Sometimes you have to pay the exact change just to get rid of coins, especially when abroad. If you are not careful about it you will come home with your pockets full of coins that you haven’t been able to get rid of. This might not be a problem for Americans, but for a European it is. During the last year I have built up a collection of loose change in Dollar, Pound, Polish Złoty, Czech and Norwegian Crown, and, of course, Euro. Fortunately I was told when I bought Latvian Lat that they would Switch over to Euro at New Year, so at the airport in Riga I donated what I had left of loose change to a collection to buy children’s books to the public libraries in the country.
Yeah. And asking for Cash Back while doing grocery shopping is a great way to avoid ATM fees. (I mostly use my debit card but cash is handy for some things.)
And I occasionally use CoinStar, because life is too short to count change & put them into rolls. Next time, I’ll look into sending the $$$ to an Amazon account–with no fee…
A number of people have mentioned the reason to use exact change is to keep the number of coins from growing in their pockets.
But again, using a Debit Card you never have a reason for accumulating coins in your pocket in the first place.
I’m a bit of a stickler for not carrying too much in my pockets or in my wallet, unlike a friend of mine whose wallet resembles a bulging hockey puck.
The one downside is that I rarely have a dollar to give to a person looking for a hand-out, and I would like to give those in need a dollar.
Pay however is most convenient for you. If the people behind you in line are inconvenienced by the time it takes for you to get the right change out, tough! They are, more than likely, the assholes who are offended by just about everything or the assholes who tailgate or run red lights because their time is just sooooooo important.
I always pay with a cc
The landlord at my favourite after work whisky bar does not like people using cards as he has to pay a large percentage of the money he makes to the bank. Therefore I, and at least one other regular, get a discount if we use cash.
A lot of small shops impose a minimum spend for debit card transactions - £5 or sometimes £10. If I’m just buying a bar of chocolate, a magazine or a sandwich, paying with the exact change is quicker than a chip&PIN debit card transaction (maybe not quicker than a contactless payment).
Coinstar has evolved. If you choose the e-certificate option (for e-stores such as Amazon or iTunes), there is no fee. And they often run promos where you can get a 5 or 10% bonus, meaning that you get what you put in PLUS some.
Is this thread from 1982?
Do you mean to tell me that you add up the exact sum of every one of the 30-40 items in your shopping cart at the grocery store to the penny, calculate the tax for the entire transaction, and count out the exact change for the cashier? Dude, that is some crazy shit right there.
If I’m buying a few items, I’ll ballpark the total, including tax, and can usually hit it within a couple bucks. But that’s where it ends.
And I don’t like carrying coins around so usually I’ll drop them in the tip jar on the counter if there is one, and if there isn’t they go in the bowl on my dresser when I get home. I haven’t in my life left the house with coins, just bills.
Yeah, to me this sounds similar to: “How can you tell me you don’t have every single street in your county memorized?” Dude, it’s not that important for me to care about. If I plan on doing exact change I’ll just have my change ready to be picked apart in my hand. Walking out before they’ve completed the transaction seems very rude to me for a number of reasons, but I digress…
On the flip side, I will reiterate that at a lot of big box and other chain stores that cashiers are often rated by their speed. Corporate doesn’t care if some people ask questions, or some people are counting change, or someone dropped their milk everywhere. So it doesn’t help to sit there and take one’s sweet time either. Just be ready with the money is all that’s required.
Here is your change, Sir…give…and thank you for shopping at Dopeco!
Another thing to remember is that the cashier has to count your exact change too. It’s easy to glance at a bill and see that it’s $10, but it takes a lot longer to look at a pile of change and say “that’s 87 cents”.
On the other hand, time isn’t really that big a deal for me at the store, and it shouldn’t be for the people waiting behind me either. Don’t stop at the grocery store 5 minutes before an important meeting (or whatever your hurry is) and you wouldn’t have to worry about somebody taking an extra few seconds to get rid of their pennies and maybe get a quarter back.
It’s about context. Sometimes there is a hurry, and exact change takes longer. But counting or spending change is useful sometimes and it shouldn’t be shunned in all cases just because it takes a few extra seconds to count.
If you dig for exact change at the register, people hate you. The people behind you in line hate you, and the cashier hates you especially. For a minimum wage drone, swiping a card is much simpler.
I suspect this is true for all cash purchases, even rounded to whole bills. It’s easier to scam someone with cash.
Our local McDonalds (a double lane, 24-7 operation) has signs posted to please not pay with exact change.
I might give exact change, but I won’t give give it.
Read the the thread title closely…
You’re doing it the hard way (which lowers my evaluation of the rest of your post).
Getting coins involves holding them and finding/picking the ones you need for the desired amount needed.
Holding is simple.
Finding/picking is more complex and therefore easier / should be done with your dominant hand.
I don’t want change, especially pennies, cluttering up my pocket. If they’re going to give me pennies if I pay with bills, then I’m gonna pay with a mix of bills and coins to avoid getting change back.
Now if they were willing to round each transaction to the nearest nickel, so that pennies could be avoided altogether, I’d be OK with their policy. But I don’t want the ‘no exact change’ policy to be one-sided.
For those who pay with cash, do you keep the receipt? Do you then record the receipt in some kind of ledger in order to balance your account?
Card transactions are recorded. You can see every transaction in your online account. Checks are too, though people like my wife still choose to manually record the transaction in their checkbook—another eye-roller at the checkout line. First they right out the check … then the cashier has to process it … then the person flips to the back of the checkbook to write down the transaction. Oy.
How do you balance your account using cash? Or is it something you don’t bother to do?
i love to lighten y load of coinage, even self serve checkout, feeding in the bills and quarters at my leisure. ussualy have to wait for the clerk to proof my ID for wine anyway
Receipt? No, I’m pretty sure this eggplant and carton of soy milk will work out for me.
Balance what account??
Cash transactions are off the books for me. My budgets are not so exact that I would care about $20 spent here or there on whatever I felt like.
“Balancing my account” to me only in references what is in my bank account so if I took $60 out in cash, I would’ve marked that as taken out and that would’ve been it. What I spend it on isn’t important, just the fact that it is no longer in my account is what’s important. Frankly I have not kept up with my account book in more than 7 years though. Everything I need to know is recorded electronically and I can watch transactions process through in my bank’s system. I look about every other and say “Yup, those are my purchases, nobody has stolen my card and nothing was recorded wrong”. There just isn’t any reason to keep writing things down in my account book now that checks have dwindled to about one a year, if that. I always have a generic tally in my head of what is available to me in my bank account anyway and when my automatic payments come out, so I’m not going to be surprised and get overdrawn.