This article is by staff writer Adam Baker. Baker is a founding member of Untemplater.com, a new multi-author blog focusing on personal finance, entrepreneurship, and life design for people in their 20′s and 30′s.
Americans have been fairly resistant to the introduction of a coin form of our dollar currency. We have them in circulation, of course: The Presidential Series and the Sacagawea gold coins are both currently being minted. 
You can also occasionally bump into a Susan B. Anthony silver dollar or, if you’re really lucky, an Eisenhower Dollar. (For some reason, it seems like this rare sighting almost always occurs in small-town gas stations and grocery stores. Don’t ask me why.)
Despite several attempts to introduce a popular dollar coin, the dollar bill continues to enjoy its position as the dominant $1 currency.
Since traveling overseas, I’ve realized the story is a little different elsewhere. Both New Zealand and Australia have not only $1 coins, but $2 coins as well. And the dollar bill? Well it’s non-existent. The smallest paper note is the $5 bill.
Coins are just dying to be spent
At first, the difference seemed negligible. Who cares if it’s a coin, a paper bill, or a credit card? Ignoring exchange rates, a dollar should be spent the same regardless of material, right?
Sounds good in theory (at least in my head), but after several months of purchasing tram tickets, bottles of water, and Mrs Higgins cookies with small bills and coins, I noticed a difference. Magically, it seemed like I had a much easier time spending a handful of coins than I did a small wad of bills.
In the States, Courtney and I generally ignored change altogether. In fact, when we had something like a $3.79 charge, we’d simply record it as $4 spent to help simplify our tracking. This meant that in rare cases where we paid for a small purchase with only pocket change, we usually didn’t track it at all.
However, we found the system we’d grown accustomed to in the States was a little more expensive to operate overseas. A small handful of change could easily be six or seven bucks!
Ditching the penny once and for all
The Australian and New Zealand currencies are also void of any pennies (although the New Zealand ten-cent piece looks like a penny). Electronic payments, including credit and debit, and still processed down to the penny in most cases; however, when paying in cash, they round the transaction to the nearest $.05 (or $.10 in New Zealand).
It wasn’t until experiencing a penniless system that I realized how pointless (and annoying) the one-cent coin can be. Ironically, a 2008 New Yorker article points out that “primarily because zinc…has soared in value, producing a penny now costs about 1.7 cents.” Yikes!
You don’t have to travel across an ocean to realize that fighting to keep the penny in circulation is a losing battle. And in my opinion, the widely-popular dollar bill won’t outlast the penny very long at all.
And you know awhat? Although Courtney and I found ourselves much more willing to splurge with the increased coinage, I still favor the system from a usability standpoint. The question left to ask is:
Why are we fighting so hard to resist this change?
It seems like a logical shift. I don’t get it! Are you ready to ditch the dollar bill and the penny?
Sacagawea coin photo by flower beauty.
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As for the similarity between dollar coins and quarters in the U.S.:
Trust me…the current dollar coins are different enough that giving a dollar when you meant to give a quarter will happen to you once, maybe twice. But after that, you will learn and your brain will automatically sense the difference for you. If not, then you don’t care enough about how you spend your money to take notice.
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Kevin @ 92
A few years ago a guy actually did this. After a while they stopped him by simply making it illegal. Effective in his case, but I don’t see how that fixes the issue in the long run.
John @ 80
The value of the raw materials will, of course, fluctuate with the market. But the cost of manufacturing a penny is only partially in the raw material. The 1.7c estimate is, i believe, for labor and facilities as well as raw material. I’m sure that number is obsolete, but probably not terribly far off.
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There’s a law of economics called “Gresham’s law” that states “bad money drives out good.” Basically it means people hoard good money and circulate bad money. It meant a lot more when our money was gold and government declared all coins had equal value. When people had the option to circulate a chipped worn coin that contained less gold and a fresh new one that contained more gold they would hoard the fresh new one and circulate the bad one, thus driving out the new fresh one. It still applies though and it’s going to be a major barrier to introducing a nice pretty coin worth a dollar.
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The penny isn’t going away because of who is on it: Abraham Lincoln.
Since he is regarded as the greatest president in America, any attempt at removing him could easily cost an elected official’s seat.
The same holds true for the dollar as well with George Washington, and the government is probably loathed to put his face on another coin (as he is on the quarter and 50 cent piece I think).
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I don’t think pennies are worthless. For everyone who feels differently, send me your pennies and I will be a very happy guy!
