Shaun Hoggan

What to people do with their spare change?

Having seen a broad spectrum of uses for loose change it is easy to understand that there are as many uses as their are coins in the world. Among some of the more interesting uses seen are:

-Storing them in a jar or bottle
-Flicking them across a school room at that boy or girl to get their attention
-Dropping them on the ground at the fast food drive in
-Putting them in a donation jar at the cash register
-Adding to the waiter or waitresses tip
-Squeezing them into a collectors book
-Rolling them into paper wrappers from the bank
-Donating them to the salvation army and Santa during Christmas
-Heavily used by the tooth fairy
-Dropped out of the car door when parking
-Vacuumed out of the car seats when cleaning the car
-Spun around on the table when playing finger games
-Stored in the living room couch
-Used to fill up the coin holders in cars that come with them
-Collected
-Retrieved in the ground by metal detectors

A financial adviser who I know who spends their time getting others out of debt made an observation of those who have lots of money laying around their home who all typically have financial difficulties. I have seen this in homes where I know there are financial difficulties and more often than not they will have small piles of change laying all around their home. The kitchen counter is one of the more popular locations.

Personally I am an anti coin guy. I am a believer that coins are there to increase the price of goods purchased from merchants. If an item costs 5.96 and we give the merchant 10 dollars we get 4.04 back. Is is likely we will save the $4 in our wallet or purse but what happens to the .04 cents? If the money gets lost, the item we just purchased cost 6.00 which effectively is an increase of the goods purchased. If this happens frequently than what amount of money is discarded every year in the US?  According to CIA.gov the estimated US population in July 2007 is 301,139,947. If everyone in the US discarded one penny per month that would equate to ~$36 million annually in lost coins in the US alone.

Today while running 3.5 miles I found a quarter and a penny which looked like they were discarded out of some ones car. The good news is that have added an additional .26 cents to my net worth. The bad news is that the poor schmuck who discarded this money is .26 cents poorer today.