toomanybooks

1. Cleaning lady gets paid every 2 weeks with dollar coins.

2. Tolls when out of state (I have I-Pass in IL).

3. Quick restaurant meals like Subway.

4. Get money orders at the Post Office/Wal-Mart to pay my monthly business rent.

5. Stick a roll of $25 in my pocket every couple days to pay incidentals.

6. I'm in the rare book/collectible paper/stamp business and I buy and sell all the time. Sellers who won't take CCs get dollar coins from me. If they balk, I walk.

I never go to the ATM any more. I feel as though I should get as many of these things into circulation as I can, lest the Mint/Fed get tired of people just depositing the whole load directly into the bank.

mia

That's my plan. We haven't been home on Halloween for several years and I have no idea how many callers to expect. If we were to buy candy I'd eat the leftovers .

We have not deposited any coins. Ours are used for tips (example, hair salon allows payment by card, but not tips), petsitter, farmers' market purchases, etc. Essentially all currency transactions have switched to coins. I have sold some to colleagues who want them as momentos.

I still carry one emergency $50 note, but otherwise I have only cards or coins.

mrpickles

Ok, I went back to the bank today for another deposit and took some more pictures for you. I normally process the coins by opening them to $4500 per box, but I had scheduled an appointment at the bank to make a large cash deposit and they opened the bank a half an hour early for me.

This time I processed the coins to $4000 per large shipping box for simplicity in counting. They had the fed bags pre filled out and we just broke down the boxes into four stacks of 8 trays so that 2 stacks equal $2000, as we were in a race against the clock. The armoured truck was due at 10 am with a cash delivery and we wanted to get this shipment out with the truck so it would not have to overnight at the branch. The vault's coin drawer only holds $25k so any more would violate the terms of thier insurance policy (not properly locked up).

I took one of my employees to help, and the manager, operations manager, and new accounts manager helped. There were a total of 5 of us processing the coins. (sorry about the size, kinda large I know)



So here you can see how we stacked the trays for quick counting, and how the mint rolls are placed directly into the fed bags, proof that they do not have to be unrolled. I think that when the banks require the coins to be unrolled that it is just nonsence busy work designed to discourage us from coming in. You can also figure out that it is a Chase Bank uniform.



So when completed we had 35 fed bags filled in less than 22 minutes. I was all done before the armoured truck arrived and before the branch opened at 9AM. WOOHOO, (Oh I forgot, it's not WAMU anymore)



And in case some of you want to print out a photo to take to your whining branches and show them that yes indeed you do not have to unroll the coins, I have included a close up photo.



I do not recommend showing up at any bank with $70k in coin. This deposit alone weighed 1288 lb and I had a lot of difficulty just getting in the door. I am suprised the tile on the floor did not crack as we rolled in. This was an arranged deposit with a branch that I have a prior relationship.

When I got back to my office at 9:30 I had this waiting for me, UGH!:



UPS had delivered an addition $50K and the driver was totally pissed off. Even yelled at another of my staff. (he should be glad he has a job) You can see where the boxes got crushed when he threw them out of the back of his truck to the ground.

Stopped back later in the day to pick up my cart and they said that the armoured truck driver was not the usual guy and he didn't even flinch when he saw the load.

maracle

Thanks for the post! It's great to see you document your method. I wish I had started working at this at some point. Unfortunately now I'm going to be moving to Argentina for a year in January so there's no point. On the plus side my credit score won't mean much anymore so I think I'll start churning rewards cards

cepheid

Actually, they can. It's called "calling the loan." If your Note has verbiage that allows the bank to call the loan at their discretion, they can most certainly do that. Not all Notes have this (in which case you'd be safe), but many do.

soitgoes

I've never heard of a prime 30 year mortgage that was callable.

leroix

A few weeks ago I reported opening a business savings account to make depositing things easier... well of course the NA's went out of stock but I managed to get a few big orders in, and today I took the first bag in to my local WF.

Last night I shucked 2k of coin into one of the deposit bags they gave me-- I walked into the branch this morning, cradling the bag, afraid it might burst, and walked right up to the (empty) merchant line, while 15 or so personal clients stood in the other line. I put my 50 lb bag in the pass through with my deposit slip, a teller walked up took my slip and I commented "the bag is heavy" and 20 seconds later she gave me a receipt showing my $2k deposit would be availble immediately and I walked out. I was pretty suprised at that as I was expecting both a $4 fee for the coin deposit as well as possibly having to wait for a count to be done-- we'll see if anything gets adjusted in the coming days...

Not even a blink compared with the flak I have gotten with depositing rolls other times. As I mentioned in the last post, this account has $5k/month of free cash deposits, so I plan to take in at most $2k/week to minimize fees.

fly2nrt

Chase?

Mr. Bean

Good idea. Convert these into MOs to pay rent! I agree about trying to put these into circulation - help the folks at the Fed do their job. And I never seem to get any dollar coins as change

buschoi

Very well said. ^

leroix

Wells Fargo... The account I signed up for is the "Business Market Rate Savings" account. It is fee free as long as the minimum balance in the account is $500. No fee for the first $5k in cash deposits per month, and then 0.20% after that. A fee of $4 per bag of sorted coins (the bags hold 2000 $1 coins).

I considered Chase but I couldn't find the detailed terms and conditions online (to get the possible coin deposit fees in writing) and with the transition here in SoCal from WaMu to Chasse, I didn't want to get caught up in any account term changes. BoA was similarly difficult to find the terms for... Citibank had the terms and conditions available, but the fees for coin deposits are significantly higher than WF.

stilloutthere

Countries that use the US dollar officially seem to have more dollar coins in circulation. They were common in Ecuador even before the NA and presidential coins were issued. I suspect that they all end up there because they have become used to them. The only way the Fed is going to get them into general use is to withdraw the bills. I would save at least half a billion to switch, a dollop to help with the deficit, but they don't seem to have the will to cut us off from the dollar bill.

236Dakota

Got my haircut the other day and I was shown an email that railed against the new dollar coin because "the President coins do not have 'In God We Trust'. stamped on them". Well that's not correct... I did a google search and found that it is now stamped on the edges, something about artistic... blah, blah, blah.

ChaseTheMiles

UPS announced great earnings recently and the drivers should thank the Mint and us for keeping them busy.

Gosh, I am so envious that you are still receiving orders when I cannot place any.

cruisr

My DH thinks I'm nuts and my bank thinks I'm nuts. I was laughing hysterically when my DH asked what I was laughing at. I had him loook at the laptop screen. He could not believe the pictures. I told him I am now inspired to go larger than my 2500.00 a shot.