Do younger people pay with folding money only?
I have to say, I’m of the “pay with cards for most, pay with paper when necessary and pay with coins only when absolutely necessary” variety. besides the fact that saving one’s change annually brings close to 500 bucks back come January, it occasionally gives me dimes to drop in meters, pennies for railroad tracks and great wads of silver money to throw on playgrounds to make the kids fight it out for the quarters. but if some people want to count out their small change, then I suppose that less offensive of a hobby than matchbook collecting…but not by much.
Sometime change manipulator here–31, male, New Yorker. I have rules, though. I do not look for change much when the purchase ends in $ .51 or more. I am not allowed to look for change for more than five seconds or so. If I know the price of something in advance, I have change ready when I get to the counter. I think that people have rules about payment that are closely tied to age and gender. Like (I think) most men, I view it as shameful to pay for anything under $20 with a credit card. I notice women fumbling around for change with their purses much more often than men do with the contents of their pockets (I suspect this has to do with purses being generally larger than pockets). I notice women of a certain age paying for everything with a credit card. Where I grew up, I still see a lot of women paying with checks at the grocery store. This may have to do with gender roles–men want to be seen as having the ready cash to pay for anything, and want to look like they don’t really car
I go both ways. Instead of a wallet, I have a pouch-thingy on my belt, and I keep coins in a zippered pocket on the pouch. When it gets too full, I count it all out and pay in coin or exact change. Otherwise I use bills or the debit card. When I do use change, I minimize the amount of fumbling around by simply grabbing a bunch of change from the zippered pocket, estimate the amount, and count out the few cents I’m off. I hate pennies, though. And people who don’t have any money ready or checks filled out when they are waiting in line to pay. For those of you who don’t get the change jar thing… well, I have a friend whose father got a big, big start on the grandkids’ college fund with accumulated change. I believe modern cash registers have destroyed the ability of retail clerks to actually make change…they may know how to make it, if they have to, but no one counts it back properly! My mother, a bank teller at one point in her career, taught me how to count back change 35 or so yea
