The penny is being discontinued in the US

V

Veronica

Head Shenanigator
Location
Eastern Midwestern Female
I saw a notice at the register when I shopped at the Piggly Wiggly. And being nosey I went online to check it out.
Evidently in 2026 the US penny will be discontinued. Prices will be rounded up or down for cash transactions. Credit card will not.
Pennies will still be legal, and you can still spend them. There are billions of them out there in jars so its not like they will run out of them.
They just will quit making them.


So Im curious. What will happen to a penny for your thoughts. Maybe depending on how scintillating your thoughts are
you might get nothing or you might get a nickel. And what about your two cents worth. If it gets rounded down that means
your two cents is now worth nothing.

 

And here the rounding thing only happens in places like supermarkets where individual items still have prices ending in odd cent prices - and each item doesn't get rounded,only the total.
So, on,say, my aprox $200 weekly grocery shop it makes difference of at most 2c.

Other places,items are priced to at least a 5c ending so issue of rounding doesn't occur.
 
The penny has been worthless for years now. But so has the nickel, and even the dime.
Probably all but the quarter, or at most, the dime should be eliminated. While they're at it they need to bring back a larger denomination paper bill.

Over the decades the Federal Reserve Bank has created so much money out of thin air that it has made what is in circulation much less valuable.
 
Thank you @Veronica
for the specific info you gave in your op, to shed extra light on the thread title topic!

And it was also amusing....
I did love the old metaphors and expressions😊

A penny for your thoughts.....

My two cents worth.

☺️🤩😁
 
Aunt Bea said:
It seems premature to start rounding.

I was under the impression that they will stop making pennies but there was no plan to actually take them out of circulation, a penny could last for twenty five years or more.
Click to expand...

If you pay with a credit card there will be no rounding up or down.
Most sites say they wont be taken out of circulation. So you can still spend them.
Pennys last forever. Probably because a lot of them spend their lives in jars and junk drawers.
I have some Indian Head ones from the 1800's in my hoard.

I have a feeling the shortage will be worsened when people start hoarding them
Especially the 2025 ones that will be the last date. You would be better off investing your money. :D
 
I personally will miss them. When I pay for things, I just use paper money. But the change I put in the paper rolls and take them to the bank. After they're gone, I'll just take a stroll down Penny Lane, and recall them fondly. But then as someone said, after they're not minted anymore, there will still be millions of them out there.
 
Wasn't it Ben Franklin who famously wrote "A penny saved is a waste of time"? ;)

The US has decimal currency so my vote would be to get rid of that second decimal place altogether. I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that New Zealand's smaller coinage is $0.1, $0.2, and $0.5.
 
It seems to me that about the time credit cards innovated the cash back policies is when restaurants decided that the consumer advantage must be at the expense of business. So restaurants decided on a surcharge to get back the money it cost them to accept credit cards. And here we are right back where we started.

I don't have enough information to do the math, but it might be that they decided to take back what is theirs plus a little bit more.
 

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