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What’s in your pocket?

Americans are losing faith in banks, period. That goes without saying and no explanation is needed. We all know this. The stock market is falling; banks are going down and receiving money just to keep themselves afloat. What is the average American doing? They are stashing their cash or carrying it with them! In the past year, since gas prices started skyrocketing, Americans have started looking twice at their bank accounts and getting nervous. Even then there was talk of there being a recession. People started withdrawing their money in a frenzy and selling their stocks, starting to stash it at home and carrying large amounts in their wallets. So how much money do Americans carry in their wallets, and how much money is stashed in American homes?

The amount of cash Americans carry on their person is directly affected by the area of the country they live in. People in New York and Los Angeles are going to carry way more money than someone who lives in a smaller town like Lorain, Ohio or El Paso, Texas. Since the cost of living is so different, the cash one carries for basic necessities would be much higher in New York City and way lower in Lorain, Ohio. The demographics on carrying money look like this:
The average purse or wallet in the United States contains about $104.

13% of Americans use a piggy bank.

28% of Americans have a coin jar.

15% if people in the U.S. have a large amount of cash hidden in their houses. Out of these people, half of them have it hidden and the other half hide it in plain sight.

1/3 of Americans keep a small amount of cash on hand for emergencies.

Finally, more than 50% of American’s don’t keep any cash at all in the house.

American’s carry cash so they don’t have to use credit cards, foregoing the interest usually incurred in that way. People carry cash because they don’t trust the banks and they haven’t been able to trust banks for at least a year or more. Some carry cash because that’s what they’ve always done and that’s what they were taught to do. Sure a lot of people go into a bank or through the drive through to cash their paychecks, in return getting their cash for no extra fees. What about those who don’t go to the bank and whose checks are automatically deposited? These people will usually hit up the ATM. It’s difficult if possible at all to not incur a fee when using the ATM so this way of obtaining your cash is costing you money. Is the tradeoff worth it?

Some might argue that we’re becoming a no cash society; using less cash and more and more debit and credit cards. I wonder if these people have taken a look at the economy lately because I think we may be going back to using as little plastic as possible.

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The story of American money started more than three centuries ago. Before this, settlers mostly bartered goods for goods. Crops like tobacco and corn and pork and butter were widely used. Learning from the Native Americans who used stringed clamshell beads, or wampum, European colonists adopted the wampum among trades with the Native Americans and then, amongst themselves.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony contracted John Hull to begin minting coins. Hull set up a mint in Boston and began producing “NE” (New England) coins in 1652. The NE coins were very easy to counterfeit, only having NE on one side and XII on the other. The coin was redesigned from 1667-1682. Eventually as more and more people came to the New World and brought their money with them, the settlers and colonists relied on foreign money for buying and selling. Money from Europe, Mexico and South America could be found at any given time. These coins mixed in with the NE coins and wampum and were all used for purchasing, barter and trade.

Early in the 18th century, a large amount of copper coins were imported from England and Ireland for the purpose of making more coins for the colonies. In 1776, dollar-sized coins were produced with a sundial and the inscription “Mind Your Business” on the front and “American Congress We Are One” on the back. These pieces were struck in three different metals; those struck in pewter are scarce or rare, while the silver and brass examples as extremely rare. The Articles of Confederation, adopted on July 9, 1778, gave Congress the ability to place the value on the coins that were struck by each state. At that time, the states each had the right to strike their own coins, there was just no fluidity in their values until the Articles came about.

Finally in 1792 the U.S. Mint was established by Congress. The U.S. Mint makes all U.S. Coins and became an operating bureau of the Treasury Department in 1873. To this day, U.S. coins typically have a mint mark showing which mint it was produced by. The Philadelphia Mint has been the longest in continuous operation, since 1792. The Denver Mint began coin producing in 1906. The newest mints were the West Point, New York, and San Francisco which gained official status in 1988.

From 1965-1968 there were no identifications used to tell where coins were minted. In 1968 the mints resumed putting their initials on the coins. Coins minted in Philadelphia had a P or no letter, Denver has a D, West Point a W and S for San Francisco. To this day, look at your coins and right under the date there should be a letter telling you where that coin was minted and if no letter is present, your coin was minted in Philadelphia!

Coins’ designs and values have changed over the years from the half-penny to silver dollars. The designs will continue to change as society deems it necessary . For now, the coins in your pocket have come a long way to get there because there was a time when there was a lack of United States coins.

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