Don't know what I mean by coin pressure? Click here to read the previous post.
Now, there are two possible things you might want to do with your coin pressure.
The first case is that you want to maximize your coin pressure. Why would you want to do this? Get rid of the change you are carrying of course. This is easily achieved by merely carrying a lot of change around - but most of us don't carry a coin purse, or anything that can hold substantial amounts of change. So what is it you can do to maximize coin pressure?
What you can do - is to always carry around a fixed set of coins and notes. Your meals would usually not exceed 10 dollars. (If they do, then it might be time you stop caring abount coin pressure and start caring about wtf you're eating.) This means that you should carry around enough change to pay anything from $5 to about $15 (just in case there was a want or need to splurge on drinks, dumplings, soup, or whatever nonsense was.)
Let's simplify the problem to just carrying $4.95 in coins - you can carry a $5 note and a $10 note to make sure you can cover the ranges extremes at $5 and $10. To be able to cover every possible change situation from $0.05 to $4.95, in Australian coins:
- 1 x 2 dollars
- 2 x 1 dollar
- 1 x 50 cents
- 1 x 20 cents
- 2 x 10 cents
- 1 x 5 cents
This is obviously a very specific case, since there's not many 1 cent coins in circulation in Australia (if any) - so in order to maximize coin pressure, you only need to carry 8 coins in total. Very manageable for most wallets (unless you don't have a coin pouch or holder).
If you live in a country where there are no $2 coins or notes, and you do still have 1 cent coins, then to cover $0.01 to $4.99 you would need to carry:
- 4 x 1 dollar
- 1 x 50 cents
- 1 x 20 cents
- 2 x 10 cents
- 1 x 5 cents
- 4 x 1 cents
13 coins - which could pose a problem. But if you live in Malaysia - you have RM1 notes! (and 1 sen coins are gonna get phased out eventually anyway, but 5% taxes at food places make it annoying.) And if you have $1 notes, you then only have to carry 9 coins - which is again manageable.
Of course, this guide is only good if you happen to have a huge stack of coins at home and want to get rid of them - if you keep reloading your wallet from your stash like this, you'll see to drop in size quickly enough. Obviously, this guide only works if we assume coins are in some decreasing order of size (barring the Australian dollar and two dollar coins). It's entirely possible that this is not always true (for example, the US nickel, 5c, is a lot larger than the US dime, 10c, and there's that 25c coin that'll just annoy your math if you're used to 20c coins.) - just adjust accordingly.
The second case is that you want to minimize your coin pressure (or in other words, create a change vacuum.) Why in the world would you want to take change? There are various reasons - number 1 - you need the change, since the notes you are carrying are way too big. This usually happens if you're walking about with 50 dollar or 100 dollar notes - which are almost always too big to spend on anything small (sub-$10).
It's pretty simple to achieve - carry around very big notes, or if you feel like turning your friends into portable ATMs (that are sometimes difficult to collect from, like malfunctioning ATMs ;) ) - carry around a credit card, preferably one from the same country. Don't want to get caught up in messy exchange rate risk now, do we?
(Note: Look - no photo. What did I tell you about me not maintaining any trend?)
