Why Are Dimes Smaller than Nickels?

Today I took the elevator down to the third floor with $1.10 in hand for the Coke machine. As I was rummaging through the change in my palm I wondered for the umpteenth time why the dimes were smaller than the nickels - smaller, even, than the pennies, back when pennies were still a part of our daily lives.

From doubloon to loonie to quarter to dime, there's a nice progression - smaller size equals smaller value. But once you hit the nickel, calamity. It's bigger than the dime! And while the penny, at least, was smaller than the nickel, it, too, was larger than the dime!

Oh sure, once upon a time nickels were made of nickel, dimes were made of silver and pennies were made of copper, and each coin was sized so that the face value matched the amount of metal in the coin, and since silver was worth more than copper or nickel, of course it would take less metal to make ten cents' worth of dime than five cents' worth of nickel or a penny's worth of copper. That sounds like wafer-thin reasoning from the mint to me, but that's the argument. Now that nickels aren't made out of nickel nor dimes out of silver, why continue to bow to tradition? Resize the coins! Or to simplify matters, make the nickel the dime and the dime the nickel, now that the penny has dropped.

To coin a phrase, our change needs change!

Whopping Woods Windfall

I checked my account balances yesterday and saw something that surprised me: a credit to my Visa account for $8.66, listed as "TD - CLASS ACTION."

A little research indicated that I'm part of a class of citizens who were charged "undisclosed or unauthorized fees to its cardholders who incurred credits or debits in foreign currency transactions on their TD VISA (or Chargex) Cards." (See here.)

Before this, I've never been the beneficiary of any sort of lawsuit. $8.66 may not be much, but hey, every dollar hacked off your Visa bill is N dollars in interest that doesn't need to be paid down the line.

Credit Where It's Due

WOO HOO! I paid off my line of credit today. No more debt for me! Yee hah!
 
Of course, I'm going to make an offer on a condo in a couple of hours...plunging me deeper into debt than I've ever been before...but at least the money is working for me now...right?
 
Right?
 
Hello?