Walt Rubel Commentary: Loss of penny first step toward no-cash economy

I still like money. Most people don’t.

According to WalletHub, only 14 percent of purchases in the United States now involve cash. Credit card usage is up 94 percent since 2016.

It’s not hard to understand why. It’s easier to keep track of one card than a fist full of bills. If you lose a credit card, you can simply make a phone call and keep all of your money. And, the transactions are much faster and easier. I fear it won’t be long before cashiers are experts on card readers but won’t be able to make change. 

To be honest, I make most of my purchases by credit card. But I still have a deep-seeded attraction to cash that undoubtedly dates back to my childhood. That’s especially true for the lowly penny.

We had a big jar on the kitchen counter when I was growing up where all of us would deposit our spare pennies. It was a sacrifice for me, given that you could buy a pack of five baseball cards with unchewable gum for a nickel. But when the jar filled up, dad would cash out and then take us all to dinner. And, I felt like my contributions had helped us reach that goal.

I wrote a column a few years ago stating that it was my new goal in life to die penniless. My plan was to pay for everything with exact change until I had spent every penny in my possession.

That column was basically one big dump on the penny. If you dropped a penny on the ground, it wasn’t worth the time or effort to bend over and pick it up, I argued. 

My plan to spend all of my pennies was a miserable failure. I still have thousands of them collected over a lifetime. I suppose I could take the time and effort to count them, roll them up and take them to the bank like my dad did. But the truth is, I will die some day with a big bottle filled with unspent pennies.

Anybody who read that previous column would logically conclude that I must have celebrated the recent decision to end production of the penny. In truth, I suddenly became a bit nostalgic for that useless token.

The penny was a big part of my childhood. Not only did we have the big jar in the kitchen, we also collected old and rare pennies. Before putting them in the jar, I would always check the date to make sure it wasn’t one we needed.

I can’t disagree with the decision to end production of a coin that has less value than the metal used to produce it. But, beyond my childhood nostalgia, I think my greater fear is the realization that it doesn’t end here.

Once we stop rounding up or down to the nearest penny, it won’t be long before the nickel and dime become just as useless.

I don’t think it will be government action that eventually leads to the demise of cash. Stores, which are already phasing out human cashiers, will eventually decide that all transactions must be made by credit or debit cards.


I realize that in the grand scheme of things, this is not the most important issue facing the world today. The next generation will grow up paying for everything by cards, and that technology will ultimately be an improvement over what I grew up with. 

But, like a lot of other things, I’m going to miss it when it’s gone.

Walter Rubel can be reached at [email protected]​

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