I pick up every coin I see, including pennies. In high school, students would throw pennies at each other in the locker room throughout all the periods. When I had track practice after school, I would pick up all the pennies from the day, and I used them to buy lunch the next day.
Of course, I make a lot more money now, so a penny might seem less significant. But I never forget my roots and how much every penny meant to me when buying lunch the next day. And this was only 2001-2005, so the “value” of a penny wasn’t much higher back then.
The whole point of Get Rich Slowly is to do it one step at a time. Everyone is looking for the big win, but we mustn’t forget that a penny is a step towards wealth also.
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@Kevin #92, http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/?p=8158#comment-217196
It says the cost to make pennies is 1.7 cents. No one ever said the actual copper was worth more than the penny. And even if it was, would it be worth the cost to obtain massive amounts of pennies, melt them down, and sell them to a factory? Of course not.
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I am not in favor of getting rid of the pennies. But the production must be slowed down. There are far too many businesses that insist on pricing things down to the penny and then come the taxes. It is a rare place in US where the price is in round numbers and the tax is included. What the business would lose in sticker shock would be gained in higher efficiency.
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I think the Euro’s biggest faults (except for basing it on a base-10 number system) are the 1€ and 2€ coins, so don’t copy that idea. My wallet gets so heavy and full, bills are much better. I don’t say the coins should be abolished, but supplemented with 1€ and 2€ bills. Back when we had Schillings in Austria, we also had 20 ATS bills and coins, so why not (although the latter were quite rare)?
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Pennies are easy to get rid of. Who really wants to keep pennies? I’m not rich but if I see a penny on the ground I won’t even bother picking it up.
I’m one of those weird people who goes the bank and withdraws rolls of dollar coins just so I can use them. I’d love to see dollar coins take the place of bills but until the feds pull bills from circulation nobody is going to use them.
It seems minor to most of us, but the vending machine industry would eventually benefit from a switchover. The mechanisms to process bills are much more difficult to maintain than the ones for coins.
There’s definitely a psychological element to all this. The dollar buys less and less each year. At some point it will effectively be pocket change. When do we give up associating the dollar with “real” money and begin to think of it as change. If fifty years ago a pack of gum cost 10 cents and now a pack of gum costs a dollar, then then buying gum is a pocket change transaction. How long do we wait before a dollar becomes worthless enough in our minds to be considered as change?
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I am living in Germany. The smallest Euro bill is 5 Euros and although I never experienced it the other way around I think our system sucks!
I am all for ditching the pennies or cents here but
I would also love to see a 1 Euro bill!!!
The change is hard to track, its heavy, its not very convenient to handle when you have the stuff in your hands.
When I leave my apartment I usually clear my pockets of all the change, I only take 1 to 4 of the bigger coins with me (2,1 Euro and 50 cent coins). The rest I throw in a box which is so heavy you can only lift it with two hands. This box has been sitting there for years, everybody has such a box. I even know people that throw their smaller change away. Stupid x.99, x.95 prices are to blame.
All those penny graveyards, the copper could really be put to better use.
What exactly was the advantage of coins again?
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I have spent big chunks of my life in England and Spain. At first, I realized that I was spending a ton more money in the Spanish system because coins are easier to spend, if you are used to coins being more insignificant amounts. Once you acclimate to the system, however, it seems preferable. There are even $5 coins in Spain as well, and, while I suppose technically they are heavier, I never noticed. In addition, they are sturdier…and as one reader stated, much easier to get into a soda machine! I agree with others that the penny needs to go, as well as the nickle…what a waste of government (read: our) money. I can see that it would be difficult to implement this “change” though…it’s very complex figuring out that you have to stop printing paper currency and start stamping coins
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I guess I will chime in on my aspect here. Time to cancel out of some of the “problems” I see mentioned here.
1. If the coins really are “so heavy” then you most likely will spend them first. You have to adapt and laziness is not an excuse!
2. Vending machines will quickly be converted to accept dollar coins if bill ceased to exist tomorrow. Otherwise vending businesses will soon be out of business.
3. Using coins saves our tax dollars wasted on paper notes.
4. The women’s clothing market will adjust with pockets. If the need is there the sellers will adjust.
5. Cash drawers: use the old $1 slots for the coins. Solved. Pretty lame excuse to begin with. Plastic trays are cheap to produce.
The problem now is people have a choice. If the mint announced that all $1 bill printing will cease tomorrow then you will see a flood of coins in the marketplace.
People may gripe for a while and that’s just too bad. 6 months later you won’t hear much about it. At some point you have to do what makes fiscal sense.
