I save all my change until the change jar is full. Then I cash in my pennies for quarters to make more room in the change jar and wait for it to fill up again and then I turn that into bills.
Last time I did this I had $9 worth of pennies.
Wow. If you had $9 and some ham, you could make a ham sandwich, if you had some bread.
If a penny makes a difference to you then collect those pennies. No till person should be giving you a hard time for it. The “worst” I’ve had is a slightly ceremonious (i.e. I pick it up as a ‘lol seriously?’) “aaand here’s your PENNY!”. I wait for mine because it’s mine to decide what to do with, not theirs. Let’s not spread the tipping cancer to literally everyone you hand money to.
Truth be told, I’m not well paid at all, but find full time employment to be enough that I value wallet space over a few pennies. But I resolve that by dumping them into charity jars once in a while, not by letting the till people keep them.
Well, but you’d need either mustard or mayonnaise as well, depending on how you swing. And some cheese would be nice.
I have a book in my library somewhere I think called “How to Think Like a Millionaire” and one of the tips is a millionaire always takes back the penny.
Even when I clean my house, and I sweep up some old pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters off the floor I do my best to clean them and keep them because I’ve been broke before and my OCD fear is one of the coins might be the difference between life or death if I ever go broke again.
All that said I do contribute to “leave a penny, take penny” jars because I have in the past have seen cashiers pull from them to complete my order. I have no problem paying it forward but I need evidence that is the institution in questions policy before particpating.
This of course begs the old debate as to whether or not we need to eliminate the poor penny. 
Even if this happened, it would be four cents max. The coin is so outdated that even the dumb arguments for keeping it have been rendered worthless by inflation.
OP is absolutely right. My pocketful of change is what I keep around to give to people who ask me for change, pennies included. While that 50 cents a week from a co-worker doesn’t sound like much, it can literally make all the difference to someone who’s down and out.
In the trash?!? Good heavens, get a jar and throw your pennies in. When it gets full, cash them in. Buy yourself a lunch with it. They aren’t worthless by any means. If I’m walking down the street and see a penny on the ground, I pick it up. I always wait for my penny change. If the young whippersnapper at the register thinks I’m a tightwad, screw him.
What’s up with all you weirdos who keep pennies in your wallet? I don’t even put bills under $10 in my wallet.
The question posed is, “Do I look rich enough to not care about a penny?”
My answer is, “Do you look like a white-bearded prospector coot dressed in nothing but a barrel with suspender straps and mangled boots that might end up in your soup someday?”
But…
There are Marxists in the world, there are Georgists.
There are Keynesians, Fabians, and then…
There are those who follow Randall’s works
OP’s never been one of them.
OP’s a penny counter
Is a counter now through and through
And the one thing they say about counters is
They never can sneak up on you.
He’s got to have great big pockets
With more metal than he’s got in his car.
The jingling makes such a nice ruckus
And prevents him from sneaking too far
Because:
Chorus:
Every penny’s sacred!
Every penny’s great!
If a penny’s wasted,
OP gets quite irate!
Let the rich folk spend theirs
On tips and honor jars
OP counts all his cab fares
'Cause he ain’t no movie stars.
[Chorus]
Canucks, Aussies, and Hebrews
Got rid of theirs long hence;
OP loves those who don’t lose
Any of their cents!
[Chorus]
Bravo.
I’m kind of amazed at the number of people here that are so well off that they ignore money if it’s less than a certain amount. OTOH, maybe that’s why so many people are in financial difficulty.
for a while in the early 00’s KFC delivered here in so cal and once a month id have a 6 to 12 piece meal delivered depending on the coupon I had
the meal dinner I bought came up to about 25 because I bought extra stuff I paid with 3 20s I turned around to set the food down (which was hot enough to start to melt the plastic bag it was in ) on the table in the living room and the delivery guy was gone …I called kfc and said what the hell … and he hadn’t made it back yet and cal back in 20 minutes … so mgmt. called me about an hour later and said delivery guy was on the way back to me apparently he thought the 35-40 in change was a tip…
I got a certificate for a free meal and the cash back … I did give the guy the 5 I usually tip drivers … he was nice about it ( I think he was maybe 18 …)
Same in Aus. Clueless people who had no idea about the way retail operates. What actually happend is interesting though: lots of companies initially rounded down the sticker price to x.95 to match the coinage, then gradually realized that nobody cared, and put the price back up to x.99, either to catch a few cents rounded on the total, or because x.99 still looked more “normal”.
Since 1793?
I’m pretty sure that in 1973 we still had pennies, because I particularly remember the Lincoln Penny. I see that according to Wikipedia, that is now the Lincoln cent, but those old timers at cointracker still call it a Lincoln Penny by preference.
I worked in retail a long time and prices have ended in random numbers for as long as I can remember. Most purchases are done with EFTPOS or credit cards and most people figure (correctly) the rounding evens out in the long run.
I never, ever - not even once - had someone complain about rounding the price shafting them somehow. I’m comfortable saying no-one in Australia cares.
NZ got rid of 5c pieces recently and the country hasn’t descended into anarchy.
It would be even harder to manipulate the amount collected on taxed purchases in the USA. Sales taxes are calculated on the total and then rounded to the nearest cent, so you can have a situation where one item costs a total of $4.98 (rounds up) but if you buy two you pay $9.97 (rounds down).
Nobody in 2016 is in financial difficulty because of pennies.
Large cents 1793 - 1857, Flying Eagle cents 1856-1858, “Indian Head” (Actually Liberty) Cents from 1859 - 1909, and Lincoln Head cents 1909-present all have the word “cent” on them. Not one has the word penny. A few early ones also use 1/100 to signify that fraction of a dollar.
In the USA, penny is a slang term.
Our Canadian friends, do (or did) have pennies.