by Laurie Childree

Created on: September 02, 2009   Last Updated: September 11, 2009

You're frustrated because you can't manage to save any money or get ahead in the least. There are somethings that you can do. That dream of having a house built from the ground up could actually be a reality one day. All you have to do is start appreciating the penny.

Saving money is a good way to help insure your financial future. Even the smallest of amounts of money will add up over time. Whether you save dollars or pennies they can both help you to pave the path to financial freedom. While you have a budget with goals and a financial plan to meet them you may just be missing the big picture. Where do you start with savings? How do you use pennies to gain financial freedom? Easy, you allow them to be a base for large savings.

It all adds up. A penny by itself is just one cent but when you have a lot of them you get a dollar, even five dollars. It's not that hard to save your pennies, most of us get them as change whenever we go to the store. How many of us dig for them to pay for purchases instead of getting more or simply leave them in the change bin by the cash register? We don't like getting them so we tend to forget they add up.

When you take all the pennies you get in a week even if you only end up with two or three and put them in a jar at the end of the week you have 0.03 cents. Even if you only get three cents once a week at the end of the month you'll have twelve cents in your jar. A year is fifty-two weeks so at three cents a week in a year you'll have $1.56 in your jar. While this is just a small amount you have to remember that pennies are the start of all change.

This means that all the change you get will add up in time. Every time you pay for a purchase there is not need to dig for the exact change, instead breaking a dollar and putting the change in a jar when you get home will help to grow your savings faster. Do you regularly take advantage of sales and cents off coupons for purchases? Even if you do the chances are that you don't put this amount aside to save. Those coupons add up, 70 cents here, 40 cents there. If each time you used a coupon you put the corresponding amount into a jar you would notice the way that it adds up over time.

Can you imagine how much money you'd have if you took the face value of the coupons and put it into a jar at home? The face value adds up, so does the difference in the costs of items that you purchase. Even if you only manage to save two dollars on your grocery bill a month at the end of the year that's $24 you could have added to your savings. If you save that $24 a year over five years you'll have $120.00. Now can you imagine if you'd saved all your change in addition to a percentage of your paycheck each payday.

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