How Get Rid of Your Pennies

I'm all for getting rid of the penny. It's time of usefulness has come and gone, and this video makes a pretty concise and compelling case for it.

The only problem I have with this video is that it contends that Coinstar machines are the only machines that accept pennies. Not true. In fact, the other machines that accept pennies are typically found in the same place that Coinstar machines themselves are.

Self checkout machines at grocery stores are common where I live, and among grocery chains that I am familiar with (just about all that operate in the southeast), only Publix does not have them. The self-checkout machines do, in fact, accept pennies. They also allow you to pay partially in cash and partially with a card, meaning that you can actually use pennies by dumping a few in the machine before swiping your debit or credit card per normal.

Of course, doing this fails the time test that the video mentions. It's almost certainly not worth your time while you wait for the self checkout machine to digest a large amount of pennies, especially since some will be rejected and will have to be submitted twice. I certainly wouldn't do something like this during prime time at the store either, as you will inconvenience people behind you in line.

However, the self checkout is the best place to spend your pennies. You don't lose a percent of them like with the Coinstar machine, and you actually do use them and keep them in circulation. It might not be the best use of your time, but if you maximized the value of every second of your time, you wouldn't be surfing blogs like this anyway.

Periodically filling your local self checkout machine with pennies is the best alternative of a lot of bad ones until the most useless of coins finally does go away for good.