Goodbye To The Penny

That does not really do anything. They need to stop minting the cent and nickel for circulation.

The nickel is not necessary. Does it make it easier? Perhaps. Is it mandatory? No. Just get used to using the dime a lot more. The dime is the new penny, the half dollar or two quarter dollars become the new nickel.

Rounding to the nearest dime with only dimes, quarters, and halves...

0.10 — one dime
0.20 — two dimes
0.30 — three dimes
0.40 — four dimes
0.50 — one half or two quarters
0.60 — one half or two quarters plus one dime
0.70 — one half or two quarters plus two dimes
0.80 — one half or two quarters plus three dimes
0.90 — one half or two quarters plus four dimes

Plenty of countries that used to produce one and five cent coins have somehow managed to survive without them. For a start, if one pays with a card no rounding occurs. If a few cents are so important, pay electronically. It's always the exact sum. As it is, with rounding taking place on the whole sum, sometimes you round up, sometimes you round down, so sometimes you're up Three Cents, sometimes your down Three Cents. In New Zealand we use Swedish rounding and somehow society has survived this for several decades. And we don't have to bother with leave-a-penny cups on the counter for people to throw away coins they don't want to carry around because they're basically worthless. And so the government saves tens of millions of dollars a year making coins the vast majority of people don't want to use anyway. Once upon a time there were fractional penny coins called farthings. They've not been made in about a century. Because they were no longer relevant.

The problem now is no one has four pennies—if they even bother to use exact change at all! The table works both ways, so expect to get more dimes in your change. And expect to see the "Have a dime, leave a dime. Need a dime, take a dime" bowls appearing to replace the one we use for cents.

We are shifting the decimal point over one place, except now we have that hypothetical 2.5 cents coin. Just accept that quarters will be used in pairs most often. If this is too complex for the American people, we are doomed, but I believe that most people will adapt in three days.

Start minting a multi-sided smaller 50 cent piece. Stop minting quarters and nickels 2 years out from beginning of the new 50 cent piece. Then gradually start retiring quarters and nickels at the 4 year mark.

Get rid of $1 note and put those 1 billion plus brass dollars stored at the Fed to work.

I like that idea, get rid of all coins except for dimes. It's about the lowest denomination that you could actually buy something with.

Maybe the answer there is larger denomination notes.

Getting wrinkly, worn out one-dollar notes into, say a vending machine, can be an all-day affair, or even downright impossible. Coins, on the other hand....