Money « Tom Is A Blog Neglector

14
Sep/061

Money

I've been trying to write about the money here for weeks now. I keep forgetting. I was going to take pictures of the money myself, but figured I would just find pictures on the internet. I had this nicely composed post almost completed and I hit something on the keyboard and it all went away. I couldn't find a way to make it come back. Was I mad? Ooooh you betcha.

Their money is called "Dollars" (Yeah it's such a weird name right? Hehe). Their "paper" money comes in 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 dollar bills. Notice there is no 1 dollar bill. That was discontinued in 1984 and replaced with a coin. Their bills are different colors and different sizes. The 50 dollar bill is about 1/8 inch shorter than our bills, and they go down in size from there. The 100 dollar bill is a little bigger than the 50, but I have never seen one in person. Their "paper" money is actually plastic. There is a clear window in the bills with a white design in it. You can kind of see it in the pictures. You can't tear their money like you can ours, and it lasts longer than paper bills.

Their coins are broken down into 5, 10, 20, and 50 cent coins, a 1 dollar coin, and a 2 dollar coin. Notice there is no 1 cent coin. They don't do the one cent coins anymore. That was stopped in 1991 (along with their 2 cent coin). Now prices are rounded to the nearest 5 cent. It's basically an automatic "Take a penny, leave a penny". It's weird when I get change from the store. Say I am supposed to get $7.20 change, and the lady hands me a $5 dollar bill and some change. I immediately think she made a mistake, but then remember that the coins are dollars. I hate walking around with a bunch of change jingling in my pocket. I don't know how they do it, though I guess it's okay if everyone else is jingling too.

Our dollar is worth more than their dollar. So when I see a price here, I take off about 25% and that's about what it costs in our money, which we refer to as "real money". We call Australian money "PayDay" money because its brightly colored like the Parker Bros. "PayDay" game. (I just spent 45 minutes looking for a decent picture of PayDay money to illustrate my point, and I couldn't find one.) Some more information about Australia's currency can be found here. (The More You Know...)

Anyway, below are some pictures of the bills and coins used here. They pictures are not to scale, but you get the idea. The coins are various thicknesses also, but I couldn't find a picture to illustrate that. I don't have any US coins with me or I would take pictures with the Australian coins so you have some kind of reference. I have a picture of all of the bills/coins, and then individual pictures of each. The group picture have thumbnails, the individuals do not.

Bills Side 1: Bills Side 2: (Not sure which side is front and which is the back.)