Loose change

When we moved into our home 16 years ago, we found some old glass apple cider jugs in the root cellar. Aside from being something cool to find, they make great piggy banks or, in my case, a vacation fund. 

We’ve been using this jug for our change for as long as I can remember. It helped out a lot when we needed to save money for things when our boys were younger…ski passes, class trip money, etc.

Since the guys are now grown and have jobs, the jug has become Marty and my vacation fund. Namely, a trip to Paris someday. 

I know, of course, some loose change won’t be enough to pay for the trip, but it can pay for our meals, wine, and possibly spending money.

We booked our first trip together in 25 years last February. We finally had the time and money that we saved for a long time. We were so exhausted from the business that we were going to an all-inclusive resort in Playa del Carmen with top-shelf booze and gluten-free friendly to relax. 

Then Covid-19 hit. I was sure last March things would be fine and our trip the last week of April would still happen. Well, we all know it didn’t. 

We booked through an Expedia-type booking agent, and there were no refunds. We didn’t book the just-in-case option; what could happen?

When the trip was canceled, I was sick to my stomach more than disappointed that all of our hard-earned money was gone. Maybe 2 or 3 grand isn’t a lot to some people, but it was a small fortune for us. 😭

Marty tried calling the booking agent every day to see if we could get a refund but kept getting a message that we couldn’t speak to someone until 48 hours before our scheduled trip. The whole world was canceling their trips. 

Finally, Marty got through to someone, and they refunded our resort money entirely, but we had to speak with United Airlines to find out about airfare money. 

United Airlines gave us full credit to be booked by February 2022. We honestly try to pay it forward, volunteer, donate as much as possible, and try to be good people; I felt like we got back a little from the universe with this good news.  

We won’t travel until the pandemic is under control. We have to book the flights by February 2022 but don’t have to use them by then…so we still have time.

Will we go to Paris? Not if Europe isn’t over Covid. A tropical resort? Probably not. We may use the $1,000 in airline credit to go somewhere right here in our country. 

So my loose change jug shattered a month ago when I was putting change in it. It made a mess, and I had to be careful not to get glass shards in my fingers when separating the coins. It sucked and took forever to separate the coins.

Since then I’ve been looking for a new piggy bank and looked on our bar, the huge glass bottle of Jim Beam would be perfect, and is almost empty. 

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Yeah, we have a serious bar complete with a real bar refrigerator and a below zero-degree tequila shot dispenser. We don’t fool around when it comes to cocktails. LOL, The bar fridge we purchased second hand for a song and a dance. It ended up coming into our house when we figured out it wouldn’t fit in our production kitchen. 

I still have to roll all the change; I won’t give Coinstar money, which would be lazy. I will not be cashing the coins in for paper money; it’s way too easy to spend that way. I’ll keep the rolls of coins in our safe until the right time comes. At the end of the day, the jug was almost full anyway. This mishap forced me to get rolling sooner than later and polish off that bottle of Jim Beam! 😜