Abolish Pennies

[bush24]

Americans are lucky, in Canada $1 and $2 are all coins. Think your pockets are heavy?

[free4now]

I used to run a little candy station at work where people would take candy I bought at costco and put coins in a little box. Pennies were the bane of my existence. Banks require you to roll up coins in wrappers to accept more than $10 worth. Coinstar charges 9% which is just ridiculous.

I think I would spend on average about 20 minutes to wrap up $100 worth of mixed coins using the coin counting cups I had. When I got into the process I thought I'd just throw the pennies into the coinstar machine and wrap the bigger coins to save the coinstar fee. But it turns out that most of my time went towards separating the coins; the counting and wrapping was fairly quick. It was almost as quick to count and wrap the pennies as to make a trip to the coinstar machine with them (which also takes time).

The takeaway is that you can't save yourself much penny hassle by discarding the pennies; the time it takes you to pick through your change and leave the pennies at the store or in your penny jar is in aggregate probably about the time it takes to spend or cash those pennies in.

As far as picking up pennies, it takes me probably 5 seconds to decide the penny doesn't belong to anyone else, pick it up, pocket it, and bank it. One penny for 5 seconds work is about minimum wage, and it's literally backbreaking work. Imagine a job that would require bending down to the ground every five seconds and paid only minimum wage with no benefits... would you take it?

[Martha]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bush24 Americans are lucky, in Canada $1 and $2 are all coins. Think your pockets are heavy?

Yeah, I got some Loonies in my desk drawer. Every once in a while I lose one in the pop machine at work which have to be retrieved by staff.

[MJ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MJ When I ride my bike around the city, I must pass 40 to 70 pennies. In NY, the streets are definitely paved with copper,nickel, zinc(?). If I had to stop to pick each one up, a 1 hour ride would take 2 hours.

I definitely stop to pick up nickels, dimes and quarters. Although, I can usually spot them easily, even though I am riding my bicycle 15mph. Alas, except for the pennies, the other coins are not very plentiful.

[AltaRed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords Yeah, right.* Next higher euro, sure, but I doubt any businesses are giving up those pfennigs for the sake of our shopping convenience.

I defy anyone to know whether $10.99 is any more correct than $10.00 or $11.00. No one knows what the right price is for anything - it is what the market will bear.

It's called marketing and all the whining about how businesses will round up instead of down doesn't know if the business is already charging you too much or too little. The whole point is that $10.99 is just plain stupid.

[kramer]

My vote is for abolishing pennies.

Today I cashed in about 5500 pennies and 100 nickels at a coinstar machine. If you accept an Amazon gift certificate or Starbucks card instead of cash, you get 100% of the value (and you do not have to get in line at the market where the machine is located, the coinstar machine prints out your certificate). So I got a ~$60.00 Amazon certificate redeemable on-line for anything Amazon offers. Not bad!

It probably took at least 10 minutes for the machine to count those ~5600 coins and about 50 got rejected (dirty pennies), which I just took home with me. The coins had just been sitting there for years, taking space and losing 3% per year to inflation.

I probably have 300 dimes or so which I have not yet decided to trade in via coinstar -- they are so much easier to carry (I travel light). I originally had over $200 worth of quarters, but when I moved to an apartment, I just started using them for laundry and I have reached quarter equilibrium.

For someone like me, this whole coinstar amazon thing is fantastic.

Kramer

[FlowGirl]

No pennies here on overseas military bases. The commissary and PX just round up or down to the nearest nickel. We haven't missed them one bit.

[fire5soon]

When I was in Australia they don't have pennies and round to the nearest nickel. They also use coins for $1 & $2. The smallest bill is $5.

I like this method and say we move toward this in the US. Considering a US $1 only lasts about 6mths, and you see coins from the 1960's all the time, it could save our government a nice mint! (pun intented )

[Craig]

At one time in the U.S., we had the concept of the 'mill' ... 1/10th of a cent, 1/1,000th of a dollar. Our decimal system of money is actually based upon the U.S. Coinage Act of 1792 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_%28currency%29). Until we have enough inflation to move right up to the dime, I would think it is difficult to literally eliminate pennies.

One thing I have noticed is that some restaurants / servers have begun taking the aggressive action of rounding up regarding charges, and reducing your change ... if you owe them $22.89, they round it to $23.00. That certainly discourages a reasonable tip, from my perspective.

A few closet millionaires have helped me see that while there are certainly limits, their balanced approach to leaving very little 'on the table' has been a big part of their success in building net worth.

Count me as one of those guys that stoops over, and picks up the coins. Keeps my back limber, and buys the occasional hamburger.

[sgeeeee]

I don't care whether they abolish pennies or not. But as long as we have them, it is misguided rationalization to pretend that ignoring them at the counter is cost effective or that they aren't worth the effort to pick up.

