Funny money?

[DaBigE]

I don't understand people that pay bills at the last minute.  First, I don't like leaving things on my to do list.  More importantly, banks and credit card companies have been known to mess with electronic payment "processing times" in order to ding people with late fees.

Some people don't have the money to pay until the last minute...

I think they were referring to those who choose to pay last minute.

[bugo]

A fellow road guy from Australia sent me a package that I received today.  It contained some Vegemite, some Australian BBQ sauce, and some Australian money, mostly coins but also a $5 bill.  I'm going to have to return the favor soon.

[english si]

What would be the American equivalent of Vegemite to send over?

As someone who likes Marmite, so Vegemite shouldn't taste awful I decided to buy some a few years back. A friend was thankfully also curious and swapped it for some proper Marmite, or it would have gone in the bin.

So maybe that brown fat from Pennsylvania that calls itself chocolate...

[Scott5114]

Nutella probably fills the same niche here, but it's Italian-made.

[vtk]

Is canned spray cheese distinctly American enough?  How about spam?

[kphoger]

Marshmallow fluff.  Now there's something distinctly American!

[SP Cook]

Peanut butter.  Most of the rest of the world finds it disgusting.

[mgk920]

Also cinnamon, loved in the USA and reviled everywhere else.

Mike

[Alps]

Also cinnamon, loved in the USA and reviled everywhere else.

Mike

Cite? And this is getting way OT.

[NE2]

Bringing it back on topic, crack rolled in $100 bills.

[Special K]

What would be the American equivalent of Vegemite to send over?

As someone who likes Marmite, so Vegemite shouldn't taste awful I decided to buy some a few years back. A friend was thankfully also curious and swapped it for some proper Marmite, or it would have gone in the bin.

So maybe that brown fat from Pennsylvania that calls itself chocolate...

If you want to send the American equivalent, just have Chuck Norris poop in a zip-loc baggie.

[english si]

Is canned spray cheese distinctly American enough?

That's the winner.

Chuck Norris poop would be a bit nicer than Vegemite, though similar in taste.

[1995hoo]

Also cinnamon, loved in the USA and reviled everywhere else.

Mike

Hungarians would disagree with you.

[kphoger]

Also cinnamon, loved in the USA and reviled everywhere else.

Mike

Hungarians would disagree with you.

It also features prominently in Mexican cuisine as well as, I believe, that of northern Greece.  Certainly not reviled everywhere but here–in fact, it is used for savory dishes in other countries more than it is here.

[1995hoo]

Also cinnamon, loved in the USA and reviled everywhere else.

Mike

Hungarians would disagree with you.

It also features prominently in Mexican cuisine as well as, I believe, that of northern Greece.  Certainly not reviled everywhere but here–in fact, it is used for savory dishes in other countries more than it is here.

I suppose the major difference with the use of cinnamon in the US is that many times if you say "cinnamon" what people actually think of is the mixture of cinnamon and sugar that many people like to put on their toast, rather than the pure stuff that's used in savory dishes.

I mentioned Hungarian mainly because my wife is a naturalized US citizen whose parents were from Hungary.

[mgk920]

I mentioned that in that I read an article a number of years ago that said that in many parts of the World (obviously not the ones in the replies), that stuff is looked upon much like how we look upon Vegemite™.



Anyways, one of the biggest ongoing complaints that I keep hearing from non-USAians is that the USA does not put denomination numbers on its coins.  OTOH, with the years of ongoing inflation since the dropping of the gold standard in 1933 (I figure that the USA has had about an 80:1 overall inflation since then), the USA's current slate of coins is now of so little real practical use that I suppose that it no longer really matters.

When the USA's fiscal situation is returned to some sense of sanity and we are able to refarm the slate of coins and banknotes, that situation can be corrected.

Mike

[english si]

There's still the issue of little differentiation between notes, though improvements have been made in recent years.

I don't like the 1, 5, 10, 25 pattern of coins, but that's being used to the European 1, 2, 5 system (which the US has for notes). Then again, as a dollar is half a pound (or at least that's what the Canadian, Australian and New Zealand ones started at), then the quarter would be a half-crown (2/6), dime would be a shilling, nickel sixpence. When the UK decimalised it went with the Florin, rather than the half-crown. The half-crown lasted longer than the florin, as they changed the design of the latter in 1968 to say '10 new pence' instead of '2 shillings' or whatever, whereas they minted half crowns right up until 1970, when they were declared not to be money any more. Florins, however remained valid money until 1993, when they changed the 10p coin to not be the same as the florin.

[agentsteel53]

1, 2, 5 system (which the US has for notes)

we barely have a 2.  it's really a 1-5-10-20-50-100 system these days.  20 is the highest seen regularly, but 50s and 100s are getting more and more use.

the 50 is, for whatever reason, less common than the 100 - maybe because people figure if you're gonna take out a lot of cash, you may as well have it occupy half as much space in your wallet.

whenever I pay for a small amount with a 100, only about 5% of the time do I get a 50 in change.  Usually it is 20s.

[1995hoo]

1, 2, 5 system (which the US has for notes)

we barely have a 2.  it's really a 1-5-10-20-50-100 system these days.  20 is the highest seen regularly, but 50s and 100s are getting more and more use.

the 50 is, for whatever reason, less common than the 100 - maybe because people figure if you're gonna take out a lot of cash, you may as well have it occupy half as much space in your wallet.

whenever I pay for a small amount with a 100, only about 5% of the time do I get a 50 in change.  Usually it is 20s.