Pennies are worthless and should have been gone long ago. Waste of time, money, and space!
Finally if you are still insistent on not using coins then your change jar will be worth a lot more when you roll it and take it to the bank!
- Foo
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We don’t have the time or money to let this come down to any simpler argument than what is the most efficient currency combination for bills and coins. If it’s cheaper to make dollar coins that last longer and replace pennies and nickels with 3.33 cent coins, whatever, we need to do it. At this point in time, arguing over “convenience” or “noise” or “something to put in a greeting card” has very little veritas compared with how to save the government (and therefore us) money.
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I must be one of the rare people who actually spends pennies. I follow the envelope system and trust me, I spend my pennies. With my budget already pretty limited, I happily use those pennies to get a little more. I would also happily get rid of my pennies they weigh down the envelope, making me feel like I have more than I do
As for the dollar coin, I’m of two minds. I carry a pouch for the envelopes. The only part that doesn’t stay in the pouch (usually) is my laundry quarters. Recently I’ve had about $5 in quarters in my pouch because I keep forgetting to move them over to the cup with the laundry quarters. My pouch has a noticeable difference in weight (quite a bit heavier). Yet I find dollar bills to be cumbersome and frustrating when I pull out a wad of cash only to find that most of what’s there are $1s…
I like the look of the Sacajewa coin and it’s a lot easier to differentiate it from a quarter. They don’t weigh more than a quarter does, but with the gold color I quickly know which is which! I have an uncle who works a side business at sci-fi/gaming conventions and only gives out Saca dollars as dollar change. Everyone always seemed happy with it, but I think it was more of a novelty thing.
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Currency altogether is becoming irrelevant. I haven’t had cash on hand more than a handful of times in the past year.
However, I don’t see why anyone would choose a heavy coin over a light paper dollar.
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“You’re forgetting about the secondary metal market.
If the inherent value of the raw materials in a penny are worth more than the penny as a currency…”
Sure, it costs more than one cent to *make* a penny, that value was not the total metal value therein.
Going to $1 coins and ditching the $1 bill would be great. Keep the $2 bill around though — it’s not like they get replaced at a high rate at all.
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Heavy coins are beneficial. People will get stronger arms and legs from carrying the extra weight and pockets and purses will become more durable. That is exactly why I walk around with my pants bulging with quarters right now ! Other people seem to find easy ways to reduce the amount of coins they carry. I guess they just want to be all “European”.
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I don’t see the problem with using a $1 coin. I use them from time to time, it sucks how many cashiers scoff at them. It’s not like they are the giant Eisenhower dollar coins of the 1970s. My pockets and/or coin purse aren’t weighed down by the “gold” dollar coins!
They will last longer than paper dollar bills. Dollar coins would reduce the amount of money we spend on paper, and not clog up our wallets and pockets with old, wrinkled, soggy dollar bills that should have been shredded years ago.
The US needs to save money, it would save approx 600 million a year just by switching to a dollar coin and getting rid of the paper dollar bill once and for all.
As for a $2 coin, I don’t think that’s necessary, at least not now. The US still prints $2 bills….as of right now, it is a waste of money because so many Americans think they don’t make the $2 bill anymore, and should they come across one they save it thinking it’s worth more than two dollars.
The US should phase out the dollar bill, not go cold turkey. And use all the excess $2 bills sitting in vaults and drawers, and bring them into circulation.
That way someone would only be getting two $2 bills and one $1 coin for a $5 bill equivalent, and not have to lug around five $1 coins. Their pockets and wallets would be reduced by cutting the amount one $1 dollar bills in half with using more $2 bills.
Then, if people still don’t like $2 bills (you think they would, if they like paper money), then the gov’t phases it out and decides whether or not to make a $2 coin, or just leave it to $1 coins.
I’m also for getting rid of the penny. It’s time prices be rounded to the nearest nickle. I’m still divided on whether this should be before or after sales tax, because I know some businesses would round up, but other businesses such as grocery stores would round down. Instead of something being 19.99 it would be 19.95.
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There is a reason why we have not abandoned the paper bill. Strong vending machine lobbies do not want to incur the cost of new vending machines, and there is another reason.
Coins are manufactured at the US Mint. Paper bills are printed at the Bureau of Engraving. You have two entities fighting for the same job.
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I feel that people missed Baker’s point when he implied that if the $1 bill were to be changed into a coin, it would be more readily spent. (BAD IDEA FOR FRUGALISTS!)
