Penny Dreadful - Currency Discussion

[Wolfe]

On the topic of the inconvenience of using pennies in a transaction, I always keep just four pennies in my wallet with some other coins. I could give $3.04 to pay for something that cost $2.79 and get a useful quarter back; or use a quarter, a dime, and the four pennies if the total is $5.39. You don't really need more than four pennies for any amount -- unless you just barely have enough cash on hand to cover the purchase -- so there's no excessive picking around for coins, and you can offload them when possible. As long as the penny is around (and the more people dislike dealing with them), cashiers will appreciate any they can get.

 

[Zenith]

Fair enough.

Should the penny be eliminated, do you think the nickel or the dime should be the lowest denomination? Nickels cost twice their value to manufacture, so there's a big saving to be had.

After some research I found that the half cent was above the dime in value when it was retired. I have not done any formal research into the matter, but I would guess that the dime should be the lowest denomination in currency in order for money to serve its purpose. Nobody cares about 5 cents either.

 

[Liquid]

but I would guess that the dime should be the lowest denomination in currency in order for money to serve its purpose.

That depends, as listed in the OP New Zealand has gone as far as having ten as their lowest denomination or in Sweden's case, getting rid of the subunit entirely.

 

[Zenith]

That depends, as listed in the OP New Zealand has gone as far as having ten as their lowest denomination or in Sweden's case, getting rid of the subunit entirely.

Well the function of the smallest unit of currency is to denominate value down to the point where buyers and sellers don't feel like they are unable to trade an accurate amount of value for a good. If the Swede's don't find themselves wishing they had a smaller unit or even resorting to trading to make up for the lack of denomination, I say it's working fine.

Of course there will always be those people who want to bargain down to the smallest denomination. It'll be nice to stop the people who are bartering down to quarters over $50 items. Those people annoy me.

 

[Grayfox]

I say get rid of it, it is not logical to make something that costs double of what it is worth.

As for rounding, Australia has been doing it for years and the country has not fallen apart cause of it.
A product is $3.93 you have to pay $3.95, Oh no the world will end since you had to pay 2c more
A product is $3.92 you have to pay $3.90, Oh no the world will end since you had to pay 2c less

There is also the debit/keycard option where you pay the exact amount.

 

[Dennisch]

Get rid of all the bills and coins. Just use plastic for everything.

Stores no longer will be robbed of their money. Armoured trucks only need to carry gold and I would not have to carry around all that cash in my pockets. And most of my transactions are already payed with plastic or 0 and 1's

I am pretty sure that there will be some serious flaws with that plan but hey, nobody is perfect.

 

[BobK]

I don't know about others but the majority of my transactions are either completely electronic or plastic. I rarely use cash in a store (the other day was an exception; I paid cash but then again the store was Target). The only time I routinely use cash is when buying gasoline; the card scanners on the pumps are prime places to install skimmers.

I'm okay with the elimination of the cent for general circulation but they should continue to make them for proof sets etc like half dollars and dollar coins. The US Mint hasn't issued a half dollar for general circulation in a couple decades now, and haven't issued any dollars for general circulation in a couple years.

For what it's worth, the US has issued the following denominations for circulation:

Half cent
Cent
Two cent piece
Three cent piece, in both silver and nickel.
Five cent piece, or nickel
Half dime
Dime
Twenty cent piece
Quarter dollar
Half dollar
Dollar, in gold and silver, besides the "golden" dollars made now.
Two dollars
Three dollars
Quarter eagle ($2.50)
Half eagle ($5.00)
Eagle ($10)
Double eagle ($20)

All coins above one dollar are gold.

 

[Keef]

Personally, I like pennies and am in favour of retaining them. However I do seem to have written plenty more on eliminating pennies than preserving them. I agree that charities are very grateful for one and two pence/cent coins and withdrawal might be a negative blow for charities.

Think about it this way.

If you go to a strip club you give the girl a dollar and she puts her tits in your face, right? There's one strip club here in Dayton that doesn't carry $1 bills, though. If you take a hundred and change it they'll give you fifty $2 bills. So because of their scheme the cost of tits in your face just doubled. You're forced to give the stripper a $2 tip for a $1 job. I'd much rather spend two $1 bills getting tits in my face for a little longer than give her a $2 bill straight away. Never go to that strip club without a pocket full of ones.

If I walk into the grocery store, past the Salvation Army guy with the ringy-ding annoying bell in his hand, I'll be damned if I'm tossing a nickel in his bucket. Nickels are useful. But I'll give him the four pennies from my change on my way out. Ringing a stupid bell is only worth so much. If he asked me for a nickel I'd tell him to screw off.

 

[Crash]

Having sticker and listed prices including tax might be a start for North Americans. As I've just posted, as someone who is used to having tax included in the price, I find it strange that you do not. It must be at least a bit awkward having to work out the percentages or additions, whether it is rounded up to the nearest one, two, five or ten.

