While getting $0.71 of change at a coffee shop today, I started to wonder just how much time is actually consumed by the act of “getting change”.
So I calculated it, and the answer is that $1 billion of time is consumed in the USA waiting for change.
That’s actually a bit smaller than I expected. And I calculate the total number of retail purchases at ~48 billion/year, so assuming $0.50 cents of change per purchase, it would cost consumers $24 billion per year to say “keep the change”.
I guess I’ll keep waiting for payment practices to change!
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June 13, 2014 at 8:57:15 PM
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| 1 |
retail sales = ($400 × 10^9) × 12
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$4.80×1012 |
| 2 |
avg purchase = $30
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$30.00 |
| 3 |
percent cash = 30%
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30% |
| 4 |
total cash purchases = retail sales / avg purchase × percent cash
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4.8×1010 |
| 5 |
seconds per change = 4 seconds
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4 seconds |
| 6 |
time spent = total cash purchases × change
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1.92×1011 seconds |
| 7 |
total_hours = spent in hours
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53,333,333.3333333333 hours |
| 8 |
avg_wage = 20$ / hour
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20 $/hour |
| 9 |
cost = total_hours × avg_wage
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$1.07×109 |