If pennies were terminated, the “rounding-up” system would likely RAISE the prices of most items. (BAD IDEA FOR FRUGALISTS!)
To add insult to injury, here in Canada, once the $2 coin was introduced, the cost of virtually EVERY item that could be obtained at a machine or through a slot WENT UP! (Yet again, BAD IDEA FOR FRUGALISTS!)
Frugality to me is about saving our hard-earned money regardless of what form it is in, and to disregard coins because they are simply “small change” and “annoying” is a habit that could carry on into other facets of life, inevitably losing us all money.
If JD taught me ANYTHING these past few years, it’s that money management includes counting change — a little extra effort that goes a LONG WAY — for it’s saving that change (not spending extra money) that can help us build towards a more financially-stable and wealthy future.
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I just wanted to say in response to a few things people have said:
a) in Australia, the total price is rounded up or down, not the price of each individual item, and only if you pay cash.
b) in Australia (and obviously other countries too?) our coins and notes are all obviously different. There is no way you could confuse a $1 and $2 coin, or a $2 and 20c coin. And all the notes are different colours and sizes. It’s very obvious just by looking in my wallet how much money I have.
c) interestingly enough, Australia changed their currency altogether in1966 – from pounds and shillings to dollars and cents. I’d say we got along all right. We then changed our $1 note to a coin in 1985, then our $2 in 1988. About the same time all our notes were changed from paper to polymer. We’re all managing fine.
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@Adrian #120
Small change being spent so easily is a matter of attitude. If you think there is little value in all those coins you’ll treat them as such.
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I’ve never heard of anybody mistakenly paying with the wrong bills in the U.S. What kind of silliness is that? It would have to be tourists, and tourists anywhere get confused with foreign money. Frankly, I’d like to see wheat pennies and Indian head pennies back in circulation. I save every one I see. I have no interest in dollar coins or five dollar coins, and it would appear that most of the country feels the same since there’s no movement to use them.
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When I lived in Japan, whenever I got a 500 yen coin in change, I would make a point to not spend it, and then tossed it into a coin bowl. I ended up saving nearly 70,000 yen (about $750), that paid for a trip to Thailand. Not a shabby way of saving money!
Of course, back home in Canada, the $1 coins are used to pay for laundry, along with the quarters, so no more ‘free’ trips to Southeast Asia!
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@Darnell #104 – Just put Lincoln on the dollar coin and the problem is solved.
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Earlier on one dollar was quite a decent amount of money, but today inflation has undermined the value of the one dollar and, as in all other countries, coins are for small value currencies.
One might argue that it makes sense to change the one dollar bill into a coin, but it’s also a sad reflection of the continuous government erosion of the value of peoples’ money. Unless you change your monetary system the one dollar bill probably will become a coin in the future. Later on it will happen to the 2 dollar bill, the 5 dollar etc. Just like it happened in many other countries where inflation has lead to coins with high numbers (not included countries with hyperinflation).
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Before we moved offices, our vending machines at the old building took gold dollars. The change machine only turned bills into gold dollars. So every once in a while someone would end up putting a $20 bill in it. I had done it and ended up with 20 gold dollar coins
Spending them was difficult. A McDonald employee called over his manager. He didn’t believe it was real currency. Other incidents were people thinking I gave them quarters. And vending machines in the new building not taking the dollar coins and getting jammed.
Actually, once I helped out my mom with an event handling money. I gave a man the “new” five dollar bill. He came back yelling at me telling me I passed him a fake bill. I told him I have plenty of the old $5 bills if he wanted, but it wasn’t a fake bill and that it was just new. He was angry, told me he never heard of a new five and swapped the bills rudely.
People don’t like change. (Pun)
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Inflation has eroded purchasing power significantly over the past 100 years, so converting to $1 (and even $2) coins is probably long overdue. They would last longer, and could be designed properly to be easily distinguishable from other coins.
I tend to try and give exact change for cash purchases, so my pockets wouldn’t get weighed down with dollar coins. For those that tend to collect change, just save it in a jar at home and cash it in periodically. If the experience of Canadians and Australians is representative, this old-fashioned savings method can be quite effective and “spare change” can add up to significant amounts.
As for vending machines, they would get converted to handle the new coins, although not without some grumbling from the owners.
As for the penny, it is definitely time to put it out to pasture. The Australian model of “rounding up/down” to the nearest 5 cents for cash purposes is an elegant solution. Since prices are rounded in both directions, on average you shouldn’t be any worse off.