That's due to the differences in tax rates from locality to locality. Each state, county and city can and does set their own sales tax rates. For example, if I drive 45 minutes south, the sales tax rate there would be slightly lower than where I live now, and that's just because it's in a different county. Even different cities in the same county can have different tax rates. It would be really difficult for a company with multiple stores around a state or the country to advertise a price with tax included as they'll either have to advertise a different price for every single region/store, or they'll have different pricing margins. In order for tax to be reliably and easily included in the final price of a good, the entire country, from California to Maine, will need to have the exact same sales tax.

 

[Slash]

I don't know about you guys, but I'm tired of paying $3.60 and 9/10 cents for a gallon of gasoline. Wut

 

[Grayfox]

Wah?

9/10?

 

[Liquid]

I say get rid of it, it is not logical to make something that costs double of what it is worth.

As for rounding, Australia has been doing it for years and the country has not fallen apart cause of it.
A product is $3.93 you have to pay $3.95, Oh no the world will end since you had to pay 2c more
A product is $3.92 you have to pay $3.90, Oh no the world will end since you had to pay 2c less

There is also the debit/keycard option where you pay the exact amount.

Woah, hold on. I can understand if you withdraw the one and two cent coin, but they still list prices in multiples of one? That would really annoy me. If they withdrew the one pence and two pence was the lowest denomination, list prices should be in multiples of two, if they withdraw the two as well, then list prices in multiples of five and so on.

Yeah, petrol prices are a pain in the arse too. If the price of petrol is listed as 133.9p, I will always quote it as 134p. Sure, if you buy ten litres you'll eventually make the saving but I look at it as if you buy one litre, you will certainly not be paying 133p.

The US Mint hasn't issued a half dollar for general circulation in a couple decades now, and haven't issued any dollars for general circulation in a couple years.

And just to be pernickety, the Kennedy half dollar was last minted for general circulation in 2002, hardly a couple of decades, but it is true that for some reason the 50c coin is not popular in the States.

The Sacajawea and Native American dollars have been minted for circulation since 2000 and still are, but with the exception of 2002-2008.

 

[BobK]

Oops, you're quite correct; I should have said "over a decade". As for the dollars, they really aren't any more. The only way to get them (Presidential or Sacajawea) is directly from the Mint at a healthy premium, thirty five dollars for a twenty dollar roll of coins or in a mint set at an even healthier premium. Congress tried to force the Presidential dollars in particular down our throats by mandating high mintages but all that happened was they just piled up in banks. I don't know why the dollar coin is so unpopular, I prefer using them to paper myself.

As for the half, after Kennedy's assassination Congress authorized a new design for the half dollar. Typically durint the first year of issue of a new series there is a lot of hoarding of the new coins. There was more hoarding than usual in the case of the new half because Kennedy was a popular president. More importantly, the following year silver was removed from our coinage and replaced with copper-nickel "clad" coins. All except the half dollar, which instead had its silver content reduced from 90% to 40%. Silver coinage rapidly disappeared from circulation, of course. Dimes and quarters were replaced by their clad variants, but people continued to hoard the halves.

Cash register drawers had five bins for coins, one for each denomination. When the half dollar disappeared from circulation stores started using the now-unused half dollar bin for other things. People just generally got out of the habit of using halves altogether so by the time a fully-clad version was issued in 1971, nobody really cared.

There's more to the story than that, notably the fact that the half dollar is inconveniently larger than the equivalent two quarters, but that's part of the reason half dollars are effectively no longer in circulation in the US.

 

[Liquid]

I quite like the design of the half dollar, the presidential seal looks good on a silver coloured coin.

I was aware about the ramifications of the 1965 Coin act, but I still don't quite get why the half dollar didn't pick up again when it went cupronickel. Surely there must be cases where using one half dollar plus other small coins is more useful than two quarters and then some smaller coins. To me, getting rid of the 50 pence coin would be utter madness and a real ball ache.

Just out of interest, why do you prefer the dollar coin to the dollar bill? Somewhat rare for that to be the case.

 

[GTsail]

I don't know why the dollar coin is so unpopular, I prefer using them to paper myself.

I like the dollar coins for vending machines. There's a couple of vending machines in New Hampshire on Route 93/3 that I used to frequent when I was traveling up into NH. The machines would take the dollar coins and the change machine that was next to the vending machines would give out dollar coins if you put in a five dollar bill.

But for just general use, I find the dollar coins too heavy, so I prefer the dollar bills.

Respectfully,
GTsail

 

[MatskiMonk]

Keep 'em.

Also they should introduce a £12 note. So I can 3 pints from a note, rather than having to take out a £20 and end up drinking 5 pints

 

[Slash]

I used to use coins a lot but cash is so much easier to handle. I'd rather have 12 $1 bills in my hand than a wad of dollar coins.

 

[Robin]

We have to keep the penny because without it we can't do this.....

.....at which point the world would explode.

