Pennies Going Away – How & Will This Affect The Average Consumer?

When I learned that the last penny was being created, and now we are done with any other penny being minted, I didn't really think much of it.  After all, there are still about 300 billion pennies in circulation.  Retailers have also stated that there will be a rounding situation that will happen.  It is already happening with some places such as Kwik Trip and McDonald's.  And this is only if you are paying cash.  If you pay with a debit or credit card, then it really doesn't change a thing.

Get our free mobile app

WHAT IF YOU ONLY PAY CASH

If you are a person who pays cash, the cost of things will be will go up or down to the nearest nickel.  Is this a big deal?  People tend to just throw pennies into a coin bucket or whatever you collect change in, and it really doesn't seem to be a thing.  But if you have a change bucket right now, does that mean that you should cash in those pennies?  Get rid of them as soon as you can?

IF YOU HAVE A STASH OF PENNIES DO YOU HAVE TO CASH THEM IN NOW

No.  Pennies are going to be around for quite awhile, but the problem might come in if you are a retailer and you need a roll or more of pennies.  You might not be able to get those in the near future.

"We believe there'll be quite some time before the penny completely goes away," said John Jost, Vice President of MidWestOne Bank in Anoka. "But the Fed has already begun to disallow us from ordering pennies. So at this point, it's the pennies we have on hand and the, what the retailers have in their registers is really what is available in our community."

START THINKING ABOUT IT

So that is something that you may have to consider when you have loose change on hand.  I would probably go and cash those in as soon as you can.  Better safe than sorry.  But that's just me.  I always err on the side of caution.

The math is not that hard to have to round up or down, but there are some retailers now, and probably all will eventually want a POS system to do the math for you.

Example:

• $10.01 or $10.02 → rounded down to $10.00
• $10.03 or $10.04 → rounded up to $10.05
• $10.06 or $10.07 → rounded down to $10.05
• $10.08 or $10.09 → rounded up to $10.10

This seems pretty easy to me, and I'm terrible at math.  But everyone is different. Sometimes if you get flustered, a simple task could become more difficult.  It might be a good idea to just price things to the nickel.  But then, you might run into a tax issue on items too.  That will throw it off, then the math comes in again.

For right now, the penny is still a penny.  There just aren't any more being made.