Extinct Coins: Will Texans Begin Hoarding Their Pennies?

Texas may experience a penny shortage sooner than later.

Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves-Benjamin Franklin

Bye-Bye Penny?

President Trump has ordered the U.S. Mint to quit producing pennies. Supposedly they cost almost three times more than they're worth. I don't find this news shocking on any level. This does give us an opportunity to look at the situation.

Cost Of Production

First off, the cost of making a coin or bill has nothing to do with the coin or bill. It has to do with the value assigned to it in regards to making payments or purchases. If that's confusing to you think of it another way; it costs about 7.5 cents to make a dollar bill, and only 10.8 cents to make a twenty dollar bill. The cost of making money has nothing to do with the value of money.

Are The Necessary?

On the other hand, do we really need pennies anymore? Is everything so expensive that pennies are just a waste of time? Here's a bigger question, if we eliminate pennies are we going to start rounding everything up to a nickel, because I know for sure we're not going to round down.

Dry Up The Supply

A better idea is to not stop using pennies, just stop printing them until they become scare. Many, many people have horded pennies over the years and these could be brought back into circulation if there's not many new ones out there.  Here's an interesting fact, most pennies have a "lifetime" of 25 years and change hands thousands of times, so thier cost of less than three cents seems like an incredible value.

My Vote

After researching all of this, I'm going to have to go with "keep the penny" and let's just be a little smarter about how many we're making and how often we're making them.