Tag: money

The cost of conversation is going up

“If it’s a penny for your thoughts and you give your two cents worth, where did the other penny go?”
— Comedian George Carlin

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“Are they really going to going to stop making pennies.”

“Must be true, I read they will stop production in 2026,” I said. The lowly penny surfaced as a topic of conversation at dinner with friends last week. Sadly, it appears that a penny saved is no longer a penny earned, as Ben Franklin once noted. As a matter of economic fact, they’ve been a monetary loss for most of 20 years.”

According to the U.S. Mint, the production cost of a penny was 3.69-cents in 2024. About 3 cents for manufacturing and the rest for administrative costs and distribution.

“Rising costs aren’t the real reason pennies are going away,” someone added. “No one spends them anymore. Most pennies put into circulation are given as change in cash transactions, then never reused. There were about 240 billion in circulation last year. That’s 700 pennies per person; most in jars or dresser drawers.”

“I have my share,” I laughed. “At least that many on my dresser, more in my car’s console, and not telling how many under the front seat.”

“I save pennies I find on the ground,” said another. “Haven’t you heard the poem? ‘So don’t pass by that penny when you’re feeling blue. It may be a penny from heaven, that an angel’s passed to you.” Finding a penny is a reminder that someone in heaven is thinking about you.”

Adding to the poetic perspective, I contributed, “‘Find a penny, pick it up. All day long you’ll have good luck.’ I’m guilty of picking up a heads-up penny for luck. But if I spot one that’s tail’s up, I turn it over and leave it for someone else to find good fortune.”

While financial fortune might be hard to measure in pennies today, the copper coins represent more than mere monetary value to many. The humble penny represents priceless value in conversational expressions that have coined philosophies of American life for generations.

My grandmother’s favorite was, “Take care of the pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves.” Survivors of the Great Depression, like my grandparents, characterized the less fortunate by saying, “They’re so poor, they don’t have two cents to rub together.”

“A penny for your thoughts” attributes value in wisdom to the meager one-cent piece. However, I am also quick to remind that “advice is worth what you pay for it.”

Today, “rattling money,” as one longtime friend always described pocket change, can be little more than a nuisance amid plastic money or folding money … or in my case, no money. However, it was historical appreciation for a penny that caused me to pause long enough to peruse a wheat penny in my pocket pile a couple of years ago.

Some my age will remember that the first version of the still-current penny, portraying a likeness of “Honest Abe” on one side, was first issued with two grains of wheat and the words “one cent” on the other. “Wheat pennies,” as they are called by coin collectors,” were minted from 1909 to 1958 when the reverse side was replaced with a likeness of the Lincoln Memorial in 1959.

Finding a wheat penny in pocket change, or anywhere today except in a coin collection, is rare enough. But the odds of someone giving me one in change at a Center, Texas, business that day might have been good enough to win the lottery. It bore the date 1919, minted when plenty of Indian Head pennies produced from 1859 to 1909 were still familiar in pockets and cash registers.

The coin had been in circulation for nearly 100 years the day it ended up in my pocket.

It was crazy to think that World War I had just ended when someone first pocketed the penny. The same year that Congress approved the Grand Canyon as a national park. The year a flight from New York to Atlantic City established the first commercial airline service. When Woodrow Wilson was president. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote, was newly ratified.

And the year before my father’s parents became newlyweds in 1920.

So, what’s a 1919 “wheat” penny worth? Besides lots of memories and some sage sayings about life and luck? Around a dollar, maybe two, according to numismatic value guides.

“What will we ever do without pennies,” one of my friends lamented.

“One thing for sure,” I concluded, “The cost of conversation will go up.”

“From now on, it’s going to be ‘a nickel for your thoughts’ to start discussions like this.”

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Here I sit reviewing finances

“I can’t understand, where my money went,
Well, I’m not broke, but I’m badly bent.”
— Bluegrass song lyrics by Fred F. Carter Jr. (1933 –2010), American guitarist, singer, producer, and composer.

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It’s January. Christmas is behind us. The new year is well underway, and here I sit reviewing finances. Leftover Christmas bills. Through the roof homeowner insurance that has doubled in the last three years. Car insurance that is accelerating faster than new car prices. And that doesn’t even include those ever-increasing real estate taxes we paid this week.

I know costs increase and prices go up, but it would really help matters if incomes increased as quickly as expenses. What my good friend and mentor in the newspaper business, Jim Chionsini, used to say at budget time is true: “If your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep becomes your downfall.”

And, none of these financial concerns address the fact that as soon as we’ve hopefully cleared the first-of-the-year major hurdles, April 15 and the IRS will be staring us squarely in the pocketbook.

On a brighter note, there’s a social media reel going around featuring an adorable little guy with an infectious laugh who is apparently reading a math question from a workbook. “Jaden has a one-dollar bill, one quarter and two pennies,” he reads slowly. “How much money does he have?” After a short hesitation, the little guy looks up and laughs loudly, “Jaden broke!”

There have been times when we’ve all probably been broke, but just not saavy enough to know it. You know, those times when we look back on life and wonder, “How did I ever do that?”

In college, I worked full-time for an auto dealership body shop where my employer fortunately allowed flexibility in my 40 give-or-take hours to accommodate a commuting schedule to East Texas State University. Finagling classes scheduled all on A days or B days allowed me to work on the other days in Mount Pleasant, plus some hours when the shop wasn’t open, like nights until 10 p.m. and some Saturdays.

Although earning a four-year degree took me five years, I did it. Graduated with a double-major degree in psychology and art. But that’s not the whole story. During the same five years, I also bought and supported two vehicles, one daily driver and one “weekend warrior” race car that friend and mechanic Oscar Elliott and I campaigned on drag strips from Texas to Oklahoma to Louisiana.

How did I do all that? I have no idea. Good money management? You don’t know me very well, do you? Good economic times? Well, if it was, I had no clue. I didn’t even have a budget — you know, one of those plans that keeps you from having too much month left at the end of your money. Like the story the preacher shared in his sermon last Sunday about a couple enduring hard times, struggling to make ends meet.

Seems that after agreeing on a workable budget, the wife was at the mall shopping when she saw a gorgeous dress and fell in love. Rationalizing her feelings, she thought, “I really need a new dress.” But then she remembered the budget.

“It won’t hurt to just try it on,” she decided. And that’s all it took. The dress went home with her.

Arriving home, she proudly showed it to her husband, who could not believe his eyes. “You bought a new dress,” he asked in disbelief? “After all of our planning and discussion about finances and how to make ends meet, you bought a new dress?”

“I’m really sorry,” she said remorsefully. “I couldn’t help myself. I was in Dillard’s and the devil made me do it.”

“The devil,” her husband couldn’t help but laugh. “Didn’t you remember the scripture in Matthew chapter 16 when the Lord said, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan.'”

“Well, I did that,” she replied sheepishly. “And the devil told me that it looked good on me all the way around.”

So here I sit when I should be writing a column, trying to fine-tune my budget and work my way through finances for the new year. I just want to cry out, “Get thee behind me, checkbook.”

Instead, I’m staring at a stack of bills and recalling that cute youngster joking about Jaden’s money problem. I can just hear him now.   

“Leon, he’s broke, too.”

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.