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American Money

M

mrfrosty

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 1, 2005
500
21
I picked up my dollars today for my impending (friday) trip to NYC & Carolina. I am really suprised by it..........(having never had any dollars before)

1. Its all the same size !!!!
2. It feels like monopoly money !!!!

Another 2 questions i have though ...in the US is AMEX accepted everywhere ? I have an AMEX card and its pretty restrictive on who will accept it over here in the UK. Also are you all chip and pin enabled or will i have to sign for things ?
 
mrfrosty said:
I picked up my dollars today for my impending (friday) trip to NYC & Carolina. I am really suprised by it..........(having never had any dollars before)

1. Its all the same size !!!!
2. It feels like monopoly money !!!!

Another question i have though ...in the US is AMEX accepted everywhere ? I have an AMEX card and its pretty restrictive on who will accept it over here in the UK.
Click to expand...

Amex is accepted in more places than not here, especially chains and major stores. Some smaller stores or mom-and-pop shops won't take it. Discover card seems to be one of the only major cards not widely accepted.

And yes, our money is different than most countries. In recent years color has been added to our traditionally green bills to help distingish them. However, the same size of the bills makes carrying them around in a money clip easier, I feel.
 
It is amusing that you said that it feels like monopoly money because that is what many Americans say about foreign money, mainly because of the many different colors that foreign money comes in.
 
Wait until the new $100 bill is released in the next couple years. Besides color, I guess it is going to have lenses embedded in the bill to make the micro printing shift up and down.
 
american money is the ugliest money on earth.

the best looking money on earth (in my opinion) is Dutch money, designed by Ootje Oxenaar in 1960's - 80's.

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/the-money-maker/

ox25front.jpg


ox100front.jpg
 
mrfrosty said:
Another 2 questions i have though ...in the US is AMEX accepted everywhere ? I have an AMEX card and its pretty restrictive on who will accept it over here in the UK. Also are you all chip and pin enabled or will i have to sign for things ?
Click to expand...


Amex is generally accepted here, but you'll need a visa or mastercard as a backup.

If by chip and pin you mean debit transactions, ie swiping your atm card and entering your atm pin number, this is available at many "big box" stores but I'm not sure if it works for international buyers. Also, most smaller stores will only allow you to sign for items.
 
One thing I like about "American" money vs "European" money was that we don't frequently use coins for $1 (or higher).

Remembering to search thru my pocket for €1 and €2 coins drove me crazy when I was on vacation in Germany. :eek:
 
aristobrat said:
One thing I like about "American" money vs "European" money was that we don't frequently use coins for $1 (or higher).

Remembering to search thru my pocket for €1 and €2 coins drove me crazy when I was on vacation in Germany. :eek:
Click to expand...

A $1 coin makes sense from a cost standpoint. Paper $1 bills last like 18 months vs. 30 years for a coin.

The problem is that the US can't make a workable dollar coin in the first place that people will accept and use everyday. The Susan B. Anthony dollar failed since it looks too much like a quarter in size. When they went out to try again, in the Mint's quest to save vendors money upgrading their equipment mandated the new "gold colored" dollar be the same electromagnetic signature as the Susan B's.

Thus go into modern day Dollar coin 2.0 - the Sacagawea Dollar. Even with a push by the Mint by having Wal-Mart and Sam's give them out change and a multi-million dollar ad campaign, it still failed. The coin turned from shiny golden color to dull brown in a matter of months becuase of the alloys needed to make it gold and still keep the same electromagnetic signature as the previous Dollar coin.

Next at bat: Dollar Coin 2.1 - Presidential Dollars. This is more of a collectors piece. There are still plenty of unused Sacagawea dollars left over from the failed Dollar coin 2.0 campaign. I have no idea how well this is doing so far.

I don't see a problem with having a dollar coin replace the bills. You will have fewer vendng machine problems (no stuck bill acceptors) and costs will be less in the long run. The small bill could easily be replaced by the $2 bill that everyone thinks is a rare novelty item to be hoarded and cherished.

But everyone likes their dollar bills for some reason. Congress can't do anything to remove this because there is typically a public backlash. Just like the worthless penny, they will more than likely be here for a long time to come.
 
jessep28 said:
But everyone likes their dollar bills for some reason.
Click to expand...

