. Back then I was not interested in investing, but all those quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies allowed me to make those indulgence purchases that would leave most people with a guilty conscience. Pocket change funded my clothes, electronics, and computer parts. I could buy them without feeling bad, because for one, I saved for those purchases and second, I just spent my pocket change… big deal!

Over that time, I learned that YES, pocket change is a big deal! Accumulated over all those years were hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in change. For the past few years, I still save my pocket change, but no longer am I buying electronics, I’m buying stocks. Constant savings and investing have not made me a millionaire (just yet), but it has provided me with a healthy hobby, and stock market returns that have not been too shabby.

So I ask you dear reader, what do you do with your pocket change?