Making Cents of the Shrewd Manager

The penny may be on its way out, but that doesn’t mean 1 cent has no value.

A penny for your thoughts costs 3.7 cents to make, so some people think that America should stop minting the copper coins. Earlier this year, President Trump told the U.S. Treasury Department to stop making pennies, and the executive action has some bipartisan support. There has been discussion and promotion of the idea on both sides of the aisle for years as an expense-saving action. (Last year, the U.S. Mint reported that it lost $85.3 million on the roughly 3.2 billion pennies it produced.)

Legally, it will take an act of Congress to permanently discontinue the production of pennies, but the president’s directive may push that to happen sooner rather than later.

If it happens, however, it doesn’t mean that goods and services can’t still be priced down to the penny. For example, an item could still cost $3.67 or $14.99, and for the people who pay using credit cards, debit cards, digital wallets or checks — with no actual cash changing hands — it would ...