

Penny Saver - Garbage
http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/438-Penny-Saver.html

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furyg3
The euro has 8 coins (€2 €1 50c 20c 10c 5c 2c and 1c) and here in the
Netherlands, they've pretty much phased out the 1c and 2c coins.

All stores round up _or_ down the nearest five cents, evening the system out.
You're only charged the precise amount if you pay electronically. Banks and
some government transactions will result in a 1c or 2c coins, but it's pretty
rare for them to end up in your pocket.

I suppose you could game the system if you paid in cash when the rounding was
in your favor, and paid in debit when it wasn't. I doubt it would be worth the
effort.

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corin_
To be completely honest, $10/year seems a perfectly reasonable price to avoid
the nuisance of having pennies in my pocket, or bothering to collect them all
up and cash in every six months.

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dspillett
I chuck 1p, 2p and 5p coins in a pot at home rather than ever carrying them
around with me once they've got as far as home. There is a machine at my bank
that you can poor any coins into and it will count them into your account with
no charge. I do this once a year, it is only a ~10 minute detour on a trip
when I was walking into town for something else anyway, and it usually works
out at one 70cl bottle of Smirnoff Red plus a pound or so.

So I'm happy to keep the small change. I consider it to be a free drink or
few, in exchange for some minutes of my time.

There are similar machines in supermarkets that give you a voucher to use at
the till when paying for your shop, though they tend to charge (as much as
15%). They do usually have the option of giving the rest to charity though, if
you are so inclined (but you could do the same at the bank and donate without
some other entity lifting off up to 15%).

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sambeau
I have a motto that I think is useful to all:

    
    
      "Fuck the pennies - look after the pounds"

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ry0ohki
"Right now, both the cent and nickle ($0.01 and $0.05 coins) cost more to make
than their face values. If they kill pennies today, then nickles are certain
to be next."

I guess the solution is to get away from physical currency altogether, with
the cheap point of entry for things like Square now I should be able to use
debit or my cell phone to pay for anything.

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socially-distnt
right, then EVERY transaction will be traceable. No anonymity for anything you
buy.

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lhnz
While I was a student I didn't use my spare change. I spent cash and sometimes
coins over £1. However I wasn't throwing it away, I was just emptying my
pockets into a box. As time went on my change accumulated massively. After a
couple of years I took it all to a bank: I had nearly £220.

That's not quite the same since it wasn't just pennies. But the point still
stands: (1) I never had pockets full of change, (2) after a while it was worth
me cashing in. This would be the case with even any high quantity of low value
coins. I know people say that you shouldn't pinch pennies, but it didn't waste
my time to do so. It's as easy as putting your keys down and in 5 years time
it will be worth something to you.

...tell your kid that they are his if he can count them for you?

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masto
I don't _really_ care, but when I see these things I think about what would
happen if the situation were reversed: how would the store react if the total
came out to $19.38 and I decided I was only going to pay $19.35 because it's a
nice even number.

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andrewaylett
In France, before the Euro, things would be priced at 99 centimes, but the
smallest coin was a 3 centime coin (worth about half a cent). This meant that
when paying cash, some form of rounding was often necessary to give the
correct change, but the rounding (in my (childhood) experience) would always
favour the customer.

I'm amazed that shops in the US can get away with rounding up.

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endgame
Australia hasn't had coing smaller than 5c for years now. This rounding is
commonplace.

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mrspeaker
And if the total is 0.02 then they round down. Hence the russian-roulette
style game of trying to put $20.02 worth of fuel in your car... careful...
careful!

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Shenglong
In Canada (I'm following the trend!), I haven't made a paper/coin cash
transaction in over 3 months. I'm afraid future generations won't be able to
save pennies either way :(

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mise
The flaw with coin saving is that, from what I'm told at least in my country,
that the banks charge a fee for processing coins.

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batterseapower
CoinStar in the UK/USA does coin counting+cash out for free as long as you
turn coins into a gift certificate. Perhaps there is something similar where
you live, it may be an alternative to the bank?

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astrodust
They also charge nearly 10% to process the coins. You may as well flick a
tenth of them into the wind.

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bingaman
The processing fee is if you _don't_ get a gift certificate. I usually get an
Amazon gift certificate for 100% of my coins value.

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ordinary
Remember: Bill Gates actually loses money if he takes the time to pick up a
$100 bill in the street.

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peteretep
Only in the hugely unrealistic scenario where doing such a thing suddenly
pauses all of his cash-generating assets. Which it doesn't.

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ordinary
One could argue that if he'd spent all his life picking up 100 dollar bills,
he wouldn't /have/ any other cash-generating assets.

Anyway, it was just an analogy: my point was that applying yourself to your
normal day-to-day activities on the job is probably more productive than
spending an hour a month scraping together pennies here and there. Even if we
aren't all Bill Gateses.

