No more new pennies

[Road Hog]

What will happen eventually is everything that is priced .99 will be priced .95 or even to a round dollar. Governments will have to amend tax votes to change amounts from penny level to nickel levels. Gas stations will remove that archaic 9/10 cent pricing.

The retail company that I work for has the contingency that if pennies become unavailable, we'll round the change gien back up to the next nickel and eat the pennies lost. That would stress me out because I want my tills (and for that matter my personal checkbook) balanced to the penny.

[GaryV]

What will happen eventually is everything that is priced .99 will be priced .95 or even to a round dollar.

Lotta good that does after sales tax is applied.

[1995hoo]

You would never need more than 4 pennies.

But you might also need a quarter or two or a couple dimes or a nickel. You don't know what the exact change will be until you check out.

3 quarters, 2 dimes, a nickle and 4 pennies will always cover you. Hardly a problem if someone insists on having exact change available.

If you were wanting to specifically help the store keep its pennies, you could also just pay with whatever you would normally, plus whatever number of pennies is appropriate (so for a total of $17.63, pay something like $18.03). This is sort of annoying to deal with as a human cashier, but a self-checkout would handle it just fine.

Make sure you put the pennies in the machine first, though. I've encountered several self-checkout systems that will proceed to process payment and make change once you put in more than the total required—for example, on occasion I've used the self-checkout to break a larger bill ($50 or $100) for a small purchase and it processed the payment as soon as I inserted the bill.

[kphoger]

Prices at the register should be rounded to the nearest nickel soon. I guess Orange Julius has bigger fish to fry with trans people, food stamp queens and crypto-grifting.

Mall food courts are weirder places than I remember them being.

Yeah.  At a typical non-mall fast food restaurant (as you certainly know), fish and French fries and trans people are typically fried separately.

I don't quite get the stores that acknowledge the penny shortage by posting signs that ask for cash-paying customers to use exact change only...

Sounds good on paper, but how am I to know what taxes are on certain items and what other fees or tax rates they throw on at the end as well.  It's not my responsibility to have a pocket full of pennies every time I go shopping.

You would never need more than 4 pennies.

But you might also need a quarter or two or a couple dimes or a nickel. You don't know what the exact change will be until you check out.

3 quarters, 2 dimes, a nickle and 4 pennies will always cover you. Hardly a problem if someone insists on having exact change available.

But it's the store, not the customer, who is insisting on his having exact change.  That's the whole point.

Gas is rarely sold by whole gallon. It's measured to 1/1000th of a gallon - thats about a teaspoon. (at least meter says it that way), about 0.3 cent billing wise
When I bought some apples today, store weighted them down to 1/100th lb (same  teaspoon, if you puree apples to go by teaspoon), or about 2 cents.
So 0.1 cent in gas prices isn't meaningless...

And if I go to a full-serve gas station and ask the pump jockey for "five gallons of Regular", and if the price of Regular is $3.299/gallon, then my total should be $16.495.  Anything more, and they overcharged me for what I asked.  If I give him $16.50, then I expect a half-penny as change.  (Not really, of course.  I'm joking.)

What will happen eventually is everything that is priced .99 will be priced .95 or even to a round dollar. Governments will have to amend tax votes to change amounts from penny level to nickel levels. Gas stations will remove that archaic 9/10 cent pricing.

That's some clever sarcasm.

When I first heard people talking about ditching the penny, back in '08 or so, I simply could not convince my co-worker that the sales tax rate wasn't actually "eight cents on the dollar".

[JayhawkCO]

It's getting harder to remember when the last time I used cash was...

Craigslist/Facebook Marketplace transactions for me, and that's only because I normally have some cash sitting around due to my moonlighting bartending gig.

[1995hoo]

It's getting harder to remember when the last time I used cash was...

I paid cash on Saturday for a haircut. I always use cash at the barbershop. They charge $24, so I give them $30 and say to keep the change. (Had to hit the ATM for $10 bills before going to the barbershop, though.)

