Anytime I’m at a checkout behind a senior, it doesn’t matter what the total is they always hold up the line counting out the change. It doesn’t matter if the total is $19.99 they’ll hand the clerk a twenty then say “hold on dear I have the 99 cents”. Now I’m not hating on them here, It actually amuses me in its cuteness. (like when they keep moving their stuff back when it’s on the conveyor because they don’t realize there is an eye that will shut it off) So where is all this coin coming from? How is it that they are net givers of small change?
Hmmmm… this is quite true.
My first instinct was slot machines (seniors love those) if they are legal in your jurisdiction, but these days they take notes anyway, and you usually collect through the cashier.
I think the only other thing that it might be is that they aren’t in fact net givers of change, but actually receive quite a lot of it because their transactions are different to yours. For example, you want to go somewhere, you probably put an even $30 or whatever of fuel in your car and use that for a few days. If you do have to catch a bus, it might cost you an even $2, say. The senior person will more likely be riding the bus, and will no doubt get some pensioner’s concession ticket of $1.15 or somesuch. Then you go to the supermarket and buy a huge load of stuff for the family, paying electronically maybe, but the senior might go to several older style main street stores, buying enough provisions for a one person household (one tomato, that sort of thing) - this’d earn them a lot of loose change. I suspect it’s little things like that.
Dunno where they get it from, but if you know a senior citizen, be sure to check their sofa and chair cushions - there will be a veritable gold mine of change there. It falls out of their pockets when they fall asleep watching TV.
Hey, I’m not saying keep it - you can give it back to them when you find it!
As a card-carrying member of AARP, I feel qualified to answer this.
It comes from being passionate to the point of anal retention about “keeping track of your change”. And the reason we are passionate about keeping track of our change is that we have learned the hard way that you can piss away an astonishing amount of money over a year by simply dropping the change you encounter during normal commercial transactions into your pants pocket and leaving it on top of the dresser at the end of the day. It disappears into the place where odd socks go, or something.
And since by this period in our lives we have learned the value of a dollar, even a dollar in pennies, and a dollar means more to us now that we are on limited incomes, we pay attention to where our change goes.
This entails buying a teeny coin purse, so that when someone gives us change during the course of a commercial transaction, we carefully tuck it away in the teeny coin purse, rather than simply dropping it into our pants pocket, from whence it would be removed at the end of the day, tossed onto the dresser and forgotten.
And we carry your teeny coin purse around with us all the time, thus we always have those coins that the young whippersnappers left on their dressers at home.
Glad you think we’re cute, sonny. You’re underwriting our Medicare with Your Tax Dollars, and it’s good to know that it gives you warm fuzzies… :evil grin:
I’m not that old, but I give change all the time - more often than not. But that doesn’t make me a net giver of change. I don’t pay exact change, just enough to minimze the number of coins I get back.
For example, if the amount is $5.21, I’d try to give exactly $5.21 (or $10.21, etc). If not, I’ll see if I can give $6.01, because I’d rather get back 80 cents (4 coins) in change than 79 (7 coins). If not, I’ll see if I can do 5.25, so at least I don’t get 3 quarters. (Unless I routinely need quarters for laundry, toll, etc.) In all but one of those cases I’m giving change, but also getting some change in return. As a result I never have more than $1 of change in my wallet.
I’m not a senior citizen, but what DDG says is very true. I started keeping a mason jar on my dresser, and the amount of time it takes to fill that jar to the tune of roughly $50 per jar is… :eek:
I’m with DDG on this. Don’t forget that Baby Boomers and older had parents who grew up in the Great Depression. You had an entire generation that was obsessed with keeping track of every penny. Today’s senior citizens, even if they don’t actually remember the Depression, certainly remember their parents making a big deal about what may now seem inconsequential.
I just rolled $237 worth of change in a huge bowl I keep on my desk so I know how it adds up. (We have one and two dollar coins in Canada) I’ve just never seen a senior actually receive change. Only count it out.
