Saturday, April 30, 2016

"Changing" Airlines: Using My Saved Coins To Get Me To NTRPG Con

North Texas RPG Con is just around the corner. My hotel room is booked; my fees for attending are paid; and my spending cash is saved up and earmarked. However, there is one outstanding outlay that had not yet been settled -- the airfare from Ohio to Texas, and back. And -- once again -- my Yearly Gaming Change Jar comes into play.

As I discussed in two previous blog entries here and here, I have a change jar that all of my spare coins goes into. This change is earmarked each year for something "game convention-related". Last June, The Change Jar paid for an entire day's worth of fun at Origins. This year, the Jug O' Coins is taking me across the country for NTRPG Con. And how did it one full year's worth of saving my coins pan out?

 My former change jar was replaced with one of those big gallon-sized plastic jugs you get pretzel sticks in. When this photo was taken earlier this morning, it was half-filled, and weighed in the neighborhood of 15 pounds (by my estimating). How much was in here? Well, I also had a coin counter attached to the lid, and the grand total was:
Yup, I dropped nearly $400.00 in loose coinage through that slot over the course of a year. I took the jug to the bank, watched my teller get a hernia as she ran the coins through the sorter-counter, and she handed me eight $50.00 bills. To keep this transaction "pure" (steering clear of involving credit cards or other credit-related payments), I purchased a $400 Paypal My Cash card ($4.95 fee) and placed the cash in my Paypal account. And tonight, I booked my tickets from Expedia, and paid with that same Paypal account. So what started as coinage this morning became airline tickets to Texas about 30 minutes ago.

 What's that? My tickets were only $290.00? Well, looks like the change jar just put another $110.00 into my pocket for spending cash for the trip!

So, again, I implore everyone who complains that they can't attend conventions because "it costs too much" or "I can't afford airfare" to start saving their change. After all, a year ago, my coins pais for a full day at Origins, and this year, they're getting me to Texas and buying me some swag!

2 comments:

  1. What a great idea. Where did you get the coin jar lid that calculates the contents?

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    1. Hi Nick, you can get those "coin counter jars" everyplace. I think I got mine at Walmart or Family Dollar. But I filled the jar pretty easily in the past, so I got one of those big plastic jars that pretzels come in, ate the pretzels, then attached the counter lid to the pretzel jug lid.

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