Well, it’s obvious that the U.S. Mint wants to replace the dollar bill with a coin. They have tried for years to get the Eisenhower dollar, the Susie B, the Sackie, and now the President series, but to date they have all failed? Why?
And if they really wanted to, why don’t they just discontinue the dollar bill like Canada did?
One drawback I noticed while in Canada was that after visiting a few shops and restaurants, you have about 12 pounds of change in your pocket. Those “loonies” and “twonies” add up pretty quickly. I remember staring at my walled thinking “How did I spend a hundred bucks already?!?” and then realizing that I had $65 in COIN in my pockets.
I like the convenience of the bills, and you think the bills would be cheaper than the coins. So what is the straightdope on this, or your opinions?
This is a multifactorial issue and someone who knows more about it will be along to expound. But one of the main reasons why the dollar coins have failed is precisely because the US Mint continues making dollar bills. You’re right that the bills are cheaper to make than the coins, but coins last much much longer. So in the long run, coins are cheaper.
I use my debit/credit cards so frequently now that I rarely use coin or bills that often. I also keep most of my loose change in a jar in the house or in the cup holder of my car. I’m not sure how you could walk around with $65 in your pocket and continue to make purchases with bills. Why didn’t you use the money in your pocket?
On the issue of cost, you have to consider not just the initial cost, but how long it lasts. My recollection from when we did the change-over to the loonie is that the average dollar bill lasted between a year and 18 months, while the average coin can last 20 years or more. Since coins are so much more durable, the initial higher cost to make them gets amortized over a much longer period, and they don’t need to make as many coins as bills. (Maybe samclem can cast some light on that issue.)
As for the change issue, you just get used to checking your change for toonies and loonies when making purchases. Not a biggie.
Few people of any means like carrying coins. They bag your pockets and clink and clank. Like many people, I dump my change into a jar at night and eventually roll it for the bank. Sacs and prez and SBA coins have nearly zero collector value or interest. Even Ikes create little interest. You can get a whole Ike set of uncirculated and proof coins for about $150.
I may be going out on a limb here, folks, but I think the OP may have been exagerating a little bit about $65 in pocket change to underline the point and be funny.
Reason #311 this place is tanking: subtle humor is beyond almost everyone left here, and the humorless literalist responses are like wet blankets. Just my $0.02, folks, try not to take it personally.
To the OP: I’ve been of the opinion for years that the US mint’s ongoing failure to sell the $1 coin is that they (stupidly) keep making them the same size as the dollar coin. The £1 coin size and shape would be great, though I imagine it wouldn’t fit in any existing American coin slots.
With the one and two-dollar coins, I really don’t find they accumulate in my wallet. I spend them. Maybe if you’re used to change being “small change”, it doesn’t occur that a handful of loonies and toonies adds up to $10-12 dollars, and that’s good for small purchases.
They are also fun to tuck away and save, and it doesn’t take long before you’ve got enough for a splurge on a book or CD or lunch out.
I also noted that in the past few years, I’ve started to pay with exact change for cash purchases, or do that thing where if the total is $18.52, giving the cashier $20.02.
I think it’s a sign of age. Or else I have a grudge against pennies. Loonies and toonies I like, pennies I don’t.
U.S. dollar coins are invariably too close in size to quarters, which is exactly the reason cited by my customers when they refuse the Sackie or Susan-B I’m trying to palm off on them, to get it out of my cash drawer.
If they made them the size of a half-dollar, be different.
I hate carrying around coins. They roll out of my pocket, and my wallet has no place to keep them. Plus, they take up more space. And no, I’m not adding a coin purse to my wallet, phone, and car keys.
I really like the idea of one and two dollar coins. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent a lot of time in places with the pound and euro so I’m used to it. But it’s so much easier to pick through a pouch of coins than a wallet of bills (especially since all our dollar bills are the same color!). It also makes buying things from automated machines a lot easier.
When Canada issued $1 coins in 1987, and then the $2 coin in 1996, they withdrew their paper counterparts, so we really had no choice. It does make for much heavier pockets ultimately – but perhaps one side benefit is that those of is who don’t immediately consider change as part of the money we have on us, and tend not to reach for change before reaching for bills when paying for something, it can make for a pleasant surprise when you’re running low on funds and discover your pocket has over $20 in coins in it.
