Free range money, the final post

The end of the finical year wizzed past me, and my Free Range Money Challenge finished.
I have been so caught up with some other things, so it was only tonight before I could do a final count on the cans in the back yard.
How did I go I hear you all asking?
Well I was able to save myself $93.50 in petrol dockets found.
I found $8.40 in various places. Most of it was in 5c, 10c and 20c coins. (it is funny how many people will walk over a 10c coin.)
I was able to return $49.00 in coin deposit shopping trolleys.
And finally I found $47.23 in cans, or if I was living in Adelaide it would have been $472.30.

What did I find out? Apart from this is a lot of hard work, I think my can figure points to the need for a national can deposit system.

Assuming that half the cans counted here were cans I found in the gutter (and the other half were given to me by various friends), and assuming that I would find similar numbers of bottles (I did not count the plastic bottles I found, but it was around the same number of bottles to cans), then these figures show the numbers of un-recycled cans and bottles in my little patch of the world.

And this in a city that is supposed to be the best recycling city in Australia.

At the half-way mark

Six months into my free-range money challenge, and things are going well.

I have made over $100 from Free Range money.

And as a bonus, on the way home from a New Years Eve party, we found this by the side of the road, our first can of 2010.

How time flies

It has been nearly a month since i blogged, and a few milestones have passed in my free range money challenge.

1. I passed the $10 mark for cans collected. In fact i am now approaching the $15 mark. I only need 65 cans and if i can keep my average of 10 cans a day going i will pass this total soon.
2 I passed the $60 total in my challenge.

I have decided to no longer keep the money as coins in my home. While Jars of 5 and 10 cent pieces made for a nice photo, i found the concept of keeping (and advertising) that i had that much money lying around my house to be a poor idea. While $60 is not much money (in the scale of things), if i can make $60 in four months, then by the end of this challenge i will have around $200 in small change at my house (and you would not want to go advertising that you had that much money in lying around).

I also have to come clean here. Not all the cans i get are ones i find lying in the street. A couple of friends drink large amounts of brown fizzy drink and they pass their empty cans on to me. I will not mention which makers of brown fizzy drink they drink, however if these fizzy drink makers want to sponsor me i will give them a plug.

But about half the cans in my totals ido find, so the search continues. And my dog enjoys the walks.

Free Range money update.

For the past three months i have been collecting free range money around Canberra, and i have finally cracked the $50 mark.

Now i hear people saying that $50 over three months equals, not much money. But this is not much money that i would have missed out on, and it has cost me nothing to collect it.

A person i work with asked me if i was worried about disease? Well there are risks involved in picking up cans that are lying around, but there are also things you can do to minimise these risks.

1. If you have a grabber use it, if you do not, then pick up the cans by their base only (and not the bit you drink from). This way there is less chance of touching the drinkers saliva.
2. Always carry plastic bags and put cans in the plastic bag. If I do not have a plastic bag, i will squash the can, and leave it there until i can come back with a plastic bag.
3. There are three ways to squash a can. One was is stand the can on end and step on it. Only do this if you are certain the can is empty, and if you are wearing heavy boots. Otherwise squash the can lengthwise.
4. Finally, get used to not touching your face/ eating unless you have just washed your hands. It takes a little while to get used to doing this, but it can be done. If you are the sort of person who when handling raw meat in the kitchen and not scratch your nose when it itches then you will know what i mean. I also carry a little bottle of antibacterial hand wash, but i will only use it if i need to wash my hands and have no other options for washing them.

Anyway, my tally's for Free Range money stand at:

• Trolleys Returned $12.00
• Cans found $8.93
• Petrol dockets $30.00
• Money found $5.50
• Free range money total $56.43

Free range money update – six weeks into the challenge.

Here we are six weeks into the free-range money challenge, and I seem to have hit a wall. Sure I am still finding cans around the place, but it seems to be getting harder to find shopping fuel dockets and trolleys.

This is either because the credit crisis is biting harder and people are being more frugal, and either keeping their dockets or competing with me for dockets, or they are buying less and not getting fuel dockets to start with.

The six week total is $32.94, and the jar of coins is starting to get full. I will obviously have to move them into a bigger jar for the next update.

Free Range Money - The July update

I have been collecting Free Range Money for a month now, and the amount collected is still growing. $21.38 in a month is good going and if i can keep this up i will make over $200 in this financial year.

Some people who i work with think i am a little strange, stopping and picking up cans all the time, but I Guess this proves the old adage of "count your pennies and pounds look after themselves".

Free Range Money - 12 July

Well here it is, week two of the free range money challenge and I figured I might as well do a progress report.
Cans collected 131 or $1.31
Shopping trolley returned $1
Petrol dockets $7.50
Money found/given $0.20



This gives me a total free range money for the two weeks of $8.91. The recent federal government tax cut gave me an extra $8.40 a week.

I have also decided to impose some rules on myself. As this is a self imposed challenge, I can make and change rules as I please.

• I cannot beg. These first two sound obvious but I have to put it on the record. I cannot beg for your money, cans or shopping dockets, however, if you decide to give them to me, then that is ok.
• I cannot steal. In the same vain, taking something from private property is wrong, but taking it from a public place is ok.
• I cannot go through recycling bins for cans, however if cans are obviously put into the normal garbage, then they are fair game. But it must be obvious. I do not want to go digging around in peoples garbage.

Free Range Money

Well a new financial year is approaching, and it is time to start a new challenge for blog posts.

The Quest for free range money.

Aka, how much money can I find in a year just lying around. I can see four main sources for this income.

1. shopping trolley deposits – Several supermarkets near I frequent require deposits for the use of their shopping trolleys. Some people do not return them, so these I will take back and collect the money.
2. Can collecting – Aluminium cans currently have a scrap value of 92 cents per kilo, or about 1c per can.
3. A great man said “a penny saved is a penny earned” so any shopping fuel discount dockets found, and used (however, not the dockets I get for my shopping) can be considered free range money.
4. Any coinage (or notes) found in the street are to be included. This also included gifts of money (but not birthday, xmas presents money).

The goal is to prove in these tight financial times, and also that people are wasteful of the recourses around them.

I will report at least monthly on this blog, and more often if I feel like it.