$1.99 is not $2 !!!

We have the penny, don’t want to see it done away with, think the 1 mill coin is going too far. And I don’t consider wanting to save pennies a psychological hangup. Just like I don’t consider being frugal a hangup.
When it comes time to treat friends/family or things like tipping waitresses/waiters (I usually tip at least 20%, and often more), that’s when I prefer to spend those pennies I have been skimping on.

It’s not a hangup, it’s more like a fetish: you’ve taken something meaningless and made it a symbol of virtue. Picking up a penny allows you to have the identity of someone who values money, even though you’re actually just financially masturbating in the noise beyond the significant figures.

And you sir have apparently made a fetish of honing skills as a snarky putdown artist.
~buys Giraffe a beer, using all the financial masturbating penny picking-up-ing~

Lose $1 and $2 coins in the couch? :slight_smile:

Properly-designed rooms should have alternative means of egress if the door is blocked. Usually, this boils down to “climb out the window”.

Hate the penny. I always walk away from the cashier who tries to hand me three cents change. The overhead and effort required to manage pennies is greater than their value.

Would a 1 mill coin have been appropriate in 1947? The cent is worth less now than a mill was in 1947. How did people even get by?

Given ubiquitous sales taxes and the tendency for people to buy more than one product at a time, there will be a pretty mild tendency for shopkeepers to round up more than they round down. Let’s say it happens often though:

$7.98 is rounded to $8.00. That corresponds to .02/7.98 or a one quarter of one percent increase in the amount paid. And that would happen once, while the terrifying transition to a penny-free America occurs. The effect on long-run inflation would be nill. The effect on inflation during a single transition year would be damn small. And even for small transaction businesses like newsstands or coffee shops, I doubt whether this would be a big profit center.

I often wonder whether this is really true. There has never been a single time in my life that I’ve thought “Hmm, 8$ is a bit pricey, I’d buy it at 7.99 though”.

But people who buy do care about 5 cents?

If you get rid of pennies how will I do this when I remodel my kitchen?

Good points made by Lord Feldon, Measure for Measure, and Isamu.

According to USA Today article Coins cost more to make than their face value

..this article in MSN Money (by Business Week) Time to kill off the penny?

And in this more updated report in the Daily Finance which links to the 2009 US Gov Annual Report (pdf)

So the recent report shows a loss of approx .23 cents over face value of every penny produced, yet approx loss on production of each nickel is closer to that of a penny each. So the US Mint is losing over 2 times (and this is a conservative estimate) as much on each nickel produced over that of the measly penny.

So on that basis, and with continued inflation and weakening strength of the US Dollar worldwide, should the nickel be abolished also?

Failed to beat the edit.:smack: That was too big a post for me, I think I should go back to Pointless Stuff forum.

Oh? And if the dorm room is on the 3rd floor? Don’t fucking block doors; we are not children.

Every time there’s a thread about getting rid of pennies, people whine about rounding and prices rising. Doesn’t anyone in the Benighted States use EFT-POS?
Totals only get rounded if you pay cash. Pay by card and you still pay exact amounts.

We got rid of one, two and five cent coins years ago and we didn’t notice any inflationary pressure from that. How could the world’s largest economy possible even notice?

Harden up and just do it!

Well I lived through the disapperance of 1 and 2. And you know what? The supermarket still prices things at $1.99 or 3.93 or whatever.

And by law, the rounding is evenely split between up and down - it you are paying cash it is rounded to the nearest five cents. No big deal, and people barely even noticed.

And to Kiwi Fruit, no 5 cent coins now? When did that happen??

And do remember that in NZ the use of electronic funds transfer is the highest in the world…from a little old back water at the arse end of the world

I am reconsidering my position since participating in this thread. Perhaps in this modern day the penny should be done away with. But I am certainly in favor of changing the alloys of coins that are too expensive to produce ( like the 5 cent piece).
It doesn’t make sense to spend more to make a coin than the face value of the coin.

I also think that those in this thread who talk about throwing pennies in the trash are snobs.

But a penny gets spent often enough that it isn’t an actual loss. Same for the nickel. You have to count the entire time the coin is in circulation.

It’s called a debit card in the US. I think usage has picked up a lot in the 10 years I’ve been here but cash seems to be still more common than I remember in NZ.

I think this mostly comes down to the US being very resistant to change ( :slight_smile: ). For better or worse, the US system of government makes change more difficult than in a parliamentary system.

I doubt that the cashier at the Dunkin Donuts is pocketing the money but I suspect it gives his cash draw a bit of a buffer to cover small errors in the other directions. The $1.99 cup of coffee is probably the most common item sold in the mornings.

Unless the US has some very unusual style of cash systems, the usual modern electronic cash drawer books each entry into the bookkeeping system and at the end of the shift, spits out what is supposed to be in the till. If that amount doesn’t match up, the cashier is in trouble. The only way to avoid this is to intentionally take out the pennies over the day.

Precisly because it’s not official rounding done by the till, but by one cashier, and because x.99 items are most common, this dishonest cashier will accumulate far more pennies from not giving them out, than he will have to pay out from rounding in the other direction.

I fail to see how politicans pandering to one particular fringe of loonies because they scream loud is the difference to a parliamentary system.

Of course it’s your decision what you do with your money, but I still consider this assholish, similar to rich people lighting a dollar bill for their cigar. Just because you can afford to, doesn’t mean that it’s worthless; there are many unfortunate people with less to whom even a dollar bill or penny is worth something.

Further, the coin has metal content, which is becoming scarcer.

So either throw them into the next donation bin (there’s one at almost every cashier in a supermarket I’ve been to), give them back to the cashier as tip, hand them to the next homeless person or even, if you hate money that much, melt them down and take them to the scrap dealer (although that’s strictly speaking usually forbidden, it’s still better than throwing it into the trash, where it does no good at all).