A Penny Here, A Penny There
I guess it adds up, especially when you are dealing with enough pennies. But it seems to make more sense just to round it up or down and get rid of the pesky little critters. We’re not in the days when a penny could buy a newspaper or a postcard.
My favorite restaurant no longer bills to the penny; add up the check and you will see it’s been brought to the nearest nickel, either to your or their benefit. When you’re paying $7 or $10 for a meal, what’s two cents?
It wouldn’t bother me if, over ten dollars, we eliminated the nickel; even at the five dollar range. Let’s start with the dime as our basic coin of the realm, because the ten-cent piece is really the lowest coin we really care about.
I just checked the price for my cruise this July. It ends in .80 and last year’s ended in .94; you can see Holland America Line knows that pennies add up to dollars. If I were running the company, I’d just round it up or down to the nearest dollar; when you are talking about the price of a cruise, fractions of a dollar don’t count and nobody’s going to cancel because their cruise is $1550 instead of $1545.35.
When RCA began making tv cameras in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, their price list said, “TK-15 camera … $15,000.00” Not $14,999.99 or something like that. It was 15 grand, take it or leave it. You got no change back from your pile of thousand dollar bills, nothing for the penny bowl at the drugstore.
My favorite restaurant no longer bills to the penny; add up the check and you will see it’s been brought to the nearest nickel, either to your or their benefit. When you’re paying $7 or $10 for a meal, what’s two cents?
It wouldn’t bother me if, over ten dollars, we eliminated the nickel; even at the five dollar range. Let’s start with the dime as our basic coin of the realm, because the ten-cent piece is really the lowest coin we really care about.
I just checked the price for my cruise this July. It ends in .80 and last year’s ended in .94; you can see Holland America Line knows that pennies add up to dollars. If I were running the company, I’d just round it up or down to the nearest dollar; when you are talking about the price of a cruise, fractions of a dollar don’t count and nobody’s going to cancel because their cruise is $1550 instead of $1545.35.
When RCA began making tv cameras in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, their price list said, “TK-15 camera … $15,000.00” Not $14,999.99 or something like that. It was 15 grand, take it or leave it. You got no change back from your pile of thousand dollar bills, nothing for the penny bowl at the drugstore.
posted by Tom Carten at 10:35 PM
2 Comments:
Yet another blow to mathematics
No. No rounding and getting rid of pennies.
My husband used to save pennies in a large can. I finally got around to rolling them, and turning them in for folding money, and larger coins. To the tune of $44.15!
That was a couple of nice dinners out. :)
What was that about a penny saved is a penny earned?
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