US Treasury to stop producing pennies next year (opens in new tab)

It's about time.

Andy Rooney complained about pennies back in the 1980s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-zcWgXu4hg . "A penny saved is a waste of time."

In inflation-adjusted terms, a penny back then was worth almost 3 cents now.

Australia stopped one and two cents coins decades ago. It's sad to have to live with a system where the numbers are just two or even five times larger than they should be, but I suppose worse things have happened.

In high school, 17 years ago, I wrote a DBQ (document based question essay) for an AP test about why pennies were a huge waste to the economy. Both in cost to some, keep in circulation, and just dealing with for businesses/consumers.

It’s past time we did away with the penny and honestly the nickel shouldn’t be too far behind. Really anything less than a quarter seems like more trouble than it’s worth at this point. I would never carry change though, I barely carry cash as-is.

> The phasing out of the coins will mean businesses will need to round prices up or down…

Only when paying cash, and only the total.

If the penny bin (bucket?) of cash registers disappears, slide the rest over one slot and start minting 1$ coins like crazy.

a few things from experience with no pennys in Canada, 2¢ now rounds down to 0¢, along with your personal opinions, and if you want to make an impression on a date.....that is already going well, then keeping a vintage penny just in case you hit an awkward pause, may bring a smile.

Honestly inflation is such that any denomination less than a full dollar is almost worthless.

The only application of fractional currency in modern USA is in making every price end in 99 cents for stupid reasons. Everyone has been conditioned to mentally round up any price to the next dollar.

There's nearly nothing you can buy today for less than a dollar. There's no point in any smaller denominations.

Replace it with a 33 cent coin

As mentioned in the article, we dropped the 1-cent coin in Canada over a decade ago. Nobody cares. We also dropped the $1 and $2 bills, years back. I'm guessing there will be a $5 coin soon ... but none of this matters much anymore, since people pay for so many things with contactless money transfers.

Cool, now work on the dollar next. Think we can get a dollar coin that lasts more than a year or two? Found a Sacagawea dollar in one of my cupholders just the other day, took me a hot minute to recognize what it even was.