So what does the average American do with the money in their change jar?
- More than half (55.5%) of Americans do nothing with spare change
- The most common use of the 44.6% that use it? 15.9% save it for vacation
- Only 20.9% of people use it to improve their financial situation
- Pay bills (11.1%)
- Pay down debt (6.8%)
- Put it into a retirement account (3%)
- Nearly 8% of respondents donated it to charity or gave it away to someone on the street (7.8%)
- Men are more likely than women to leave it untouched (60.3% vs 51.1%)
- Younger Americans are the most neglectful:
- 60.3% of 18-24-year-olds and 59.1% of 25-34-year olds overlook the value
- About 51% of seniors aged 65+ said they don’t do anything useful with it
2016 Findings
- Majority of Americans (62%) put their spare change to good use while 37% did nothing
- Most said the loose change was put towards a vacation fund (22.1%)
- Only 11.3% said they used it to help cover bills while 7.6% used it to pay down debt
- Gave it away: 5.9% of respondents donated it to charity while 5% gave it to people on the street
- Just 4.8% said they used their spare change to beef up their retirement accounts
- Men were more likely to leave it untouched (39.1%) compared to 34.3% of females
- Surprisingly, older Americans were the most neglectful:
- 43.7% of seniors aged 65+ and 41.3% of 55-64-yar-olds didn’t do anything useful with it
Methodology - The study was conducted from February 14-17, 2020 with 944 respondents in the U.S. of ages 18 and up with a standard deviation of +/- 3.2%. The full results and methodology of the study can be found here: https://www.mybanktracker.com/open-data/surveys/spare-change-2020-306312
I had a chance to interview research analyst Simon Zhen to learn more.
What exactly is counted as “spare change”?
Primarily, we consider “spare change” to be coins. But, it can be subjective since some people may consider lower-denomination bills to be spare change.
What should people be doing with it?
Any savings goal would be a great place for your spare change. But, for most people, it’ll likely be for beefing up one’s emergency fund.
Why don’t many people set it aside for a specific purpose?
Spare change isn’t really top of mind due to the convenience of card and digital payments.Furthermore, coin-counting machines have become less available in recent years as banks remove them from their branches. So, it is less convenient for consumers to convert coins into bills or something that’s easier to spend, such as a digital gift code.
How much of an impact can spare change make?
Depending on how often one uses cash, spare change can add up to hundreds of dollars a year. However, the general trend is likely to reduce the impact of spare change as physical currency loses favorability among consumers.
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