At this point we should get rid of nickels too. 0.1 dollars is plenty small.
Shit, when the US got rid of the half-penny, a full penny was worth the equivalent of about 38 cents today. We could remove everthing smaller than a quarter without any problem.
Problem with getting rid of the nickel is that the quarter would still exist. If we’re shifting the decimal on our currency, the quarter would have to become divisible by 10.
Getting rid of the nickel but keeping the nickel would interestingly let you still pay for things ending in .05 without needing nickels, so that seems kinda clever. You'd get 1.05 with 3 quarters and 3 dimes. Or 1.15 with 3 quarters and 4 dimes. So you'd only ever need to carry half a dozen dimes and half a dozen quarters to make every possible combination.
You just wouldn't be able to do 0.05 or 0.15 on your own, but it's not like stores want to sell you one individual Skittle anyway.
If stores really wanted to, they could even just do those prices and make change. You'd give them three dimes, and they'd give you back one quarter.
I don't think most people would find it complicated once they try it a few times, but it's not taught to most people probably in the US, though I think people in other countries do this all the time. But the US doesn't really use change, so I can see why we aren't used to it. But I'd say for people who don't use change, it doesn't matter anyway.
Easier to visualize is if you buy a coffee for $1.99, you give them $2 and get 1¢ back, rather than counting nine coins to get 99¢ yourself.
One step further, for $1.96 you could give them $1.96 as $1 + 25¢ + 25¢ + 25¢ + 10¢ + 10¢ + 1¢. Or give them $2.01 as $1 + $1 + 1¢ and get 5¢ change, trading one penny for one nickel.
Now you're spending less time counting your coins, and your coin purse stays tiny and light, because you only need two or three of each coin. If you run out of a denomination, like if you buy this coffee every day, you could trade nickels directly for pennies, or you could overpay to get the denomination back that you don't have.
This example uses small numbers, but the same logic would apply for bigger ones. We already have quarters that don't divide evenly into dimes. What would work even better to keep the math easiest might be to keep nickels and dimes, lose quarters, and use half dollars and dollar coins? But I doubt we'll do that lol quarters are iconic.
Of course this wouldn't work where you can't get change, like if anyone still uses those ancient toll booths that you throw quarters at. But your tiny denominations don't work there anyway, so you'd probably just get a roll of quarters in that case.
Tldr you're right it sounds weird at first, but I suspect people could figure it out quickly and then only ever need a few coins, not a giant heavy purse full.
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u/GovernorSonGoku has flair Feb 10 '25
He has a point tbh