Pictured: A Pretty Dime
Here's the math part, if you dislike math, read the last sentence of this section.
Okay, let's be modest, I'm not going to say you're picking up half-dollars everywhere you go. So you go to school, you find an dime, you come home, you find another dime. 20 cents, and that's if you're putting minimal effort, so we aren't going to suggest you find ten dollars of change everyday on your subway ride.
So picking up money from daily life wise:
$0.20 a day
$1.4 a week
$5.6 a month
$67.2 a year
Though it seem's like very little, that's the "modest" approach.
If you actually tried looking, and picking up change, you could range around 50 cents a day.
$0.50 a day
$3.5 a week
$14 a month
$168 a year
168 dollars? You could buy a point and shoot camera with that much.
Okay, now if you took into consideration, how much change you've gotten back from buying thing's, that help us out as well. Lets pretend you buy things everyday, and on average, you recieve one dollar of change in a day, made up of pennies and nickels.
$1 a day
$7 a week
$30 a month
$360 a year
This is estimated obviously, there aren't 360 days in a year.
But let's be honest here, some day's you won't buy anything, some day's you will. From my experience, everything is getting "odd" in a literal sense, you end up buying things for 1.95 cents, or other strange numbers. Lets up the amount by a fair amount, $1.75 a day.
1.75 a day
12.25 a week
45 a month
588 a year
Now let's add up both, picking up change, and saving change.
$588 + $168 = $756
756 dollars from keeping your change in a jar, and picking change off the ground. To be fully honest, you'll have good days, when you go to the mall on a shopping spree, or you find four-five quarters, or even gold dollars and bad day's when you buy nothing, or find only two pennies, though 756$/year would be most likely your absolute minimum if you put some effort into it.
Lastly,
$756 a year
$1512 two years
$3780 five years
$7560 a decade
You'll have this, in your pocket.
Here are some lame old excuses for picking up and saving change.
"I'm not a peasant! I don't want to pick up pennies from the disgusting ground, who knows what was on there!"
Well, who know's who handled last that five dollar bill in your pocket? It could be some crazy guy with a sick money fetish. You can never know. Accepting any currency except from directly the printing press, puts you at "risk" of "contaminated" money.
Oh really?
"That's honestly not that much."
Not that much? If someone offered you just five dollars every year, would you accept it? If it's free money, and in some cases, your money don't you want to keep it? Except in this case, you can actually buy things at the end of every year, first save/find 756$ a year, then go on a shopping spree, or buy Christmas gifts at nobodies expense.
OH NO! "RKET IN RE?!" NOOO!
"I don't want to pay for a new TV with a bucket of pennies and nickels!"
Did I say put all your change in a little bucket, and carry it to the mall and buy a new flat screen TV? Not at all. Go to the bank, and get the money transfered to either your bank account, or into real currency.
"I use debit card! I can't physically hold on to change!"
Well, if you use debit card, it pretty much does it for you, so you'll already set on that side!
At the end of the day, you can tell your friends you bought a PlayStation 3/Xbox/TV by picking up change from the ground. Now commence in self-clapture. Job well done.