Sometimes the simplest strategies are the best.

Writing at Wise Bread, Thursday Bram reveals how she's used the most elementary of savings tools -- the piggy bank -- as a way to sharpen and improve her financial life.

When I was a sophomore in college, my dad gave me a piggy bank for Hanukkah. I couldn't figure it out at first — had my dad forgotten that I was all grown up and didn't need a piggy bank for my pennies anymore? It was an adorable little pig, though and I put it on my desk as a decoration. Pretty soon, the pig was full. I wasn't sure how it happened, really, but who was I to turn down the $20 I had in pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters? I took it with me to the bank and deposited my change — I wasn't about to roll all that change myself.

Bram writes that the piggy bank helped her pay more attention to the minutae of how she was spending money, and it bolstered her savings, as well.

I was able to think about it as a saving tool — it was money that I would have lost if I wasn't putting it in the pig, and I worked hard to remember that fact. That money went straight into my savings account. It came in handy, too: the clunker I drove died on me one day and without my savings, I'm not really sure that I would have been able to get my car fixed.

I've got a plastic cup that I put my change in -- once it's full, I take it to the store and use the Coinstar (not the penny-pinching option, perhaps, but convenient). Unfortunately, I tend the treat the money as a windfall -- it goes into my wallet.

What do you do with your spare change? Do you have a strategy for capturing it and using it?

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