Pennies turn to Wealth

While one could argue that any coins are irrelevant in the age of electronic transfers and cryptocurrency, I still lament what appears to be the pending demise of the penny.

As chronicled by the New York Times and other media, last month President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Mint to stop producing pennies. They cost more to manufacture than they are worth.

While the president said that cost is more than two cents, the Times reported it’s nearly twice that: 3.7 cents per penny.

Given Trump’s DOGE-inspired push to cut waste from the federal budget, it would seem wise to reduce the costs associated with producing pennies, right? Maybe not.

Chump Change?

It’s not just pennies whose livelihood is threatened. Any coin under a dollar is often scorned and sneered at, treated as if it’s “chump change” that wise people can’t be bothered with.

I beg to differ. For years, our spare change has gone to charitable causes. Most often that has been our church’s food pantry, although last year my wife and I donated the money to another cause dear to our hearts.

It doesn’t amount to much, but for any group routinely short on funds, every little bit (even a penny) counts. Besides, years ago a man told me how he and family members had tossed enough stray coins into a bowl that over time they had enough to purchase a household appliance.

Saving Pennies

Legendary founding father Benjamin Franklin reportedly once said, “A penny saved is a penny earned.” According to The Franklin Institute, not so: “He did, however, write in the 1737 Poor Richard’s Almanac, ‘A penny saved is two pence clear.’”

Whichever version you prefer, Franklin’s point that saving money instead of spending it foolishly is a wise move.

A move, by the way, that we as a nation would be wise to heed, given our deficit, now approaching $37 trillion. If it keeps following its trajectory of late, in a few years we will have quadrupled our collective debt since the onset of the 21st century.

It isn’t just Uncle Sam who struggles to pay his bills. According to this recent story in The Guardian, “we the people” have nearly $1.2 trillion of credit card debt alone, an average of $21,000 per household.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York places private citizens’ total debt at more than $18 trillion. That’s a lot of mortgages, car loans, home equity lines, and other red ink.

Too Proud

When it comes to wise sayings about debt and the underlying problem of sneering at pennies, none are better than a couple in a book I recently edited for Jim Linzey. Jim was the general editor of the Modern English Version of the Bible.

In a collection of wise sayings (which he hopes to soon shop to publishers) on the topic of wealth, Jim wrote, “He who is too proud to pick up a penny is too proud to become wealthy,” and “He who casts his penny to the ground does not deserve any gold.”

Inherent in Jim’s observations is the detrimental effect of pride on the way we look at money, down to the smallest increments.

When we ignore the value of small coins like the penny, before we know it we have wasted enough money to create a serious danger. If we fall off a fiscal cliff in the next few years, we may never recover.