Just over 3 years ago, I began a savings plan that was basic and simple. At the end of the day, I placed all coins with less than 50 centavos value into a used 2 liter soft drink bottle. Now that we are preparing to return to the States, we thought it a good time to see what we earned (A penny saved is a penny earned, Benjamin Franklin).

Our Bottle-o-loot

Our next task was to count the loot. We decided on a “divide and conquer” method. Dividing the coins into their respective denominations. Since the under .50 category only has R$.25, R$.10, and R$.05, that makes only 3 piles to deal with. The “penny” was done away with a few years ago by popular demand. Stores round the purchase price up or down to the nearest R$.o5. Even in the States, people leave pennies or take pennies from the little dish in front of the cash register…. just the next step I suppose, is to not worry about them at all.

As One-Eyed Bart would say.... "Ooohh, money, money, money, money...."

We then were able to stack the monies into appropriate counting divisions. This made us feel like we were REALLY counting some money. In the end, it was a grand total of R$ 141,90.  That is about US$ 89.25.  Not bad for loose change that I really did not want to carry around anyway…

So what now???? Dinner.  That is right. After a family vote, we have decided to go out to eat at a nice restaurant (or semi-nice). The kids had fun and the parents had fun watching the kids. Now to look forward to our next term on the field. And a great big thank you to you for sharing in our little family entertainment.

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