March 17th, 2005 - Pickle Jar
A few months ago, my Mom sent me a story about a man who’s Dad saved change in a pickle jar for his college fund. For years, I’ve been putting change into a blue bottle. I’d do various things with the money–something special or send it to the DRiP account for the future or just put it into the bnak as the slush fund. It wasn’t usually very much, less than $100 a year. We used credit cards as much as possible (paid off every month of course) because I hate dealing with cash. But whenever I did pay cash, the coins went in the bottle. (I’d also use the change during the summer for garage saling!)
I though the pickle jar idea was pretty cool, so bought a jar of pickles, which we’re still eating, last fall. Put the pickles in a smaller jar in January, and delightedly started to fill up the pickle jar. I decided to also put in any refunds we get (they come after I entered the original amount paid into Quicken and I bet we can meet the budget without the refund, so why not?), Discover cashback bonus awards, and other miscellaneous income.
But then I had a change of opinion about saving for college. Talked it over with Eric, and we decided to make the pickle jar our trip to Alaska fund. We went there for our honeymoon and always talk about going back. But we’ve never put it into our budget because it’s an overwhelming expense. (We did a cruise which we adored and would do again. Or, we’d like to spend more time in the state and be in the mountains, and go north of the Arctic Circle. Either way, we’re talking 1000s of dollars.) We’re both excited about putting money into the pickle jar now! Even if it’s only a penny that I found on the sidewalk, I’m just delighted to add it to the jar.
I wonder how long it will take to get $6000 dollars? 10 years? More?