America's Money: In their own words

Hotel bell captain, 37, Seattle, Wash.

I live in Seattle, and we are pretty close to Canada, eh? Well, it used to be that our dollar was so much stronger than the Canadian dollar, that we would go up there all the time - always the best hotels and the best hockey seats in town.

Anyway, we always had lots of change from Canada. It seemed almost worthless, so we always just put it in a jar, or a drawer somewhere. Well, with the things the way they are now, I decided to go through all those jars of disposable change to see what was what. It turns out that I now have a huge "piggy bank" of Canadian coins that is worth several hundred dollars -- no, not Canadian, but U.S. dollars.

I took the train up to Canada and now have a few hundred extra dollars that just a few years ago would have been rated as curious metal junk. Sadly, I can't afford hockey tickets in Vancouver anymore.

NEXT: Joe Ross: 'Fools' for saving