I heart Coinstar

Hoarding change for a year at a time can really pay off. Every day, I dump all of my change into a heavy duty plastic bag formerly used to hold a comforter. Today I took 42 pounds of change to the Albertson's grocery store on 145th and spent 10 minutes pouring it into the Coinstar machine. The result? A $590 Amazon gift certificate (if you take the gift certificate option there is 0% service charge). The Coinstar experience continues to get better and better each year that I go. The machines are more sophisticated and the partnerships through gift cards are great.

We used to own the stock in our investment club and sold it about 6 months ago for quite a profit. I may have to look into where they're at again...