About a year ago, my bank account was locked up for a month by one of my creditors. During that time, I lived on foodstamps, free stuff from homeless services centers, and found money. In terms of absolute numbers, by far, most of that found money was pennies. On one occasion, I had 83¢ in my pocket. It was 43 pennies, one nickel, one dime and one quarter. So, nearly half the monetary value was in three coins. Finding nickels, dimes and quarters was a big deal and I learned to really value that.
At the time, I was too ill to do recycling. In recent weeks, I have been well enough to do a little recycling. Bottles and cans are worth 5¢ or 10¢ each. So finding recyclables is like finding nickels and dimes, not pennies. It is also something I can find more reliably than actual money because people discard bottles and cans as trash.
In recent weeks, recycling money plus found money has accounted for about $30 to $40 a month in untaxable, legal income that does not impact my eligibility for foodstamps (or potentially other benefits, though foodstamps is all I am currently getting). It has made a far larger impact on my quality of life than it seems like it should.
I recently ran some numbers. After paying debts and other bills, I typically have $400 or less for food, clothing, etc each month. So, yes, $40 is a substantial bump in disposable income and makes a real difference in my ability to keep myself adequately fed. I also feel better about it than I would, say, panhandling because it adds real value to the world for me to delitter for fun and profit. It benefits me and the world rather than just shifting wealth from a have to a have not.
Figuring out how money is made -- how to create value and make money as a result -- is one of my biggest personal challenges. I was a homemaker for a long time. I tend to do things for other people just to be "nice." And it gets me victimized a lot. I have heard other people on the street say similar things. So I am looking to change my psychological relationship to money. Change in my pockets, from found money and from recycling, is serving as an important agent of psychological change.
And that's a good thing.