cash – Life In A Word

(Not) Making Cents

The other day when I drove into town I felt a sneeze coming on, so I reached into my car’s pull-out coin drawer and grabbed a handkerchief. If I’d wanted a breath mint for my mouth or an eye drop for my contacts I’d reach into the same place. But I wouldn’t find quarters, dimes, nickels, or pennies anywhere in there. Come to think of it, someday soon I won’t find pennies anywhere at all.

You probably caught the headline in your news feed. The population growth of U.S. pennies is about to come to a grinding halt. Our country will no longer mint shiny new “Lincolns” for the first time since their debut in 1787. Two hundred years and change (ha) is a darned good run for a coin but the penny appears to have been done in by compelling arguments. One, the production cost is three times the face value. And two – and perhaps most humiliating – the penny’s face value has descended into, well, obsolescence.

There was a time not so long ago when I wouldn’t pass up a lost penny lying in the street. In addition to “free money” there was the old adage find a penny pick it up, and all day long you’ll have good luck. Today you’d better settle for just the luck because you can’t buy anything for pennies anymore. You’d be better off using them for more practical purposes like checking your tire tread depth or turning screws. My brother and his wife turned thousands of their pennies into a beautiful, copper-colored floor for their kitchen.

Speaking of copper (I’m easily distracted today) I had no idea pennies are no longer made of copper. They’re primarily zinc because of the rising cost of metals (yet they still cost three cents apiece?) You’d assume quarters, dimes, and nickels were made from an alloy of silver, lead, or aluminum, but – go figure – those coins are primarily copper.

Enough with the facts. I’m bummed to see the penny put out to pasture. Along with it goes a ton of childhood memories. You could roll pennies into coin wrappers and enjoy the thrill of exchanging the whole lot for paper bills at the bank. You could drop them into handheld banks for untold savings (and my banks were delightfully mechanical). Finally, you could walk into any 7-Eleven or drug store, hit the candy aisle, and find several “penny candy” choices. A chunk of Bazooka bubble gum, hard candies, or licorice whips could be purchased for just a few cents back then.

Practically speaking I’m on board with the penny’s retirement, because I can’t recall the last time I involved a cent in a financial transaction. If something costs $9.99, are you telling me you’d reach into your pocket and pay the $9.99 in cash and coin? Nope, you’d more likely hand over a ten-dollar bill and then what happens? You get a penny in return. What are you supposed to do with that?

Certain sayings will have to head out to pasture as well. An expensive item can no longer be described as “a pretty penny”. “A penny saved is a penny earned” literally has no value. A frugal person should now be described as a “quarter-pincher” (in case the nickel and dime are also on life support). And “pennies from heaven” certainly don’t describe good fortune anymore, even if the song of the same name will continue to be sung.

For my money, I hope car manufacturers continue to include coin drawers in their dashboards. I keep important things in there and I’d prefer not to change my ways. Then again maybe I should keep a few pennies in the drawer, if only for my childhood memories. Those will always have value.

LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #5

(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)

I decided to have my lunch today while working through Bag 8… of 34 bags of pieces. That was a mistake. I reached for a LEGO piece, grabbed a little block of cheese instead, and Notre-Dame de Paris almost had cheddar in its walls. I immediately vowed food would go nowhere near the assembly ever again. It’s unnerving enough putting in the real pieces.

As I worked on the uppermost level you see here I used a little too much force, and a piece in the level below loosened and scampered down into the sanctuary. I shook, rattled, and rolled the entire cathedral trying to get it out but to now avail. Just before admitting defeat, the little devil finally emerged (he must’ve gone to confession). And here’s where I learned an unnerving truth: re-assembling pieces long after you’re supposed to can be near impossible. I had to tear down an entire wall to get the piece back in place. We’re working in close quarters here, people.

Today is also a good chapter to point out the tool to the right. It’s a “LEGO lever” (my words), designed to easily remove a piece from a place it wasn’t meant to go. I didn’t need my lever through the first seven bags, but today? Half a dozen times. My mind’s eye was off just a hair and I kept assembling pieces a quarter or half-inch off from where they were supposed to go. LEGO lever = life saver.

Bag 8 started slow and repetitious but finished grand and confident. In fact, I was so full of myself after the mere forty-five minutes of construction, I boldly plunged into Bag 9. Mistake. I mean, look at the pieces in this photo! Are these LEGOs or the little bits of pasta you find in your chicken soup? Seriously, we may be almost a quarter of the way through the bag count but the pieces are shrinking. Some Sunday soon the parishioners will look to the heavens and be burned by the giant magnifying glass above them.

Running build time: 4 hrs. 22 min.

Total leftover pieces: 17

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “Trump instructs Treasury to halt penny production”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Cashing Out

Yesterday I picked up a few items for my mother-in-law, who seems to restrict her driving to the nearby grocery store. After dropping off the purchases at her house, I was reimbursed – rounding up – with a crisp, new, twenty-dollar bill. That bill went straight into my wallet, nestled alongside a couple of paper receipts. But on the drive home I thought to myself, “What am I going to do with twenty dollars?” Not the money, mind you – the bill.

