Pennies playing hard to get

Just got informed at the financial institution where I work that once the armored service we use runs out we can get no more pennies unless of course someone brings them in to deposit. Will be interesting to see how folks deal with it.

Related to this???

No more pennies: In big change, Treasury will stop minting them : NPR

No doubt. It’s just more real when you hear it from one of the executives specifically about your own work place. As I think about it it has been quite a while since I have bent over to pick a penny up off of the street. :slight_smile:

We have a supply of pennie’s we’ve gotten as change in a container. H will look through them at some point and figure out what he wants to do with them.

There will definitely need to be changes to prices so that change is in nickel increments. No more $12.52. Because change won’t be able to be given after Pennie’s run out.

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I was recently in a store somewhere - gas station maybe? - and they had a handwritten sign saying they were low on pennies, so please plan accordingly. I did a double take, because I knew getting rid of the penny was talked about, but didn’t realize they were actually doing it. I rarely use cash, so at this point I’m not personally worried about it.

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For as long as I can remember, my gasoline purchase has been rounded to the nearest penny (or maybe just rounded up, I never thought to check). If the smallest available coin is now going to be 5 cents, how is that different?

I have pennies, but I can’t get rid of them. I tried to bring them to a bank, but they want me to stuff into those brown tubes and I don’t have time for it. Didn’t they use to have those machines that you could just throw coins into?

There’s still a few at the grocery store - they take 7% I think - at least the one by me.

Just think - in 100 years, these will all be collector’s items :slight_smile:

We have tons of those machines - called Coinstar. I took a bunch of change to the tune of $200 - lots of them pennies! - a couple weeks ago.

You can choose to take a gift card(paper receipt type) with 0% taken off your $ total. I’m the last I could get Amazon gift $ - it wasn’t available the last couple of times but there are other choices - I chose Lowe’s because there is always something we need from Lowe’s!

If you choose to take your turned in amount in cash THEN they take a %. Most of our Coinstars are located in big box grocery stores.

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I bank at a small local bank and they take all my change- no fee, just deposit it into my checking account. I cash in about two times a year. I rarely use cash but a few places around here either only take cash or charge a fee for cc. One place I frequent charges a fee for debit cards as well so I use cash.

I’m the weird one who likes to wrap coins! I used to do it for my mom - she let me keep the money! Big stuff to an elementary kid. I did the same with my kids - they started in preschool. Sadly, I just don’t have a lot of coins anymore to wrap.

the coinstar machine at our local grocery store was also a hit with my kids. We shopped every week and all the employees knew us. Every so often, the manager would open up the machine. Anything that can’t get sorted (I.e foreign money) get put into a container. He’d empty the container into a bag and would give it to my kids. So much fun to dig through, especially since we couldn’t travel anywhere back then. Sadly, the store closed many years ago. But good memories

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We had a family tradition of saving our change all year, wrapping it in the paper rolls on NY’s Eve with the kids and then taking a little weekend trip on the $ when they were off school Martin Luther King weekend. So fun.

Any foreign coins get spitted out in the “coin return” on the Coinstar machines now. I know because we often have Canadian change and it always gets spit out!

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I think many were eliminated after the TD bank coin counting scandal (just inaccurate). I use the coinstar at a stop and shop, but they recently eliminated Amazon gift card from their no fee options. I’ve been sneaking pennies into the garbage for a while now.

We just hang onto the pennies and have a nice bunch of them. I can’t see any reason to throw them away. They’re nice weights for curtains if anyone needs a light weight.

Periodically H would give them to our favorite coffee shop as part of their tip, along with all the coins we’ve accumulated since last time we gave them change as part of the tip.

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Lots of examples on the internet:

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I was just at my bank and they have a sign and said the same thing. My son lives in Sweden for now and they have a cashless society and he uses his debit card. I can see just doing this going forward. Both my kid’s do. Have to make some cultural changes and mindset changes. Neither of them even uses their credit cards much and both have amazing credit for a 26/28 year old.

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My kids are fine without cash—they use debit & credit cards, as well as D using some app to transfer funds—Venmo. S also wires money. It works well for them. I’m fine with cash, debit & CCards. So far, haven’t wired funds nor apps for funds. My kids are in NYC & LA, both large cities. D has been paying rent via Venmo for ages.

I believe when they laid out our wooden floor, they used pennies as spacers between the wooden planks, so whenever we remove the floor, we would have a lot of pennies that were used to install the floor. We have had the floor for decades and have no intention of removing it though. It’s still in pretty good shape for its age. Haha!

I’m hanging onto a few pennies in case I run into another pressed penny machine. I have quite the collection over the decades. But I guess those machines will either disappear or they’ll have to figure out a way to store blanks.