JS
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The thing about the U.S. is that you don’t have a $2 bill, so the $1 bill is a bigger deal. I was against the coins up here in Canada at first but now I would welcome a $5 coin as well. You don’t forget about your coins like they’re just nickels or quarters, you are well aware of the value of the loonie and the toonie as we call them. Since so many of us are hooked on drive-thru coffee we use them for that quite a bit.
At the same time a lot of tradition gets lost. I can understand the mentality of “just because the rest of the world is doing something doesn’t mean that we have to do it”.
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Pennies won’t go away until retailers stop trying to kid people that a $10 is really a dollar cheaper at $9.99. If they do go away, then we’ll all be paying $10 for goods marked $9.99, which at a penny per item could, over time, add up to a nice windfall for merchandisers and a nice rip-off for consumers.
Americans have had dollar coins in the past. People in my father’s generation were happy to see the silver dollar go, because it was heavy, bulky, and would wear a hole in a man’s pants pockets. The two reasons no one liked the Susan B. Anthony coin are a) few people want to carry a pocketful of nuisancey coins around and b) they’re so close in size to the quarter that it’s easy to accidentally pay for a 25-cent item with a dollar coin.
And we know very well that given a quarter-sized dollar, it will be a matter of…what? minutes? seconds?…before vending machine owners jack up the price of a can of sugar water to a dollar and then to two dollars. Another fine rip-off for the consumer.
Also, they’re junky. Those of us who remember when coins were made of silver and copper and were worth about their face value will not even bend over to pick up a penny, a nickel, or a dime, because a piece of base metal that goes “clunk!” instead of “ping!” when you drop it on the floor doesn’t feel like real money.
Our money is debased enough without giving us more cheesy coins to advertise it.
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@ Funny about Money — I have silver dollars too, and our toonies and loonies are not as heavy! They’re very easy to tell apart from each other and from quarters (right down to the texture on the sides). If the U.S. was smart, they’d make the coins distinctive and lighter and people wouldn’t have those problems. Mind you, I have a hard time telling U.S. bills apart, so I don’t have much hope!
I don’t remember people jacking up prices on vending machine items or other coin operated things when we got the loonies. Prices went up over the years, of course, but that was due to other factors and not the introduction of a new coin. (I was very young then, so please feel free to correct me!) Machines that take loonies and toonies give change, just like machines that accept bills.
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@ funny about money – in Australia we have plenty of things for sale for $9.99. If you bought three things for 9.99 you would actually pay 2c LESS, because the total would be $29.97, and would be rounded down to $29.95.
We have a LOT of things for $9.95, rather than $9.99 – same psychology, but with the added ‘it’s not being rounded up so I’m saving even more’ thing added in.
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Yet another Canadian weighing in to say I love loonies and toonies. And, of course, the only way the US will switch is if you stop making dollar bills and start pulling them out of circulation.
While you’re making changes you might try making different denominations of bills different colors so you can instantly see how much money you have and adding Braille to the corners for the blind. We’re doing that and it’s helpful while the bill is relatively new and stiff. I don’t think it’s possible to read the Braille on an old, floppy bill though.
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“The biggest draw-back is definitely strip clubs though and probably the best reason to keep low-currency bills.”
This is a personal finance blog, not a blog for losers who have to objectify women in order to feel better about themselves.
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@Artemis (#134)
Thanks. I didn’t notice that comment before. I’m not going to remove it now because it’d make your comment confusing, but I’ll try to make sure stuff like that doesn’t slip through the cracks again. I’d normally delete a line like that and let the rest of the comment through. I apologize for not catching it this time.
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I bought a digital coin counter last week and have $88 so far this month. I usually average about $50 a month which I squirrel in my savings account at ING Bank. For me, having change is a necessity when you have to do laundry or park anywhere in downtown LA, Pasadena, Santa Monica or any city where parking is a revenue source (Sign of the apocalypse: a parking meter had takes credit cards). As for the penny, I doubt people are ready to have their sales tax raised in increments of 5%.
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The people complaining about all the loose change just aren’t used to using it. Here in the UK we have no real need for 1 and 2 pennies. I ditch them in the charity boxes that are at many tills.
If the smallest note is £5, there is little need to have more than £5 worth of change (which will mostly be a couple of £1 (or £2) coins. You need to get used to using the change for purchases. Say you have £4.30 in change and you are buying something at £6.80 – If you just hand over your £10 note, you’ll get another £3.20 in change…but it’s common practice to give over £11.80 and get a £5 note back. Voila, less change. Most vendors are happy to do this (if not encourage it) as it keeps their level of change in the till.