I remember using a $50 at a McDonald's once and the cashier initially refused to accept it because he had never seen one and insisted it wasn't real money. This was in the days before McDonald's took plastic and after a few minutes of this nonsense I asked them to summon the manager, who promptly berated the cashier for refusing the money instead of just calling him in the first place.

I liked the €200 banknote and thought it was a good idea to have something worth more than €100 but less than the controversial €500 "gangster's note." With the value of the dollar having declined over the last 20 years I feel like $100 doesn't go that far anymore (our weekly grocery shopping for two people usually tops $100) and isn't the large amount of money it once seemed, and I've often thought it would be convenient to have something more than the $100 for situations where you either need to carry cash or don't want to pay with plastic. Of course the $500 and $1000 and the rest were dropped in 1969 for a number of reasons and the rise of electronic payments and alternative methods of paying (such as the far more widespread use of credit cards today, not to mention debit because that didn't really exist back then in a consumer form) mean that the need for cash payment for larger amounts is greatly reduced. But I'm sure almost everyone has encountered a time when you wanted to pay cash for something that cost more than $150. I suppose a $250 bill would be consistent with US monetary practice (25¢ coin), but then I guess a $200 would be consistent with the way we have a $20 bill instead of a $25 bill, and I guess the idea of round hundred-dollar multiples theoretically makes giving change easier.

I'm not going to hold my breath either way, of course. I rather think the chances of the $1 bill being dropped are higher than the chances of there ever again being US currency in denominations higher than $100.

[agentsteel53]

I'm not going to hold my breath either way, of course. I rather think the chances of the $1 bill being dropped are higher than the chances of there ever again being US currency in denominations higher than $100.

I'm pretty sure the $1 will go away well before the $500 is issued again, but given that inflation is inevitable, we are almost guaranteed to see a $500, while the $1 note may be kept around despite its obsolescence, just like the 1c coin.

I usually have 2-4000 in hundreds whenever I go to a show and anticipate buying signs.

[vdeane]

1, 2, 5 system (which the US has for notes)

we barely have a 2.  it's really a 1-5-10-20-50-100 system these days.  20 is the highest seen regularly, but 50s and 100s are getting more and more use.

the 50 is, for whatever reason, less common than the 100 - maybe because people figure if you're gonna take out a lot of cash, you may as well have it occupy half as much space in your wallet.

whenever I pay for a small amount with a 100, only about 5% of the time do I get a 50 in change.  Usually it is 20s.

It might also be that notes over 20 are not always accepted, and the 100 is easily divisible into 20s while the 50 is not.

Also, all US coins have something listing their value, though it's not consistent and not always helpful:
-The penny says "one cent"; as long as you know what a cent is, you're fine
-Similarly, the nickel says "five cents"
-The dime, most unhelpfully, says "one dime".  I guess you're screwed if you don't know that a dime is 10 cents, but if you know that but not what a dime looks like, you're set.
-The quarter says "quarter dollar".  This works as long as you don't mind doing math.
-I had to look this one up on Google, but half dollars say "half dollar".  Kinda a merger of the dime and quarter, but that's what happens when the name of the coin is the name of the amount.
-Presidential dollars say "$1"

[Dr Frankenstein]

Meanwhile in Canada: "1 CENT", "5 CENTS", "10 CENTS", "25 cents", "1 dollar", "2 dollars".

It seems that some special issues like the Grey Cup one in my pockets (Steve: heads up if you don't have that one) are exceptions. It just says "CANADA [maple leaf] DOLLAR".

[kphoger]

-The dime, most unhelpfully, says "one dime".  I guess you're screwed if you don't know that a dime is 10 cents, but if you know that but not what a dime looks like, you're set.

And what person visiting our country would know that a dime is ten cents?  Or what child learning how to count money would assume a dime is ten cents?  If we're going to be confusing, let's replace QUARTER DOLLAR with TWO BITS.

[SP Cook]

the 50 is, for whatever reason, less common than the 100 - maybe because people figure if you're gonna take out a lot of cash, you may as well have it occupy half as much space in your wallet.

I have heard a lot of people say they consider the $50 "unlucky".  That is a commonly held idea in casinos, where some people will walk away from a table if you put down 50s to get chips, and the cage will never, never, try to pay you with 50s.  Perhaps this superstition has passed to the general world.

[vtk]

If we have to do everything in decimal, then the 1-2-5-10 sequence makes the most sense.  The 25¢ coin makes exactly as much sense as a hypothetical $4 note or coin.

As for US currency, the penny needs to go.  I'd say the nickel should go too, but then we'd have to round cash transactions to 10¢ and yet still have the quarter.  (If we had a 20¢ piece instead, we'd be set.)  On the other hand, if we killed the penny, nickel, and the dime, then we can just round everything to 25¢, which I think is still small enough to be practical.  And then, aside from spreadsheets and accounting, we can write amounts as fractional dollars and forget the cents altogether.

I also think we need to drop paper bills under $10.  Mint coins of $1, $2, $5, $10, maybe even $20 in quantities sufficient that people will treat them as ordinary money and not novelties.

And we need some practical coin-oriented wallet designs.