Money

Since we’ve been throwing out money left and right in the last three weeks, I thought I’d share how money works here, it’s different and way better. Things are actually changing on 31 July too to make it even cooler.

NZ has $1 and $2 coins, not bills. Their lowest bill is the $5 bill, then they do $10, $20, $50 and up like the US. The coins are $2 and $1 as I’ve said, then 50c, 20c, 10c and 5c. NO PENNIES. (Sorry Alec, no more pennies.) And the coins for $1 and $2 are so handy, albeit very heavy. Apparently NZ has one of the heaviest currencies, so on 31 July the government is changing coin currencies. The bills are staying the same, but the coins are changing weights to be lighter, and they are removing the 5c piece. Wow, imagine no pennies in the States, but then no nickels too! How smart is that.

How do they work it at the stores? If you pay in cash, they round to the nearest 5c right now, but on 31 July it will be rounding to the nearest 10c. They call it Swedish Rounding, which is odd because it originated in Norway. If your bill ends in 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5, they round down to 0. If your bill ends in 6-9, they round up to the next 0. So we will only have to carry around 5 different coins rather than 7 (they had 2 versions of the 20c coin) and they will be much lighter; the 50c coins in particular are extremely heavy.

If you pay by Visa or EFTPOS (electronic funds transfer point of sale, but it’s become its own noun and verb—“paying by EFTPOS today?”), the final price is what it is, the rounding comes into play only with cash. Very cool, we think. I love the idea of $1 and $2 coins, the US could totally follow this method, how many $1 bills do we all accumulate??

Kiwis have only 3 months to do this currency transaction; the stores will stop taking 5c pieces by 31 October as well as all the old versions of the 50c, 20c and 10c coins too. You gotta go trade them all in for the new stuff. So for everyone who’s saved up change for that family trip, better head to the bank. (Good news Alec, you’ll be getting our final roll of useless 5c pieces from New Zealand.)