Also, the reason people end up with more change when travelling is that the coins look different, so feeling pressured at the till point you grab a note rather than trying to sort through the bunch of strange coins.
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Not going to happen any time soon.
Penny’s are made of copper. The biggest copper producer in the US is Arizona. Arizona is represented in Congress by John McCain. The US Mint will never be allowed to get rid of the penny as McCain has too much clout as a senior senator.
My guess – 10 years after McCain retires we’ll get rid of penny and dollar bill.
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I love having 1 and 2$ coins. When I fist moved to Australia I spent them more, but as I adjusted I don’t think my spending habbits have changed that much from what I did when I lived in the US. The best part is when you think you have no cash but then find enough money for a cup of coffee or lunch in your change.
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With a $5 bill as your lowest denomination, and a $2 and $1 coin such as in Canada, the most amount of coinage you can get dollarwise in a transaction is 4 one dollar coins or at the least, two two dollar coins. This will not drastically weigh you down. I for one would rather have a couple coins you barely notice over a huge wad of dollar bills.
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I’d sooner use coins to do trading than bills of credit. Common sheets of paper money have practically no inherent value (which is what we use today for larger amounts of monetary transactions)! A coin contains metal which has value due to scarcity, usefulness and demand. Most paper (note: there are some rarer species of trees) is too common and abundant to be worth anything. Even a base metal has a small amount of value which is better than a piece of paper worth not even a penny in value. I believe it is time we go back to a system where money has most (if not all) of the value stated on the coin face. Better yet, let’s dump the whole idea of currencies and simply trade in bullion coinage, that way banks cannot have power over the masses and all of society. The power of money should belong to the people (not to a bunch of crazed, manipulative central banking control freaks)!
The U.S. Constitution, in Article 1, Section 10, states that coined money in silver and gold is the only legal tender. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 is illegal based on the U.S. Constitution. It’s time we take our money and government back. Please visit http://www.opencurrency.com. Sign your business up to accept their metal backed participating currencies. It is 100% legal!
I also believe there needs to be a black market metal spot price and “official” metal spot price to keep the market in check and prevent corruption from specific interests (private, public, government, corporate, etc). The system we have currently always gets manipulated by the Federal Reserve and central bankers. The U.S. Dollar is irrationally high right now, whereas metal spot prices are manipulated by the banks to be artificially low. This is not right for those who have invested logically, properly, honestly and responsibly in response to the actions of government and banks that care not how much debt they take in and cannot and do not intend to repay. This is common sense folks!
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Interesting discussion! Regarding US coins: could we get rid of the one-cent, five-cent, and twenty-five cent coins and revise our pricing so that we start with zero and move up to .1 (a dime), .2 (two dimes), .3 (three dimes) etc, We would have coins with values of ten cents, twenty cents, fifty cents, one dollar, two dollars, five dollars, and so on. Any thoughts on how that would affect the overall ‘cost’ of things in the long run? Would we need a .05-cent value coin too as a buffer for rounding? I’m just wondering because we haven’t used a half-cent in ages yet nobody complains about that. How much inflation must there be before dealing in hundredths of a dollar becomes ridiculous? Don’t we have a quarter-dollar coin only because of the old Pieces of Eight and Two Bits–one bit being twelve and a half cents? And where are those fifty-cent coins I used to see often when I was a youngster in the sixties? I’m in favor of dollar coins and two-dollar coins simply because I’d rather have coins with some value weighing me down instead of useless pennies, nickles, and dimes. I do think, however, that the US government will remove dollar bills from circulation sooner than later–mainly because they didn’t bother to redesign the dollar bill and WE do all the discussing about it and THEY don’t. Now I must run to the CoinStar with a few hundred nickles and pennies that I can turn into something less cumbersome!
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Phasing out the paper dollar is one of the best ideas that i have ever heard of. I have been spending dollar coins for a few years and they are much easier to spend. Besides we are talking about $1. It’s not like you have to carry around 25 or 30 of them. you probably use a debit card if you make that many purchases in a day. as for the rest of us that just spend a few dollars a day on coffee, it is much easier. As for the penny, I would like to see it around for a little longer. All that change saved up after a long time is good when you turn it in and get a pretty good amount of money. And for everyone complaining about change, how is it so annoying when you barely notice small change anyway. i think you all read this and thought about it for a second and decided it was annoying. then you went back to forgetting about it. Quit whining about keeping paper dollars. no one wants to upset their normal lives. Its a better idea so just accept it.
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