Fiscally Responsible Follow-Up

So you may remember me downgrading both my phone/Internet and cable services recently in an effort to be more fiscally responsible considering I won’t have an income for the last half of 2009 and probably all of 2010 (OMG! AM I CRAZY?!?! WHY am I returning to the world of poverty?!?!)….

I’m happy to report that I have now gotten my first full bills post the changes and am now paying $55 LESS per month for cable and $53 LESS per month for phone/Internet. I *could* bring my cable down another $40 if I gave up Sci Fi channel (well….other channels as well, but that’s the only one that concerns me) but I am planning to watch Warehouse 13 (OK it seems like a lame X-Files rip-off but I love Eddie McClintock (remember when he was Sully on Bones? Ah, Sully.)) this summer and Caprica this fall so I figure I’ll keep it for now…

Aren’t you proud of me? Still working on controlling my eating & my spending, my two big self-destructive areas of the moment, but you know, there’s still time. I do have a job for another two months, you know! 🙂

Dinner’s on me!

Change turned into real money at Coinstar this morning = $177.09. Woot.
Change rejected by the machine:

  • Three perfectly good umblemished dimes.
  • One shiny shiny penny.

Fewest rejects ever. But also oddest rejects ever. (There were some mighty moldy pennies accepted!)

Just another trip to Coinstar.

Total change turned in for “real money” = $144.50.
“Change” rejected by Coinstar:

  • Another Boston T token.*
  • One 2-cent Euro.
  • One Canadian dime.
  • One British penny.
  • One, presumably U.S., penny so molded over and verdigreed that I think it might grow a tree if I planted it.
  • One U.S. penny just barely beginning to mold.
  • One U.S. dime, the side ridges of which seem to have somehow been replaced by the outside edge of a penny? I mean, it’s a dime, silver 10-cent piece, but instead of the thin silver scored outer rim a normal dime has, it has a smooth copper rim that extends past the edge on both sides (i.e., is for a fatter coin than a dime). Bizarre!
  • One perfectly normal U.S. dime.
  • And a perfectly good U.S. quarter.

So one transit coin, three non US, two US degraded, one US bizarro, and two perfectly good coins that should have been accepted as Legal currency.
*It’s got to be the Walgreens by work that keeps giving me these. I don’t know if they’re even still valid tokens!

Fat Wallet.

Dunkin Donuts gave me $18 change in ONES Wednesday night (late night hot chocolate in the pelting, icy rain).

A big wad of ones in my wallet = that’s what I call “stripper money.”

Coinstar Rejects.

I used to post about this on the blog all the time; I think it needs its own category here on Snip.

I do not use change. Any change given to me when I buy lunch or stamps or snacks or what have you is dumped into my bag and then dumped into a change jug when I get home. When it gets full, I cash it in and it’s generally about $200 (given the size of the jug, the fact that I dump ALL change in it and only dig out quarters for laundry occasionally). It is always a surprise to find what Coinstar rejects when I take it in as often there is change from countries I have never been to so clearly I got handed this AS IF it was legitimate currency when someone was giving me change for a purchase. Shortly after a Coinstar run, I become a Change Nazi, carefully looking over everything they hand me back. But of course, shortly after that, I forget…

Anywho, here’s this week’s round of Coinstar Rejects:

  • One Boston T token.
  • One Canadian 10-cent piece
  • One dull British 10-pence piece
  • One sparkly French Franc. Hello they don’t even use these in France anymore, but someone in the US is giving me them as change? Lame!
  • One dirty 25-centime piece from the Dominican Republic. Hello!