In a state with sales tax, it wouldn’t really be possible to round the price on a taxable item anyways, since the total tax amount is itself rounded. Two items priced to cost exactly $5 each when bought singly might total to $9.99 or $10.01. (When sales taxes were introduced, the rounding was slightly controversial, but people quickly tired of the attempts to introduce tokens worth fractions of a cent to balance the transactions. Those tokens were worth more than the penny is now, of course.)
All of the arguments for why we need a 1-cent denomination even if those other countries don’t were completely demolished when Canada abolished its penny without a single peep of complaint. Retail pricing there was identical (tax not included, etc.) and it didn’t matter one bit.
Well I’m the kinda guy who don’t have much
Don’t even have a chequebook as such
And I certainly ain’t got no personal stash
But sometimes I like a little spending cash
Pocket money, ooh pocket money
Pocket money, ooh pocket money
I tell you pocket money can’t be beat
Pocket money is my Saturday treat
If I pay for something in cash, the coins get tossed into my pocket, then later at home they get tossed into a basket. Eventually I’ll roll the coins up, or take them to a bank with a counting machine. to get rid of them.
It’s quite rare for me to actually pay for anything with coins - too much hassle.
That kind of goes along with what I said earlier about being more likely to spend coins when they’re actually worth enough to buy things with.
If I’m in Europe and want to buy a coffee that costs €4.10, it’s not that much hassle to grab two €2 coins and a 10c coin.
If I’m in the US and I want to buy something that costs $4.10, it’s a bigger hassle to count out four $1 bills, and then fish a dime out of my pocket. I’m more likely to just pay with a $5, or with a card.
I haven’t used cash in at least 5 years and never carry it anymore. There is simply no longer a need. Salary is direct-deposit, all purchases are via debit or credit card, and all bills are paid online.
And change? I don’t remember the last time I’ve even seen a coin, much less possessed one.
I still use cash…but much less so since COVID. I always had coins accumulating because I was too lazy to fish around for exact change. Then Coinstar let me turn in coins for amazon vouchers and it was all good.
Mrs. L is one to use debit cards for a lot of things. She always wants my $1 and $5 bills.
I haven’t used cash since the 2019 State Fair, and for about the last 10 years or so the State Fair was the only thing I carries cash for (and it was extremely irritating that I had to do so as a number of food vendors wouldn’t accept cards). Last state fair was cancelled an not being vaccinated there’s no way in hell I’m going to risk my life going to this state fair, so the streak will go on.
I’m aware a lot of servers like cash tips because it makes it easy for them to commit tax fraud. I’m not going to inconvenience myself to make it easy for someone else to commit a felony.
I try to stay away from the type of areas of town where beggars congregate at all costs- I haven’t been inside Minneapolis or St. Paul aside from driving straight through on the freeways since before the riots.
For the most part of someone doesn’t want my credit card, I view it as them not wanting my business and take it elsewhere.
IIRC before they went to the Euro, the Italian lira exchange was something like 1600 to 1 USD. 16 lira were worth 1 penny. How did they handle making change etc.?
A lot of that is COVID related, I think. I’ll still occasionally see a “Minimum purchase $5 to use EFTPOS” signs about (although I gather they’re against the bank terms of service and possibly the law) but recently (COVID-era) I found myself in the temporarily embarrassing situation of not having enough money in my bank account to cover a coffee and steak sandwich for lunch, but I did have a perfectly serviceable $20 note which would more than cover the cost - and the cashier did a double take when I produced it; it was obvious they weren’t seeing a lot of cash transactions.
On the other hand, there have been lawsuits over the years from businesses failing to pass on tips to their employees when customers pay with a card, so while you might tip your server that way, your server might not get their tip.
How about we pay servers a living wage and do away with tipping altogether?
It could be a ploy to avoid reporting income - or it could be that the business owner has just decided (rightly or wrongly) that accepting cards wouldn’t increase business enough to be worth paying whatever the costs associated with accepting cards are.
I still use cash a bit * so I am carrying change for some period of time - but usually only until I get home/to my desk/to my car where I will dump it. It will eventually be rolled up/used in a vending machine or used to pay a parking meter.
* There are still certain types of stores in my area that either don’t accept cards ( the sort of store than sells lottery tickets, cigarettes, drinks and snacks , which probably wouldn’t greatly increase business if they accepted credit cards) or that do accept cards but paying for my purchase would take longer using a card ( If I’m buying a $2 cup of coffee, paying cash is probably faster than using a card, and definitely faster if I have two singles)