Learn to love your coins. That's the message from Kevin McColly

That’s the message from Kevin McColly, CEO of Coinstar, the company behind those coin-cashing machines you see in supermarkets.

Whenever the price of an item in a store comes to an odd number of cents, such as 17 or 39, do you find yourself wishing you had some pennies to use? If so, you’re probably not alone.

According to a 2022 Pew survey, two-fifths of consumers never use cash for payments.

The Federal Reserve reports that, in 2023, only 16% of consumer payments were made in cash.

As for those who do prefer to pay with cash, most keep their coins in a jar at home—or worse, they discard them. The typical household has $60 to $90 in neglected coins, enough to fill one or two pint-size beer mugs, according to the Federal Reserve.

Every year, Americans throw away millions of dollars in coins, literally treating them like trash.

But coins are worth money. Coinstar converts $3 billion in coins into spendable cash every year, one coin jar at a time. The average jar yields $58 in buying power.

“People underestimate the value of their jar by about half,” said Kevin McColly, CEO of Coinstar. “It’s a wonderfully pleasurable experience. People have this sensation of found money.”

Certain groups of Americans – lower-income households, and those over 55 – still use plenty of cash, the Fed found, along with people who prefer to shop in person.

But for the rest of us, McColly thinks it is time for a paradigm shift. Don’t think of your coins as clutter. Think of them as recyclables.

“They’re metal,” he said, in case we needed a reminder. “And they have a long and useful life.”

The Treasury still mints more than 5 billion coins a year, although the figure is dropping, according to the journal CoinNews.

“Those are just natural resources coming out of the Earth,” McColly said: Copper-plated zinc for pennies, copper-nickel alloys for nickels, dimes and quarters.

His point: If Americans got serious about gathering up their idle coins and “recycling” them into the monetary system, the Mint wouldn'ਾਂਦੀ