Phasing Out The Dollar Bill ...

Okay, all of you people whining about how "heavy" dollar coins are, LISTEN UP. (Nina's pet peeve has been activated!)

I used to buy these out of my drawer at work in order to save for trips (a thing I will probably start doing again). On one occasion someone came in using HIS old coin-savings bucket for gas after it grew so much that it was impractical, and between him and what was already in my drawer I ended up going home with twenty-two of those babies in my pocket. I mean that literally; I wear men's khakis to work (they fit better, bigger pockets, last longer, cost less), and when I buy coin out of my drawer, only bills go into my wallet for safekeeping. Everything else stays in my left-hand pocket and is dumped nightly.

And you know what? The only time I felt that $22 in coins, ONLY time, was when I was driving and one of them got turned sideways and started poking my leg. I walked around with 'em in there for three or four hours and barely noticed the weight. And there is no good reason to have $22 in $1s on a regular basis, so really, the "waaaaaaaaaaah, they're too heavy!" argument is invalid and I'm sick of it because it makes it exceedingly clear that those arguing it have never actually thrown half a dozen coins in their pocket and walked around with 'em. If you are anything like the majority of adults I know, your key ring weighs more than half a dozen dollar coins.


On a side-note, I'd like the move because bills are porous. In my work--ask anyone who works retail--you pretty much HAVE to keep hand sanitizer around and use it more or less regularly because you have no idea what's on those bills; a test in LA found that 92% of all dollar bills in the city were contaminated with cocaine, over 70% with fecal matter, and a small but still frightening percentage (I think it was between 20-25%) contained e. coli and/or other potentially life-threatening antibodies. Coins are nonporous, and the conditions under which those germs on the bill thrived are not present on a coin. It would make my job a lot cleaner and safer if we used coin-only for the dollar.

Yeah Nina!
Four or five dollar coins weighs way less than my keychain. More than that, use twos, fives and tens. Who wants 30 dollar bills in their wallet anyway, plus most wallets would get too fat to be comfortable if you carried mostly ones.

The ugly brass $1 coins need to be dramatically improved.

Fox: This is precisely it. I just rolled my first $25 roll the other day, and it weighed about the same as $10 in quarters. Who carries $10 in quarters?! Same concept. If you have 25 dollar coins (unless you're like me and bought the night's coins out of your cash drawer, you're doing it wrong. Spend 'em up--use $21 for a $16 transaction and get a $5 back instead of four coins (and you're using a coin to do it, too--possibly more than one, if you need to use quarters or such). Actually use your $3 in dollar coins for your $2.79 purchase instead of whipping out a $5.

The problem is the lack of common sense.