I’m another one who doesn’t like the $1 coins we have because they are so close to quarters in size. If they were larger, I wouldn’t mind as much.
I do think we are creatures of habit. We won’t see a lot of people using $1 coins until the Mint withdraws $1 bills - and then there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
I’m very fond of the loonie and toonie. I used to get Sackies at the bank down here when I first moved, just a little reminder of home. I stopped when people who were stupid as a sack of hammers wouldn’t accept them, thinking they weren’t real money.
Coins = Evil. Bills = Good. It’s that simple. I don’t give a rat’s ass how much it costs the gummint to mint or print money. The impact on my tax load is insignificant. But I hate, hate, hate coins, and refuse to add the wear and tear to my pockets by carrying them when there are light, easily-foldable, 1 ounce of money can buy a car bills around.
:: preens in 15.4 minutes of fame (that’s 15 minutes Canadian) ::
As others have said, bills are individually cheaper than coins, but don’t last as long; and one coin is cheaper than the series of bills required to last the life of the coin.
And we Canadians tend to spend loonies and toonies, rather than letting them build up. If I’m buying something worth $7.50, I’ll pay with a five-dollar bill, a toonie, and two quarters as often as with a ten. I will pay with bills and accumulate coins if I’m in laundry-change-acquisition mode, though.
Prices have also risen enough at the company caf, with cans of pop being $1.09, that they’re now happy to accept my pennies, and they don’t accumulate as much as they used to…
I really like using coins to pay for stuff - I’m one of those people who collected Sackies and would happily use ten or fifteen to buy groceries. Within 8 hours of arriving in London, I came up with a simple system: any coins smaller than a pound went in one pocket, anything larger went in another, and I didn’t break a bill (or is it a note?) unless I didn’t have enough coins to pay for my purchase.
Aside from the cost of switching out coin-operated machines to accept a new dollar, another thing that I can see holding back the switch to dollar coins is how resistant many Americans are to changing their money. I worked retail when they introduced the new colored $50s and $20s and I had to listen to complaints about them all day long when each was first introduced. “Why do we have to have this darned monopoly money? It’s so ugly, I can’t get used to it,” etc., etc. For most Americans, money is green and it folds, and anything else just doesn’t seem real.
We’ve, of course, done this to death over the years. But it won’t die.
As many have said before me, the main reason that Americans won’t accept the dollar coins(whether Ikes, SBAs or Sacs) is that we still have the paper dollar as a more attractive alternative.
The US Mint isn’t at all serious about replacing the dollar bill with a coin. They know full-well that it won’t happen with paper in circulation.
[hijack]Which has been driving me nuts since I got here. I can’t tell a one from a hundred (well, assuming I have a hundred dollar bill), so it takes me longer to sort through bills because I have to double check each one to make sure it’s what I think it is. As a Canadian, watching scenes in American films involving money can be…interesting. You know the scene in Dogma where they’re bidding on the stripper? I mentally parse each bill they hold up as $1, which makes the whole thing rather ludicrous. Frankly I can’t see why you wouldn’t want different coloured bills–it makes 'em easier to tell apart. And don’t get me started on paying for an ice cream cone with bills.[/hijack]
On topic–I find coins easier to deal with, especially when I only have one hand free for some reason. I can’t speak for the dollar coins, but loonies and toonies are different enough from the rest of our change that they’re easy to pick out. I probably accumulate less change with them, because since I’m in my coin purse anyways, lets see how close I can come to the exact amount…
Just out of curiousity, is any of this might be attributable to the fact that the Mint is one part of the Treasury, and the Bureau of Engraving is another? Is this possibly an example of bureaucratic infighting affecting policy? Per this .pdf file , both are seperate sections of the Treasury Department, if on the same organizational level within the chart linked. Which would leaves me thinking that there’s at least the potential for much rivalry between the two organizations.
(Obviously, not the sole factor - you’ve got a pretty good split, here in this thread, with people who love and people who hate dollar coins, which is pretty representative, I think of the population as a whole.)
