I detest loose change. It seems to accumulate everywhere. In my car the ashtray slowly fills. In the house we have a ‘change cup’ that keeps growing. I detest it because it always leads to a task of having to get rid of it. 

Sure, you can roll it. Or when I was in Canada you could take it to the supermarket and pay 10% to have the machine count it (which seems a rip-off to me, especially when we dropped $700 into the machine when we were moving).

So now we let the cup fill and then we sort it into piles of £10. I then take the aforementioned piles, put them in a little bag and use them at the corner store. But every time I do it, I feel guilty or embarrassed (not sure which). Of course the customary response from the clerk at the till does not help. Common responses to my statement of ‘I am going to pay for this with the change from my car’ are ‘groan’, ‘oh-no’ or a grimace. 

Which is why it was a pleasant change to hear from the pizza restaurant ‘Thank-goodness, I need the change desperately’ (I unloaded £30). Although he did groan when I forced him to take £2 worth of pennies and 2P pieces as part of the deal.

Which leads me to a final question, why do we have pennies? After all it costs Canada between 1.5 and 6 cents to make one (It must be the same in the UK). A few interesting penny facts:

• It costs 61 pennies per citizen to fund the Queen.
• A US penny produced before 1982 is worth 2.2 pennies post 1982.

Lots more penny (or pfenni) facts here.