Drop the Latte Habit, Get a Van

Think of all the things you buy in a day that cost $5 or less: coffee, cab rides, lunch. Now imagine if you skipped those things and put the cash you saved in a jar, and when it reached $14,700, you walked to a car dealership and bought a van.

Well, meet a man who saw his change for what it was: enough to buy a van, even if each note he used to buy it was worth no more than the equivalent of 15 cents.

It took a while, but Mr. Zhao, as the BBC calls him, finally found a dealership in Jining, a northern Shandong province in China, that accepted his bundles and bundles of notes, many of which were stained and torn. All in all, Mr. Zhao handed over 100,000 yuan ($14,700) in small bills.

And it wasn't like when you buy a $4 dollar latte with loose change and you tell them, "Trust me: it's all there." Extra staff actually had to be brought in to the dealership in shifts to help count out all the bills.

"Our finance department originally had three or four people counting the money, but that was certainly not enough," Chen Ying, a cashier with the dealership, told the BBC.

It took hours to confirm all the money was there. Mr. Zhao apparently got the notes from customers at his printing business and held on to them hoping he'd be able to buy the van he wanted.

"I held onto the money waiting to see if they would accept it so that I could buy the car," Mr. Zhao told the BBC. "The manager of this dealership decided to accept my cash, so that was really helpful to me."

Hmm ... a van or 3,675 four buck lattes? Tough call.

Photo by kalleboo via Flickr.