GatewayRedbirds.com

It's more of a travesty that they don't take fives.

it's one of the reasons i always use the self checkout. i just dump every bit of change, especially pennies, into the change insertion area. I don't want change. I seem to always have several dollars worth in my purse. so I don't even count it, I just give it to the self checkout machine.

Luckily, I rarely grocery shop during peak times. But my local store has a funnel system for accepting change. So I literally just dump handfuls of change in the funnel. I probably wouldn't bother if I had to literally put one coin in a slot, at a time.

Green Coinstar machines are ubiquitous in grocery and big discount stores around the country; for a nearly 10% fee, they'll sort your change for you and give you bills in return. We'll be the first to admit that rolling coins is tedious work (especially since many banks make you put your name and address on every single roll), but that 9.8% fee that the company charges seems steep for something your kid could do in his or her spare time.

Now comes the news that Coinstar has begun expanding on a little-known program that eliminates that fee as long as the customer is willing to have their pennies converted into retailer gift cards rather than cash.Coinstar still gets its cut; the fee is subsidized by the merchants whose cards are purchased. According to media reports, big retail names like Starbucks, The Gap, iTunes and Amazon are all participating in the program.