Let's Make Money

Typically the first principle of business is "to make money"? In whatever your business venture is the goal is to be profitable, produce your good and services at less of a cost then you sell them. Yes there are certain products or services that you may provide as an addition or enhancement to your main revenue stream. Items that you know own their own have no chance of ever returning their cost back to you, but they are something that's typically required as a compliment to your other good. But generally the bottom line is the bottom lime.

Now let's talk dollars and cents. More specifically the dollars that it costs to produce these cents and I'm not speaking figuratively here I'm talking about actually producing cents, pennies and nickels. A question recently asked in a piece on 60-Minutes asks "Why mint the penny, when it costs $134 million to make $80 million worth of what most people consider nuisance coins?" Given the rising cost of copper that equates to a cost of 1.675 cents per penny produced.

Now because the U.S. Mint is a government operation I wouldn't expect them to really operate the most efficiently nor care about their profitability all that much. Oddly enough, according to the 60-Minutes piece, the situation irks Edmund Mony, the director of the U.S. Mint, who would like Congress to find a solution. "You can’t sustain losses on pennies and nickels and expect to be a viable organization that benefits the American people," says Mony.

So where do the penny and nickel fall? Are they the main product whose production can be adjusted? Or are they accessories that you have to have?

My solution...
A limited offer of a 25% bonus on the exchange of all pennies returned.

The results...
You and I have an excuse to clean out our ash trays, cup holders, seats and couches as well as those mason jars sitting in your closet and finally see a little value in those little brown coins. The government would realize a savings of .425 cents per penny and could recoup tons of useless coins and remove them from circulation.

Think about it in terms of a used car. A used car right after you pull that car out into the street and someone smashes the back end up. The insurance adjusted tells you it's your fault and you aren't going to get any help from them, they don't care. The body shop tells you it will cost approximately twice the value of the car to fix it. Now, what are your options? Do you pay twice as much to fix something that's not that important? Do you try and sell it as is knowing you'll get nothing for it? Or realize that maybe the pieces of your car are worth more then the whole thing. You can take the engine out and sell that for about the same price as the car. Strip the custom rims and tires, chain them to a tree in your front yard and sell those. Yank out your Pioneer stereo and sell it on Ebay. The sum of it's pieces are greater then the sum of the whole.

That's just my thought.

Here is the video from 60-Minutes...