[kphoger]

It's getting harder to remember when the last time I used cash was...

For me, it was October 17.  My wife and I went on a double date with another couple from church, to see a play.  It was free admission but there was a donations box to help fund the theater guild.

[kalvado]

It's getting harder to remember when the last time I used cash was...

I paid cash on Saturday for a haircut. I always use cash at the barbershop. They charge $24, so I give them $30 and say to keep the change. (Had to hit the ATM for $10 bills before going to the barbershop, though.)

Cash is good for small farm shops for me. Last weekend, $12 for a bag of apples.
One of big problems with small vendors is a high entry barrier and high cost of transaction. Once something like african M-PESA, chinese WeChatPay  or russian SBP shows up, things may change for US cash. Venmo and PayPal couldn't make it work that nice..

[mgk920]

Nickels also cannot be made and circulated at a profit to the federal government, even if the material of each coin cost was $00.  Since dimes also need nickels to work and both are only useful in fine-parsing of state and local sale taxes, I would drop both and have quarters be the smallest denomination that the USA makes.  Quarters are only just barely useful for any 'real' commerce, one will buy a whole 15 minutes from a parking meter in downtown Appleton, WI.

Mike

[kphoger]

Since dimes also need nickels to work ...

Please explain.  To me, this is equivalent to saying pennies need half-pennies to work.

ETA — I think maybe you mean dimes need nickels to work assuming we also keep quarters but no pennies.

[kalvado]

Since dimes also need nickels to work ...

Please explain.  To me, this is equivalent to saying pennies need half-pennies to work.

ETA — I think maybe you mean dimes need nickels to work assuming we also keep quarters but no pennies.

next higher coin is 25, not multiple of 10. So you end up with hard-to-accommodate 5 cents.

[oscar]

It's getting harder to remember when the last time I used cash was...

I paid cash on Saturday for a haircut. I always use cash at the barbershop. They charge $24, so I give them $30 and say to keep the change. (Had to hit the ATM for $10 bills before going to the barbershop, though.)

Almost all of my barbers only accept cash. Maybe to hide income from the IRS.

There was an amusing story in our area, where a contractor asked to be paid in cash, only to find out his customer was the Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

I tend to pay cash for small transactions, especially if I know I'll get pennies in change. That might not last, with penny shortages being more common. My barbershop transactions are not small enough, and if I got change (I let the barber keep the change) it would be all bills.

[1995hoo]

Almost all of my barbers only accept cash. Maybe to hide income from the IRS.

....

The barbershop I used to go to out at Fair Oaks Mall accepted credit cards for the price of the haircut but not for the tip.

[kalvado]

It's getting harder to remember when the last time I used cash was...

I paid cash on Saturday for a haircut. I always use cash at the barbershop. They charge $24, so I give them $30 and say to keep the change. (Had to hit the ATM for $10 bills before going to the barbershop, though.)

Almost all of my barbers only accept cash. Maybe to hide income from the IRS.

There was an amusing story in our area, where a contractor asked to be paid in cash, only to find out his customer was the Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

I tend to pay cash for small transactions, especially if I know I'll get pennies in change. That might not last, with penny shortages being more common. My barbershop transactions are not small enough, and if I got change (I let the barber keep the change) it would be all bills.

Cash with assumption that it may or may not  be reported is definitely a thing, and definitely something government doesn't like.

[1995hoo]

I remember one of my college roommates talking about how when he mowed neighbors' lawns to make money during high school, his father made him file a tax return for that income. His father worked at the DOJ in the Tax Division, so I suppose I can see where he was coming from in terms of complying with the letter of the law, even if most people would have considered it excessively conscientious.