For many of us, this is what it’s come to: cash is a nuisance instead of a convenience. Use that twenty-dollar bill for a purchase and what do you get in return? “Change” – more bills than you had in the first place (and a few of those little round coin thingy’s). It’s the modern-day definition of “cash flow problem”. The coins go into the car “ashtray” (what’s that?) to gather dust. The bills go into the wallet or purse, where they take up more real estate than they deserve.

Speaking of wallets, the contents of mine have been reduced to a driver’s license, two credit cards, a bank card, and a (paper) insurance card. Even if my wallet had a “billfold” pocket, there wouldn’t be anything in it. You could say I choose to be strapped for cash. Instead, my phone slowly absorbs my wallet: payment apps, photos, and ID cards; all formerly parked behind the leather inside my front pants pocket.

Of course, I’m not alone. As the table suggests (from the Wall Street Journal article Should We Move To a Mostly Cashless Society?) we’re using other means to defray our expenses. Cash and checks, please step aside for the more popular debit, credit, and electronic alternatives. Note the table is already three years old, so it’s safe to say “Electronic” is an even taller column today. I know it’s been years since my kids wrote a check (if they ever did). Their data-driven world prefers Venmo, Apple and Google Pay, PayPal, and the like.

How about a couple of surveys to support the cash-is-no-longer-king society we live in? The first – 2,000 respondents (smartphone owners) – says they conduct more transactions with their phone than they do with their cash. The second claims four in ten merchants will soon take payment through “digital wallet” apps (if they don’t already). Stack and rack those bills, people; cash is officially old-school.

One more data-point for you. This survey shows how much (or how little) cash we carry around these days. The age range of the 2,000 respondents is 19-71. I’ll bet my $20 the 71-year-old’s lean toward the yellow ($21-$50) while the phone-gripping teens lean toward the blue ($10 or less). Frankly, I think there should be a fourth color for $0.

In defense of greenbacks, I still come up with two reasons why I occasionally need cash on hand. The first: tips for on-the-spot services (i.e. rental car shuttles). Perhaps one day Avis will include tipping in its app – like Starbucks does – but for now it’s still gotta be cash. The second reason: the needy – spontaneous gifting for those street-corner-dwellers (especially this time of year). Without cash, I’ve got nothing to give.

No surprise, both of my reasons are included in the article 7 Reasons You’ll Always Need Cash The other five? Small-business purchases (i.e. farmer’s markets or lemonade stands); “managing a tight budget” (more of a strategy than a reason); “when technology fails” (which admittedly, happens now and then); “when you need to remain anonymous” (witness protection program, anyone?), and “in case of emergency” (in other words, buying yourself out of a problem). I choose to play the odds, as I don’t pass enough lemonade stands or find myself in enough compromising situations to merit a $20 in my wallet. I can still run pretty fast.

Speaking of my mom-in-law’s $20, I shifted the bill from my wallet to my wife’s purse as soon as I walked in the door. It wasn’t a reflex move (I swear). It’s just, my wife “bucks” the trend – ha – and prefers a “stash” of cash at her fingertips (or maybe under the mattress? I should go check.) In other words, if you’re looking for a handout, you know who to go to in this relationship. As for me, I’ve officially cashed out.

Two for the Money

Not so long ago people would say to me – my grandpa included – “a penny for your thoughts”. I always liked that phrase, though I was never paid for whatever was on my mind. Today you don’t hear it so much, because nothing is worth just a penny anymore. You’d be better off giving a dollar. Or two dollars. Maybe then you’d find out what people think.

The other day I was in the drive-thru lane at my bank, and the teller cashed a twenty, returning a small stack of bills – a $1, a $5, a $10… and two $2-dollar bills. I’ve seen plenty of the first three, but when was the last time you came across the double-dollar? U.S. currency may be downright boring compared to the colorful equivalents in other countries, but today I say this: the uncommon $2 is a cool bit of cash.

America’s paper money prints in just seven options today, from the $1 on up to the $100-dollar bill. Fifty years ago you could find several larger denominations ($100,000!), but the big boys were dropped from circulation to deter organized crime. Even today, the $50 and the $100 get second looks for fear of counterfeits. The lion’s share of circulating bills is the $1 on up to the $20. But the one that earns a second look? The $2.

What makes the $2 so tony? Try finding one. I asked my bank how many they have in the drawer at any given time. They said none. In fact, I didn’t just get my couple of $2’s – I had to ask for them – and the teller had to go back to the vault to find them. The $2 just isn’t in demand anymore – hasn’t been for a long time. The U.S. Mint stopped printing $2’s in 1966, but thanks to America’s bicentennial, started the presses again in 1976. The most recent printing of the $2 was 2016 – almost 200 million – but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the U.S. currency clan. If you could shake the globe over a big basket, you’d find 40 billion U.S. bills in circulation right now. But the overlooked $2 represents less than 0.5% of the lot.

