that is what we do. Periodically we take it to our bank and toss it into the coinstar and put it into our account. Several hundred dollars a year in change =)
I stopped using credit cards in an effort to become debt free (which I now am). I just cashed in $45 dollars in pennies alone and the other coins will bring in about $450. It’s not the saving of coins, it’s the focus on better spending habits.
How many people throwing money away like this before it adds up to a significant amount just going straight into the garbage?
They should start allowing it in our recycling.
Seems fine to me. Plus you get to rile folks up.
If I hated my change I would just toss it out the car window or throw it in the parking lot. I kinda miss littering and littering with change could satisfy that desire. Just think in 250 years someone could find that coin and really help them out, better than giving it to someone now. Hell they still will find it when future archeologist dig through out trash. So do what you want. Anyhow just check and see if littering with coinage is more satisfying. I would love to know.
Keep the change doesn’t make a cashier’s day. It comes across as condescending and trying to act like a bigshot over a couple pennies. “Keep the change” should be Frank Sinatra handing someone a fiver back when a fin was actually worth something. “I hate change, can I leave this here?” sounds MUUUCH better, believe me.
Every one of my coworkers hated “keep the change”.
Recently got a better job from cashiering
As a large woman, who is rather top heavy, I really hate to bend over in public. The boobs tend to go a tumbling and my cups runneth over. So, if I drop a coin, I leave it. You are so right about the looks of shock and amazement. I hate it. I am almost guilted into going back to pick it up. Almost.
But just straight up throwing change in the garbage is not something I can do. My daughter would kill me, for one thing.
Me too. I feed it a pocket full of pennies and pay the rest by card.
US currency tends to generate lots of small change. The penny should have been eliminated years ago. 1 and 2 cent coins are a very distant memory in New Zealand and Australia and I think even the 5 cent is now gone in NZ.
This is a pretty ridiculous statement. He’s not throwing this amount away a day. It’s a YEAR. If $2.88 over an entire year would make a difference in your life, you don’t live in America. If you drive AT ALL, you ‘throw away’ that amount of money every day with underinflated tires, poor route planning or lack of carpooling.
If you eat, you waste an order of magnitude more in uneaten food in a year.
If you buy three candy bars that you don’t really need to eat over an entire year, you’ve wasted more than that. Man, if you buy a single fancy coffee, you’ve wasted more money than that.
If keeping those coins wastes space, aggravates you with their very existence, or annoys you in any way, I say throw it away. We’re talking about $2.88 over twelve months, people.
I’m still wondering why the OP doesn’t throw it in the “Please donate! My kid has brain cancer!” cup at the local 7-11.
I’ve noticed that some small retailers are starting to round things to the nearest nickel here. Nothing official or anything, but a sign of things to come?
Throwing the money away seems unnecessary. If you don’t want the money, just drop it on the ground. You’ll delight some kid who’s looking for another quarter or so to spend at the candy rack. (I seldom pick up change when I see it on the ground on the the theory that it means little to me, but may be a big deal to some kid.)
Well, maybe those cups are a lot more prevalent where you are, but here they’re few and far between, which means I’d have to haul around all my change all the time on the random chance that I encountered one. I think not.
A quarter? No way – that’s real money. Pennies, nickels, and dimes only.
If you don’t mind my exploiting your valuable perspective as a cashier a bit more, I have a question: don’t you think someone who said the less-obnoxious version would still likely receive some shocked looks and perhaps questioning from the cashier? I mean, look at how appalled nearly all the posters here have been. I’d prefer not to defend my personal philosophy while buying a lollipop for my son.
Everything worthwhile I know about money was taught to me by a couple who raised two kids during the Depression. The thought of throwing away money has never entered my mind other than as a metaphor for wanton spending… until this thread, that is.
I pick up every coin I see. If y’all want to throw away your dimes, nickels, and pennies, come on down to San Antonio and let me know when you’re arriving.
This is exactly how I see it, and this perspective seems so obvious to me that it’s truly fascinating how almost nobody else sees it this way. I think it stems from the profound significance money has for us – it has inherent value that is independent of its actual monetary worth. Anyway, this is why I started this thread, to see if dopers, who skew toward the analytical side, would respond the way my real-life acquaintances do.
No offense intended, please – many people have given perfectly logical reasons for objecting to my behavior, I just don’t happen to find the reasons sufficiently compelling.
I’ve been known to toss a random penny into the garbage when I’m sweeping and in a hurry. Otherwise, the change goes into my vending machine bank in my desk at work, or into my ash tray in the car (for parking meters or a soda at Sonic during happy hour), or into our box full o’ coins at home. When we go to Buffalo on vacation, at the end of the trip we’ve typically accumulated tons of change, which we pour into the hands of our elated very young grand nieces/grand nephews, much to their delight.
I travel for work, so I’m always going through the airport security line where pocket change is a nuisance.
Also, I have developed the pattern of paying for everything (and I mean everything) with a credit card to avoid carrying cash and to accumulate the points. (If your ever behind me in line while I’m taking too long to pay with a card, then I guess you’ll just have to wait your turn.) I don’t carry over a balance so I’m not paying interest.
So, I really try to avoid ever having any pocket change. I don’t throw it away when I get it, but I will dump it in any handy “we’re collecting for hair-lip Guatemalan kids” bin - or hand it to that nice stinky man sitting just outside the door who collects change.
We keep change. I used to use it for the vending machines at work, but now that I’ve changed my eating habits, we split any change between our children. One saves it: the other spends it when she gets enough.