Leslie DeVries has spent about 10 years dropping spare $1 bills into a five-gallon water jug at the back of her wardrobe. The habit has built a cash pile of roughly $16,500 (about £12,200), earmarked for the family holiday she is planning. Left in the jug, that money earned nothing.
Had she funnelled the same singles into a low-cost stock index fund over the same period, she could have had several thousand dollars more.