I like the $2 because of its unique look. Thomas Jefferson is on the front – oval-framed as in a portrait (only George on the $1 has the same look). The words “Federal Reserve Note” curve gracefully over TJ’s head; on all other bills those words are in a mundane straight line. Finally, the $2 is the only bill without a building on the back, like the Lincoln Memorial or the White House. Instead, you have an edge-to-edge top-to-bottom rendition of the signers of the Declaration of Independence (replacing TJ’s Monticello home from earlier versions).

The two-dollar bill has several chapters of urban legend much more colorful than other denominations. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak purchases $2’s in uncut sheets; then has them perforated and glued like a Post-It pad. He enjoys tearing off several for tipping. U.S. Air Force pilots of the U-2 spy plane keep a $2 in their flight suit; a sort of badge of distinction. $2’s are often used by gun rights activists to show support for the Second Amendment. The website Where’s George? keeps track of the circulation of over five million registered $2’s.

Despite my enthusiasm for the buck-buck, it’s not without its challenges. The $2 is not accepted at most vending machines. The common misconception the $2 is no longer circulating leads to suspicion of counterfeiting. Two years ago at Christa McAuliffe Middle School in Texas, a 13-year-old was denied lunch privileges for using a $2 at the cafeteria window. A man in Baltimore was jailed for using $2’s to pay for a purchase at Best Buy.

My couple of $2’s will stay with me a little while, at least until the novelty wears off. Maybe I’ll spend one of them just to see what happens. Maybe I’ll return the other to the bank vault for safekeeping. Today’s lesson; there’s more to American money than fives, tens, and twenties. $2’s have a place at the U.S. currency table as well, just as they did when first minted in 1862.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

gratuity

Last week as I was buying lottery tickets, it occurred to me that very few transactions require payment by cash these days. Perhaps you still buy your newspaper at the street corner box. Or you feed the parking meter with coins, even though most meters now take credit. Maybe you still throw coins into the bridge toll basket just because it’s fun.

My family and I were in New York City this past weekend and I was quickly reminded that cash is a necessity in the big city. Specifically, I’m talking about tips. “Tip” is a word that supposedly originated in the 17th century, and somewhere along the way it was more elegantly referred to as a gratuity. But sometimes I question how elegant the practice of tipping really is.

When my family and I arrived at our mid-town Manhattan hotel last Friday, I found myself tipping three people inside of fifteen minutes. The cabbie, the curbside bellman, and the valet (who helped us with our bags and refused to step aside until I “greased his palm”). In my book, a gratuity is a gesture of recognition for a job well done; a service that went above and beyond what you had in mind. Nowadays however, tipping has reduced itself to more of an expectation.

Case in point. That New York City cab ride was nothing more than a lift from Point A (airport) to Point B (hotel). The cabbie did not say a word the entire time, when in fact he could’ve joined in the family conversation or at least pointed out the city sights as we passed them. When we arrived at the hotel, the cab’s credit card machine allowed me the gratuity options of 20%, 25%, and 30% (nothing lower), and the cabbie actually complained about my choice of 20% for a large party. I suppose you could decline all of those options and hand over less cash instead (which is what the cabbie’s sour attitude deserved). Regardless I felt manipulated, as if the tip was mandatory instead of voluntary.

Americans would be surprised to learn that tipping is not a common practice outside of this country. Canada and a few locales in Europe promote the practice, but otherwise the world’s countries don’t expect tipping and in some cases discourage it. I find it interesting that tipping in the U.S. supposedly started in the Prohibition Era, when business owners reluctantly promoted tipping as a means of supplementing their employees’ wages at a time of lost revenue. But again, the spirit of tipping in those days was for recognition; not as an expectation.

When I was in sixth grade, gratuity showed up on the weekly list of spelling words. A few days after, a friend and I found ourselves at a local snack bar; the kind where you order at the counter and take your tray to a dining area. After finishing our food we realized we could be “cool” and use one of our spelling words. We left a $10 gratuity (virtually the same amount we spent on our snacks), then went to the corner of the dining area where we could watch the person who clears the trays. I remember that person looking around as if someone had forgotten their cash. I also remember the lecture from my friend’s mother a few hours later. That verbal smack-down – fully deserved – included something along the lines of not understanding the meaning of our spelling words, and clearly not understanding how long it took our fathers to earn $10. Whoops.

Here’s a little tip for you – ha. The next time you dine at a restaurant or have your hair done, or receive some other service that asks for a little recognition, ask yourself the following: Was the experience beyond expectation? Did the person go out of their way to make the meal or the service a little more meaningful? If yes, then the inevitable gratuity will be given in the spirit it was intended for all those years ago.