Ya can't stuff freakin' coins down a g-string!​

And since alot of people have wads of 1 dollar bills on occasion, where do they put the large volume of coinage?

Change in America is that, change. You dont "need" more than a tiny bit of coins to make any needed change. But you may need as much as 4 $1 coins...see the conundrum ?
 
Over here in the UK, we have £1 and £2 coins. Although with the currency conversion, that's kinda like $2 and $4 coins, with the cost of things here they're probably equivalent to a $1 or $2 coin... I don't mind them at all although for most purchases over £10, I use a debit card.

I only use small amounts of cash for lunch and other small items.
 
United States currency is really ugly, especially in the most recent iteration.

I remember all of the wailing and moaning when the UK central bank dropped the pound note in favor of the coin. They did the right thing, though -- exactly what the US Treasury needs to do here if there's ever going to be any hope of acceptance of a dollar coin.

I just picked up some of the new Jefferson dollars btw. They look fine, except the bust of Mr. Jefferson makes him look vaguely like a character from The Simpsons. Who knows, maybe that's deliberate marketing ploy on the part of the Treasury!
 
American Express is not as widely accepted as other cards, but larger chains will take it. Visa or Mastercard would serve you better.

No, we do not use EMV (what was sold to the public in the UK as "Chip and PIN") in America. Our card also don't have the chip for it. It was funny going to the UK this last spring and having some idiot shopkeepers try to put my credit card in the EMV reader and wondering what on earth was wrong with it. Most knew better, but there were some who insisted it would read. Uh, no. Look at the card - no EMV chip! One store realized this, but the guy had to get a manager - he didn't know what to do with a mag stripe only card!

EMV is nice in that it's more secure, but ironically that's also a problem. Magstripe cards are easily cloned and stolen, so when you have a problem, banks cover you easily, all but $50. Since EMV *is* much more secure, banks are less likely to just take the hit for fraud... they'll put more of a burden of proof on you.

We're a long ways off from seeing EMV or any similar system in America, mainly because, compared to Europe, we have a LOT less fraud!
 
Having different sized bills makes a wad of cash so messy looking.


I find the Euro system has wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too many coins. I hate carrying change, it's easy to lose and Euro coins might actually have somewhat substantial value.
 
LoL... fanny pack! Too funny.

You think our money looks like Monopoly money. Try going to Japan and using their money. Oh and a word of caution. Don't leave a 10,000 yen bill in your pocket when you wash your jeans. It will disappear! The one thing I can say about our money is, it can be washed, dried and ironed and still look like money.
 
kasei said:
LoL... fanny pack! Too funny.

You think our money looks like Monopoly money. Try going to Japan and using their money. Oh and a word of caution. Don't leave a 10,000 yen bill in your pocket when you wash your jeans. It will disappear! The one thing I can say about our money is, it can be washed, dried and ironed and still look like money.
Click to expand...


Yeah, don't put 10,000 yen in your pocket - give it to me! If I get 3 of them i can buy a new iPod nano (and get Apple Care for it too!)

Australian money is by far the best - it is made of a special plastic. Plastic monry to be sure! And the colours are soooo pretty, almost as bad as Brazil in terms of colour. I wouldn7t be surprised if we start to see more countries shift to this plastic money, but with a lot of countries now very vending machine oriented there will have to be a lot of changes to said machines - one reason I think the US will have trouble eliminating a paper dollar bill.

Now, as for a fanny pack as mentioned earlier - I just luv the completely different meaning of 'fanny' in the US and UK.
 
For anyone wondering...

cash.jpg

they have new £20s now though, they look more like Euros.

American dollars are all the same size, about the size of the £20 note here but not as "tall". I feel bad for blind people in the US... "yeah sure, that's a fiver." (as a $20 is pinched)
 
yeah i second the "american money _feels_ like monopoly money" emotion

a month ago a friend to the US for holiday and durign his leaving party he came out with the dollar bills (fairly new) and compared to normal euro bills they feel like money from a game

on different sizes & colors: they make life much easier for people with eye problems

on the problem with coins: how about paying with coins ;)
thanks to the side print on the coins it's very easy to pay with coins now, than it was before with schillings were they really were only usefull for change
 
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