Ever wonder what happens to your money when it leaves your hand? Well, with the Where’s George website, you can find out!
The other day, we took the kids out on an adventure to get my daughter’s first hair cut. She has beautiful baby fine curly hair, but lately it was looking a little wild. I had been putting off having it cut, since she is such a girly-girl and has been begging to wear clips and princess combs in her hair. Still, she had begun to resemble Einstein. I knew that we had reached the last straw when the nurse at our pediatrician’s office told my adorable little girl that she had “crazy hair.”
So, off the the salon we went. She did really well, and looked forward to the bright yellow lollipop that she knew was waiting at the end. We paid the bill and tip and got back a bunch of singles. One of the the single dollar bills was a tiny message stamped on the edge. it read: “Want to track this bill? Go to www.wheresgeorge.com.” Well, of course I couldn’t resist a challenge, so as soon as we got home, I looked it up.
The Where’s George web site was started back in 1998, as a fun way to track money as it travels across the country. Users input the serial numbers on their bills (any denomination, although dollar bills are probably most likely to travel around more frequently) and then wait to see if they get a “hit.” A hit occurs when someone like me visits the site and reports on the bill, inputting the serial number and leaving a message as to the current location of the bill, what condition it is in, etc.
Registration on the site is free but not required. Registering allows other users to send you private e-mail, and makes it possible for the web site to e-mail you if a hit occurs on a bill you’ve entered. The web site says that you can get a hit in as little as two weeks or as long as six months. This all depends on luck. A bill may sit in a bank or someone’s pocket for a very long time before it is spent. And then, even when it is floating around out there, there is no guarantee that anyone will read the message and bother checking the web site report on where that bill has been.
Our bill? Well the last place it was reported to be was Sugar Land Texas about a year ago. It traveled more than 1,300 miles before it came into our hands here in Pennsylvania, at a rate of 3.2 miles a day. The kids thought that was really fun. We haven’t spent the bill, yet. My husband thinks we should pick someone randomly in California and mail it off, but I think that might be artificially inflating the travel of this bill. I am more likely to give it to my father, who lives in New York City, to spend. There is no telling where our George may end up next!
Mary Ann Romans writes about her family’s money saving secrets in the Frugal Living Blog here at Families.com
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