Here’s a fun and easy technique to make you feel rich and to capture some free money in your life.

The average American creates between 42 and 89 cents per day in pocket change. That’s a few hundred bucks a year. If you have a family, multiply that number by the number of adults in the house.

That’s just the new change you create. The change you may already have is even more interesting. It’s been estimated that there is around $10 billion in loose change sitting around American homes, never buying anything and never earning interest.

Most of my purchases are done with debit cards, but a percentage of my monthly spending is in cash just like most people. Here’s what I do to make sure I capture that “free money” that I “create” out of change.

I have a change jar in my kitchen (it’s actually a big metal container). Every time I have any loose change, even if it’s just a few pennies, I toss it in there. I also have a similar container in my car which I empty into this “jar” about once a month.

It takes me about 2.5 years to completely fill it. When it’s full, I take the jar down to my local grocery store and turn the mountain of change into cash with one of those change sorting machines. This usually nets me somewhere around $400 to $600. Then I take that money and go buy gold with it.

Granted, with gold prices these days it only buys me about half an ounce of gold, but that’s still a lot. And it’s fun. Then I toss the gold in with the rest of my gold investments.

In other words, I turn my change, this “free money,” into gold. It’s a fun game I play with myself. Every time I end up with loose change, I get a little excited. I see it as gold, because that’s exactly what it is. This way, I like saving my change. It’s not a hassle like most people view change to be. It helps my financial abundance mindset, and it also ensures that the change is really going somewhere that helps my financial goals.

Turn your change into gold. It’s free money. There’s no reason not to.

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