The penny costs to much to make and it uses too much time to spend them. Plus, what can you buy with a penny? I’m not even sure what you can buy for five pennies theses days, so occasionally I’ll take a jab at the nickel too (maybe).
I’m going to mention this every so often, why? Because it’s interesting to me and hopefully you’ll think so too. According to this video, it’s 1.8 cents to make a penny (how counter-productive is that?) and I’ve heard numbers higher that that. I don’t think any machines even take pennies. Although, I did hear in a West Wing episode that toll booths in Illinois will take them.
FYI, individual items wouldn’t be rounded to the nearest nickel, just your final total.
Watch the video, the theme is “Why Pennies are economically inefficient and should be abolished”, the guy who made it makes fun ones and he’s got some surprising points later on towards the end.
Please note that at 52 seconds in, he says we make 4 million pennies a year, but in the text on the screen he corrects it and says billion.
He makes some interesting points. Personally, I don’t carry change on me. I keep it in the car and generally use it for parking meters and if I’m getting a 99 cent or $1 item at the drive through. They’ll get mostly dimes and nickels and 9 or 10 pennies to help me get rid of them.
