Don't pinch your pennies, change them in for bigger bills

Looking to hang onto your hard-earned cash a little longer? Instead of pinching pennies, research suggests converting them into big bills.

Researchers from New York University found we tend to hang onto $50s, $20s and even $10s longer than we do $1s and $5s. The theory: It's more painful to part with a big bill than it is a little one.

"People tend to over-value large bills relative to an equivalent sum of money in smaller denominations because of self-control reasons," says one of the study's authors, Joydeep Srivastava, professor of marketing at University of Maryland. That "overvaluing" leads us to make more impulse purchase with small bills or "change" than if we the same amount of money (or even a few dollars less) in larger bills.