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Saving money can for many people be a difficult thing to do, particularly when it comes to loose change that we all tend to accumulate each day. However when saved up over a long enough period, pocket change can suddenly become a substantial amount of money, certainly enough to make saving it worth while.

To get your saving started the best thing to do is firstly invest in either a money box or a piggy bank of some sort. However many people simply use large jars, or even bottles, provided the opening at the top is large enough. Also available from many places are large plastic bottles specifically made for collecting spare change. If you have a large amount of change, then perhaps even a coin sorter would be a good thing to get if you can find one cheaply. And of course once you have a place for all that spare change, the only step after that is to fill that place with money.

A good habit to get into is to empty all the change out of your wallet every time you get home after having made a purchase. Whether that might be a penny or two from having bought a coffee in the morning, or even several dollars after the grocery shopping, it all goes into the box. This will make the money you save quickly add up, and you will be surprised how much you put in there every week, particularly if several people are contributing.

Getting the whole family involved will not only make the money add up much faster, but can teach children from an early age the importance of saving their money. A good idea that many people do in fact is give the money that they save up to their children to start a savings account with. This over time can add up to several thousand dollars, particularly if you put the change money into it regularly.

To give you some idea of just how much change can make a difference to your finances, the large change bottles that are widely available can often hold around one thousand dollars when full. These bottles are usually replicas of either beer or soft drink bottles, and stand around three feet high. With several people contributing change regularly to a bottle, it can even get filled up two or three times per year.

If you are planning to do this over the long term, then you can usually get very good interest rates with accounts that allow deposits but not withdrawals for a certain time period. So for example an account that cannot be withdrawn from for ten years might have an interest rate double that of a regular savings account. If you are only using this money for your children for the future anyway, then not being able to withdraw it shouldn't be a problem.

An important thing to remember is not to take any money out of the piggy bank after you have started it. This tends to start a downward spiral where you will find yourself taking money from it on a regular basis and in effect counteracts the purpose of saving the money up anyway. One of the easiest ways of doing this is to put the jar or box in a difficult to reach spot, or to have a key opening back. This then means that you will have to find the key before you can get the back of the box open to release all the money.

Some people once having saved their money might be tempted to get their change exchanged for paper money in a coin counting machine found in most malls and supermarkets. The problem with this however is that these machines tend to charge between 7 and 12 cents per dollar for their services. This is pretty expensive when you consider that this same service is free in most banks. While some banks refuse to accept large quantities of change, they all by law have to accept change if it is being deposited into an account and not just being exchanged.

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