Define “senior,” please? 
Anyone older than you? Anyone with gray hair? Losing or lost hair (as opposed to those who shave their heads)? Their clothes smell moth bally? Too many wrinkles? If we choose to take AARP status using DDG’s example, anyone can be a member of AARP, providing their spouse is at least 50. So there could be 30 to 50 year olds as members of AARP and qualified to be “seniors.”
If you restrict “senior” status to say the Baby Boomers and older, let’s not forget the Boomers at their youngest were born in 1965 (the last crop of them). We’re now talking a sizeable chunk of the population with money.
We know where every dollar and penny goes. Do you?
I hung on to my nickles, dimes and quarters for about five years and then blew it all on a dinner cruise for two on the Seine.
I’m saving again. I never give exact change!
Volunteer wine and red elephant steaks, I assume. Served in eleven sacks?
Anything to do with paying for more things in cash, due to long-engrained habit and technophobia that extends all the way back to the dawn of the ATM era?
I swear I spontaneously generate pocket change, and I hate carrying it around. It is a minor miracle that I somehow don’t walk around under a cloud of constant self-loathing. And I really don’t know where it comes from…seriously…as I’m a total debit card junkie.
I toss my change in an old wine jug in my bedroom and plunder that for bus and train fare for my commute. Usually when it gets to be 1/3 or 1/2 full, I lug it all to a coinstar machine and use it to buy something exciting, like dog food.
But I’m really going to start trying to horde it for something really cool. Like perplexing the young whippersnappers at the UberWalMart Synthetic Grocery Store of 2050.
I am a spry 24-year-old and I accumulate change too. I keep it rolled and every so often change it at the nearby depanneur, which is used to my eccentricities.
I used to stick my change in (very tasteful and decorative mind you) jars on my dresser. But I soon realized that money was not earning me interest.
Fucking banks won’t take, count and deposit your coins anymore.
Those coin machines in grocery stores will count your change and give you a receipt you turn into the cashier, but they take almost $.10 on the dollar.
I’m not quite old enough to hold up the line while I count out $3.95 in pennies, nickles and dimes.
What I recently discovered is – the “self check-out” lanes! I used to hate those things. They’re supposed to speed things up, yet everyone who uses them doesn’t know how they work, and half the things they try to scan won’t scan. Well honey, you didn’t really think that bag of green onions was going to scan did you?
But, they take coins! So now I go to the store and unload all my coins into the self checkout machine. It doesn’t roll its eyes at me, and there’s enough distance between me and the person waiting behind me I don’t have to deal with his rolling eyes and tapping feet either. You can stand there all day unloading your coins into that damn machine, and all it does is say “thank you.”
Because I don’t like carrying pennies. So, I will always give change (especially pennies) away.
I used to pull pennies out of my pocket because I didn’t like carrying them. Then I’d end up with tons of pennies that I’d have to go to the trouble of rolling and taking to the bank. Instead, I just kept track of the number of pennies in my pocket. I’d give as many as I could to the cashier and the pennies were no longer my problem.
Check it out, midwesteners - or anyone who is in an area with Giant Eagle grocery stores:
Their Coinstar machines now will give you Amazon Gift cards in the amount of your change desposited WITHOUT TAKING FEES!!!
Cool cool cool 
I save my change in a large jar. When it’s full, I take it to a local Crestar bank ( I’m not a member, doesn’t matter) and I run the change through their free coin machine. I get a receipt with the total amount and I get cash from the teller. No fees are taken out, either.
Change to me is for drive thru food. All change goes in the change thinggy in my car. When I hit a drive thru, I have plenty of time to count out the exact change. When I hit the window, I dump the change in the kids hands, they take it and give me my sandwich.
My much younger husband was one of those people who had to whip out the change in his pocket during every purchase and painfully count out what he did or did not hate. Annoying as… well, annoying.
Commerce Bank has free change counting machines. I accumulate between $25 and $30 every 8 weeks.