One of the best ways to save money for a rainy day is to collect and store all of your loose change, for example 1p's, 2p's, 5p's , 10p's and 20p's (or whatever your local currency is). I did this and used the proceeds to pay for a few weeks travelling round Europe earlier this year.

I'm someone who always carries cash around with me. I don't have a credit card, and although I do have a debit card, I nearly always pay by cash, even for goods costing a couple of hundred pounds (which helps negotiate a better deal as retailers generally prefer cash).

The only downside of doing this is that I accumulate a lot of loose change at the end of each day. However after seeing how much my parents saved up through putting all their loose change in jars, I decided to do the same thing, and when I finally got round to counting how much I'd saved up after about 18 months I was delighted to find £785.45 in there.

Not a fortune admittedly but I looked upon this as being free money and I therefore decided to use this money to help pay for a few weeks trotting around Europe and have a bit of fun (one of the joys of working for yourself )

I think the reason I'd saved so much is that I now consider 50p coins to be loose change and so decided to save them as well which really must have helped the fund along nicely.

Anyway the point I want to get across is that if you want to save up some money and treat yourself, then start saving your loose change and you'll be amazed at just how much you can save.