 

[BobK]

I quite like the design of the half dollar, the presidential seal looks good on a silver coloured coin.

I was aware about the ramifications of the 1965 Coin act, but I still don't quite get why the half dollar didn't pick up again when it went cupronickel. Surely there must be cases where using one half dollar plus other small coins is more useful than two quarters and then some smaller coins. To me, getting rid of the 50 pence coin would be utter madness and a real ball ache.

Just out of interest, why do you prefer the dollar coin to the dollar bill? Somewhat rare for that to be the case.

I agree about the seal on the reverse, but the portrait is sort of meh in my opinion. Actually I'd like to see a return to designs like we had from 1916 to 1946ish.

As for the dollar, just personal preference I guess, I don't like my wallet getting stuffed with one dollar bills like it has a tendency to do. Plus I think of my pocket as where I put small change and my wallet as where I put Real Money (as in a significant sum of money; there hasn't been any Real Money since 1964 or 1968) and a dollar certainly isn't a significant amount of money any more.

As for why the half dollar didn't make a comeback, recall that stores no longer had halves in the cash registers, they were by now using the bin to hold other things. Consider that store change is where people get a significant amount of their pocket change from. So when a half came in it was tucked away in a corner of the register somewhere, and the store wasn't giving them out in change any more. When a store went to the bank to get more change for the registers, they didn't get any halves because they didn't really have a convenient place to put them any more.

I used to use coins a lot but cash is so much easier to handle.

Errr, coins are cash.

 

[Liquid]

I absolutely loathe the shield design of our coins.

Truly, truly loathe it.

 

[kennylmao]

I used to use coins a lot but cash is so much easier to handle. I'd rather have 12 $1 bills in my hand than a wad of dollar coins.

I never pay with coins. NEVER. I bet cashiers always hate me.

"Do you have 20 cents, sir?"

"Nope."
Even if I do have 20 cents in my pocket.
"Nope."

On topic: My country already scrapped the use of 1 cent coins. God I hate inflation. My monies are getting worthless.

 

[homeforsummer]

I don't know about you guys, but I'm tired of paying $3.60 and 9/10 cents for a gallon of gasoline. Wut

The result of market prices plus taxes for a good that can be bought in near infinitely variable amounts. It's a necessary evil.

And it's also better than them rounding up each denomination and paying even more for gas. Because they sure wouldn't round down...

As for pennies, I used to have loads of them rattling around, but more recently I've started giving denominations under 5p to charities. If I'm buying a sandwich for £1.95 and give them £2, it's easier for me to just get them to put the 5p in the charity box. Frequently do similar online too - I know Dominos online lets you round up the cost of a meal so if you're 12p away from a round number you have the option to donate that 12p to charity.

But yeah, rarely troubled by pennies any more. Can take 'em or leave 'em.

 

[somebody]

Woah, hold on. I can understand if you withdraw the one and two cent coin, but they still list prices in multiples of one? That would really annoy me. If they withdrew the one pence and two pence was the lowest denomination, list prices should be in multiples of two, if they withdraw the two as well, then list prices in multiples of five and so on...

Rounding only takes place at the end of the transaction on the total price, not on individual items.

 

[Liquid]

Which leads me to wonder why list and sticker prices aren't in multiples of five already so no rounding needs to be done at the end of the transaction.

It seems a bit half-arsed to withdraw the one and two cent but not bother adjusting prices to match.

 

[somebody]

Because if you pay by credit card it doesn't get rounded. It's only the coins that have been removed, not the unit of currency.

Sorry if that doesn't sound quite right, but it's 8:27am on Australia day so I'm already 2 meat pies and 3 beers in to celebrations - not everything is entirely clear right now.

 

[Slash]

Errr, coins are cash.

Technically but bills are a lot easier to handle.

 

[Imari]

Small coins are only useful if they provide a meaningful change in value.

I can't think of anything in the world that I would refuse to buy if it cost four cents more. Anything I'd be willing to reach into my pocket to pay one cent for, I wouldn't think twice about paying five cents for.

I'm pretty sure the same would apply all the way to ten cents. Five cents and ten cents are equally trivial amounts of money to me.

Twenty cents is the first non-trivial piece of change in my opinion, that I would actually waste brainpower to think about. Everything below twenty cents could go and it wouldn't change a thing. I might end up spending a few dollars extra a week because of rounding, and I'd only have four different coins to deal with instead of six (or eight if you're comparing to when we had 1 and 2 cent pieces). But I think that the NZ approach is sensible, to keep ten cent pieces going. Once twenty cent pieces start becoming trivial, that's the time to look at axing tens.

 

[BobK]

Technically but bills are a lot easier to handle.

Debatable. Can you tell the denomination of a US bill by touch, for instance?

 

[Liquid]

You actually could with British notes; different sizes.

 

[BobK]

You actually could with British notes; different sizes.

Yes, that's why I specified US notes.