[ModernDayWarrior]

I worked at Stop & Shop from June 2018 to February 2020, which had a CoinStar. Some people would throw their rejected coins in the nearby trash can, which was fairly safe to dig through because it was mainly lottery tickets and containers. In addition to the expected damaged coins, coins stuck together, and foreign coins, there were many silver dimes (a few Canadian) and a few silver quarters. There was even one time I found an 1875 British threepence and was able to show it to the manager who saw me looking through the trash so I could explain that doing so is worthwhile. (Some managers allowed it, while others didn't. It depended on who was there that day.)

Nice finds! I personally hated working retail, but one of the perks for me was that I never knew what I might find in my cash register at the end of the night. I've ended up with 23 Eisenhower dollar coins (from one sale), a 1942 Canadian quarter, a 1950 $20 bill, a 1930 Standing Liberty quarter, a few dozen silver dimes and quarters, and countless wheat pennies. I also once had two teenagers come in and buy $10 worth of candy entirely with old silver certificates, but unfortunately they turned out to be stolen from a co-worker (the teens were his girlfriend's kids) so I gave them back to him.

Coin collecting is actually more than just a hobby for me--my day job is running an eBay store selling rare coins along with various antiques and other miscellany. I still use cash fairly regularly, because many of the places I typically purchase inventory are either cash only (private collectors, yard sales, Facebook Marketplace) or charge swipe fees (antique malls and our local Amazon resale store). All of my change gets tossed into a glass jar, which I take to the bank once a year. It usually ends up paying for a decent chunk of my annual roadtrip I take every May.

[Scott5114]

Nickels also cannot be made and circulated at a profit to the federal government, even if the material of each coin cost was $00. 

Charging $00 instead of $0, presumably to increase their profit? Is the contractor from Las Vegas or something?

[Rothman]

Used cash tonight to donate to a church's feed the hungry event.

[1995hoo]

Used cash tonight to donate to a church's feed the hungry event.

There have been a few occasions over the years when I've wanted to put $10 in the collection but all I had was a $20, so I made change out of the collection basket by taking out two $5s or a $10 and putting in my $20. For some reason that annoyed people around me as though I were doing something wrong (whenever I've done that, I make it very obvious I'm putting money in the basket).

[SEWIGuy]

Nickels also cannot be made and circulated at a profit to the federal government, even if the material of each coin cost was $00. 

Again, this isn't the point of federal currency.

[kphoger]

Nickels also cannot be made and circulated at a profit to the federal government, even if the material of each coin cost was $00. 

Again, this isn't the point of federal currency.

True as that may be, however, my point still stands that...

... pennies, and honestly probably nickels and dimes too, don't really provide any real support or benefit to us.  As functioning currency to facilitate the exchange of goods, they are more of an annoyance and a hinderance than they are a useful tool.

So, even if making a profit for the federal government is not the point of federal currency, they still fail at fulfilling the actual point of federal currency.

[MikeTheActuary]

The only cash I've used this year in the US has been to pay for parking at a baseball game.

I'm still carrying Euros in my wallet from my trip to Europe this summer.  Germany was a little more plastic-friendly than I had been led to believe, and I was glad to have a little cash when I had issues trying to buy train tickets in Amsterdam with plastic.

[ClassicHasClass]

next higher coin is 25, not multiple of 10. So you end up with hard-to-accommodate 5 cents.

The Aussies did this right. They have 5, 10, 20 and 50 cent pieces. There's been talk about dumping the 5 (they already have in New Zealand).

[vtk]

next higher coin is 25, not multiple of 10. So you end up with hard-to-accommodate 5 cents.

The Aussies did this right. They have 5, 10, 20 and 50 cent pieces. There's been talk about dumping the 5 (they already have in New Zealand).

And in a few decades when they are considering dumping 10 cent coins, they'll have the same issue with 50 cents not being a multiple of 20 cents.

[kphoger]

The nickel and dime issue would be resolved if we got rid of pennies, nickels, and quarters.  Just leave dimes, half-dollars, and dollars.