Now is the Time to Get Rid of Your Canadian Pennies

Where: Canada

April 2, 2012 at 10:10 AM | by jetflyboy | Comments (0)

Our friends to the North have decided to scrap the penny. Yes, Canada will no longer have a one cent piece as legal tender. The clock is ticking on the little maple leaf copper coin and its ability to buy anything when traveling in Canada, but we don't think it will majorly change how you travel.

The Canadian government has decided that it is far too costly to continue to produce the fractional monetary unit and will ceased minting this month. If you have a jar filled with 'loonies' and pennies, don't freakout as you have until the end of the year to spend them on Royal Canadian Mounted Police souvenirs and the like. Distribution to financial institutions will end in the fall when the decision makers will begin the end of circulation.

If you are planning a trip north of the border, please understand how this will work. If you choose not to heed our foreign currency advice, here are the details: Transactions in cash will be rounded, either up or down, to the nearest 5 cent increment Typically this will even out from transaction to transaction and leave you will a lot less jingle in your pockets. Credit card transactions will be unaffected.

Canada has gone the way of Australia, Sweden, the Netherlands and a handful of other nations to eliminate the 1/100th coins. New Zealand has even gone the next step and eliminated their 5 cent coin with very little outcry. The nation's leaders claim that it will see a savings of $11 million annually by not minting the low denomination coin. With that amount of savings, maybe the trend will come south and we'll consider scrapping our Lincoln head?

[Photo: amy-wong.com]

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