Is it worth picking up a penny? Well, maybe for Nick L and Cecil, but it isn’t for Bill Gates.
I wonder at what wage would it be profitable to employ a team of people to scour a major city grabbing loose change. Could they be expected to find more than $1 an hour?
I make it a point to pick up any money found on the street, even a penny. The exception would be if I am running and don’t want to get a cramp over a penny. I’ll risk it when running if it’s more than a penny. Not picking up all resources is bad Karma in my book. The most I ever found was $43 in a bar parking lot on a Sunday morning.
Perhaps more helpful than cash are other things I have found. I have found wallets, which I return if there is ID, cellphones, jump drives and hand tools. I jogged right by a body in the dark that was found and on the news just after.
By my reckoning picking up pennies pays me $12/hour. That’s less than I make in my day job, but it’s a lot more than I was going to make for those three seconds without finding a penny.
I still think the U.S. one-cent, and even five-cent, coins could be abolished, though. Picking up dimes, there’s a good gig.
Here in Florida, minimum wage is now $7.25/hour, meaning that picking up a penny is, indeed, a losing proposition (at least for the gainfully employed).
Am I the only one who thinks Cecil totally missed the point of the question?
What’s being asked is NOT, “How does picking up a penny break down into an hourly wage?”.
The question is, “Does one expend more food energy picking up the penny, than one gains by picking it up?”
I know Cecil was trying to keep things simple, but a few baseline assumptions about adult physiology and caloric values and food costs, and a whole lotta number crunching, would’ve answered this question.
I’m disappointed.
I make it a point to pick up any coin I come across, even a 25-satang (0.77 US cent) piece, IF there aren’t too many people around watching who will make a remark about the “money-grubbing foreigner.” It makes my day if I find one, and the wife thinks I’m crazy for it.
I also always check the coin-return slot of a pay phone I happen to be using. Say, maybe I AM money-grubbing. 
Indeed. I pick up all money because I don’t want the universe to think I have enough and stop sending me some.
My problem is that the ground seems to get farther and farther away each year. When I was in my halcyon days, I had no problems picking stuff up from the floor. Now, it can take me half an hour or so to reach that far down, and that doesn’t count the warmups I have to do if I ever want to straighten out after bending over.
It is an old column. The Straight Dope Science Advisory Board was more spritely all those years ago. I doubt they could make minimum wage anymore.
I saw a cowboy/comedian not long ago who says, “You know you’re getting old when you bend over to pick something up and you ask yourself, ‘Is there anything else I can take care of while I’m down here?’”
Okay, let’s get calculating…
There is something called Metabolic Equivalents or METs which is a way of measuring how strenuous an activity is. The way METs work is that sitting around and doing nothing (but awake) takes 1 METs unit. By taking the METs units of an activity and multiplying it out by the number of hours and your basal metabolic level, you can calculate the number of calories something takes up.
For example, playing soccer has a METs rating of 7 while watching soccer has a METs rating of 1.5 (see chart). Let’s assume your basal metabolic level is 60 calories per hour. You’d burn 90 calories per hour watching a soccer game and burn 420 calories per hour playing soccer.
Stretching has a METs of 2.5 which means you’d burn 190 calories per hour stretching. I am assuming a similar rating while touching toes. If you can reach down and grab a penny in 5 seconds, you’d burn .26 calories. . For comparison, you’d have burn .16 calories just watching someone pick up a penny.
A can of Coca Cola has 140 calories and costs about $1.00. That’s .7 cents per calorie. Picking up a penny will cost you less than 1/5 of a cent to “refresh” those lost calories with a can of Coke.
Conclusion: Picking up a penny doesn’t cost more in calories than it burns.
Of course, instead of using a can of Coke, I chose say celery my results would differ. Celery has much fewer calories per cost than Coca Cola. But, this does show several things:
[ul]
[li] Our bodies are terribly efficient and burn way fewer calories than we would normally assume. Play soccer for two straight hours and you’d only burn 820 calories.[/li][li] Calories are cheap and plentiful. You can play soccer for two hours, then go into Jamba Juice and undo all that exercise with one “Power Sized” Chocolate Moo’d. This wasn’t always true.[/li]
At one time, just finding enough calories took us most of the day hunting and gathering. And, what calories were around were few and far between. But, thanks to modern science, calories are easy to find and we no longer have to do things that burn them off. Now, can you say Thank you modern science. I knew you could.
[/ul]
I think the minimum wage comparison is flawed slightly.
A portion of (or sometimes more than) the five seconds expended to pick up a penny may be regained at a store checkout, newspaper stand, etc. when you produce exact change and are not waiting around for the teller to ring it in and/or count out your change. You simply drop your money in her hand and keep walking.
Therefore, the wage/time ratio is not a constant relationship.
It’s free money that costs some time to collect, yet you can recover that time by using said money at opportune times.
I don’t know about your experience but in mine. The cashier is much faster at making change than I am at fumbling through my pockets counting out correct change. So from my perspective the penny cost you time twice.
Maybe I’m a faster counter than you but come on it’s simple grade school math…besides you have lots of time while you’re waiting in line.
I’m not saying you go out of your way to make exact change for every transaction but there are lots of circumstances where using that penny can regain the time it took to collect it.
Why would you be fumbling around in your pockets? I keep all my change in one pocket, I check to see I can make correct change or not. If I can’t in this instance, I keep it for another one.
I could also use the penny to round to an easier number for the cashier to make change thus saving time. Get it?
Whenever you buy something regularly or at fixed cost, such as your newspaper or morning coffee, you would be regaining some of the time you spent picking up the penny.
i.e. I know my morning coffee costs $1.52. They hand me my coffee I hand them $1.52 and I’m out the door before she can put it in the till.
Or I give the cashier $2.02, she hands me me my coffee and 2 quarters and I’m out the door in less than 5 seconds.
Now if I give her $20.00, she has to put the money in the till, then count out 18 dollars and 48 cents then hand my change to me.
I calculated this some ten years ago. I assumed you could pick up a penny in two seconds. Not counting inflation, the actual value of the metal of the penny, or the fact that you would need to rest your aching back, it worked out to be $18 per hour, or $144 per 8-hour day if you work through lunch. Now you just need to find yourself in a vat of pennies that only allow you to pick up one at a time.
PS - Like wise, for higher denominations, just multiply them by $18 (ie., dimes earn you $180/hour)
I reckoned three for myself. Assuming it’s within reach of someplace I’m walking anyway–not a detour–three seconds to spot it, bend the knees, pick it, stand, pocket. Cecil said five. Obviously it’s more trouble than that for some, so it’s a personal calculation.
This is reminding me of a friend back in Albuquerque who stopped framing his own photographic prints for sale. Said once he figured in the cost of his labor, it wasn’t worth it. I thought: “The cost of your labor?? It’s not like you’d be going down and pulling a shift at the 7-Eleven if you weren’t doing this.”
Likewise, that’s one penny you’ll always be poorer if you don’t pick it up. Don’t think too much about it, just take it.
As a Unity Truth follower,money of any denomination is sacred. Most people don’t know thus therefore have wasted many dollars and are in debt for not “picking up pennies.” The ground is where you place your feet and if your money is there it MUST BE PICKED UP to be of value to you. It(money) should also be at pocket level.Women should NOT put purses on floors or below pocket level Below ,it means you have a low value of it’s power.“On the floor.out the door”.
I almost never walk over one, even if it is in the street.I just wait for the traffic to pass or return later.Usually the coin is still there. Remember,pennies make DOLLARS!
Just go and get some coin wrappers, fill them up and take to bank when you need money.
That’s just good cents. 