At the counter: All transactions involve a price with 0 to 4 pennies in required spending every 5 cents of incremental cost. With random pricing, that amounts to an average of 2 cents change per transaction. Count your transactions per day. It doesn't matter whether it's a small or large transaction. At an average of only 5 transactions per day, your pennies are worth $36.50 a year. Invest that amount over the course of a career or retirement and you are talking about several thousand dollars. How much time and effort did it take to collect those pennies? No longer than to collect the rest of your change. How long did it take to spend them? If you check your change each time you make a transaction, you may have to count to as high as 4 before paying. I'm not sure about the rest of you, but that doesn't take me too long. In fact, using exact change usually speeds up the transaction since I can count faster than the typical quick stop clerk.

Picking up change: My DW and I make this a competition. We walk about 5 to 8 miles per day together. We also run errands and visit places on our own. We keep a talley of the money each of us picks up on our travels and see who gets the most each year. This year I won with $36.12. She had over $20.00. Not all of this was in pennies, obviously. But it doesn't take me 5 seconds to pick up a penny. It takes less than a second. Try it. At a second, picking up pennies pays $36/hour.

If you just don't want to count your pennies, do me a favor -- rather than leave them in the dish at the counter, take them with you and throw them on the ground after you leave the building. That way I have a chance of finding them and beating my DW again next year.

[old woman]

I pick up coins including pennies as a form of exercise. I wouldn't get off a bike to pick one up but most times I will if walking. I might not in a pouring rain storm.
When I was in high school in the early 60s some kids refused to pick up pennies and would throw them on the ground. Other kids would pick up or in other ways get pennies. They could get over $5 a school day and minimum wages was 1.25 so it really paid for the minutes they spent.
My main problem with eleminating the penny is grocery shopping. You might buy 40 items and lose a few cents each.

[Sue]

I started picking up change as a way to amuse myself when I walk..* Hey, it's tax-free money and it adds up over time!.* Sometimes you can find piles of pennies around parking meters.* I guess all those people who would like to have the penny abolished, dump them when they're looking for change for the meter.* *The best time to find coins is when the snow piles around parking meters melt, leaving lots of pennies and silver coins behind.

[MJ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ((^+^)) SG Picking up change: My DW and I make this a competition. We walk about 5 to 8 miles per day together. We also run errands and visit places on our own. We keep a talley of the money each of us picks up on our travels and see who gets the most each year. This year I won with $36.12. She had over $20.00. Not all of this was in pennies, obviously. But it doesn't take me 5 seconds to pick up a penny. It takes less than a second. Try it. At a second, picking up pennies pays $36/hour. If you just don't want to count your pennies, do me a favor -- rather than leave them in the dish at the counter, take them with you and throw them on the ground after you leave the building. That way I have a chance of finding them and beating my DW again next year.

For only $1.97 plus $3.94 shipping, I will mail you a map showing all the best penny picking streets in NYC so you can walk yourself into becoming a very wealthy pennyaire.

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sue Sometimes you can find piles of pennies around parking meters.

My favorite spot is the shrubbery around fast-food drive-through windows...

[Spanky]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MJ For only $1.97 plus $3.94 shipping, I will mail you a map showing all the best penny picking streets in NYC so you can walk yourself into becoming a very wealthy pennyaire.

I would not mind to receive a penny for each share traded at the NY stock exchange - from a pennyaire to millionaire quickly.

[Sue]

Turnpike toll boths are also great places, but if you stop and try to retrieve coins, the people behind you aren't particularly tolerant of the delay.

[retire@40]

See, this proves my point. Even a judge doesn't think pennies are good money anymore.

Judge Admonishes Painter Who Paid Debt With Pennies

POSTED: 2:00 pm EST January 3, 2006

KEENE, N.H. -- A judge in Keene didn't see anything funny when a painter paid a court-ordered debt with 33,000 pennies.

Keene District Court Judge Michael Ryan ruled on Tuesday that the $330 in pennies didn't fulfill an order that house painter Roy Edwards pay Keene resident Gerry Day part of a deposit for a painting job.

Edwards and his wife were ordered to return $330 of Day's $1,000 deposit because they never painted the house. The rest of the money wasn't returned because the judge found that the couple did $750 of work.

The painters have said they didn't paint the house because Day and his wife couldn't choose a color and were never satisfied with suggestions.

http://www.thewmurchannel.com/news/5819924/detail.html

[Craig]

I don't see how judges, or others can pull that kind of behavior. They may not like it, but pennies are still legal tender.

[retire@40]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charles I don't see how judges, or others can pull that kind of behavior.* They may not like it, but pennies are still legal tender.

Judges have been making up their own laws lately.

[Theo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by retire@40 Judges have been making up their own laws lately.

They've been doing that for over 200 years.