counting coins and other money matters

When I was young, every day when my father came home from work he would empty his pockets of change into a jar and in December they would empty it out on their king size bed and we would group it into denominations and count it and the amount was what they would spend on christmas presents. That's as I remember it, participating in the counting of the change. I don’t remember when this practice ended. My sister would have known.

My grandmother had a small enameled box which I now possess that contained dimes.

She had another small carved wooden box for pennies. I remembering liking to empty them and count the change and then fill the boxes again. Flashes of childhood so far back. These days, the small carved box holds the few love letters my husband has written to me over the years. 

I have a jar. Originally it held five pounds of fine frit in whichever color. It sits on my dresser and contains my loose change, apparently a habit acquired early. When the grandkids were growing up and coming regularly, when the jar was full, they got to count it and divvy it up equally. They're all grown now but I still have the jar and I still empty my change into it when I get undressed. When it gets full I empty it into the coin counter at the grocery store and exchange it for dollar bills and squirrel it away. 

Marc just piles his change up on a shelf until it gets put in various containers. Remember the coin shortage during covid? I know where all those coins were. While he was in the hospital with pneumonia and the house cleaners that our grandgirl Jade arranged for were going to come, I cleaned off those shelves and took all those jars and the mountain of loose coins and dumped them into the coin counter machine. It was well over $600 even after the machine took its 12%.

One new year I made a resolution to spend my change instead of letting it pile up and I did for several years. I annoyed more than one person in line behind me for taking the time to dig it out of my pocket and count it out to the cashier. One woman rudely verbally accosted me because she was in a hurry. I told her standing in line for an extra few minutes was not going to change the quality of her life. It might, she said indignantly.

As teens we kids got an allowance every month so that we did not feel the need to get a job to pay for things like gas, food, music, etc. Our job, our father told us, was to go to school and get good grades. I was a saver even back then. When my father had to leave town to attend one medical conference or another, he sometimes didn’t make it to the bank for pocket money before he had to leave. Those times he would borrow money from me because he knew I always saved a portion of my allowance. I still do that. While a lot of people don’t carry cash anymore, we do. It keeps us from spending too much, easier to keep track than just whipping out a credit card for every purchase. 

The best advice my mother gave me was to always keep an escape fund (the worst advice she gave me was to let the boys win when we played games as they didn't like being beat by a girl). This comes from back in the days when women could not get a bank account or a credit card without a husband or father cosigning, when most women stayed in the home and were financially dependent on their husbands. Control the money, control the woman. You might never need it, she said, and if you don’t you have money for a vacation. Or, more likely, some piece of art I want.