Time to start smashing your kids' piggy banks and conducting a thorough search down the back of the couch - the Reserve Bank wants those lazy coins back to work.
New Zealanders, it appears, have been selfishly replenishing their home supplies of metal money after emptying the vaults in 2006, when the coin system was updated.
Prior to 2006 the Bank estimates that the average New Zealand household had about 200 coins stashed "in various places at home", which was two or three times the amount in regular exchange.
Now, the Bank says, such home coin stores are likely to be well below half the pre-2006 level, hence the renewed hoarding trend. The Reserve Bank's coin-minting cost projection did not, however, take account of this micro-financial behaviour. In the interests of keeping its nickel budget under control, the Bank is asking us if we really need to keep 200 coins in the house.
"To improve the efficiency of New Zealand's currency system, the Reserve Bank encourages all households to bring these coins out of store and use them again for purchasing goods and services," the Bank says.
It is your economic duty to go down to the dairy and buy an ice-cream (and why not take one of those over-priced packets of Gingernuts too).
The startling facts about our coin budget blow-out are contained the latest Reserve Bank Bulletin, which also includes some good news about the modern banknotes: "The polymer substrate itself has also proved to be a significant deterrent to counterfeiting."
But as well as the dollar and cents stuff, the Bulletin covers some heavyweight intellectual ground.
Reserve Bank chief, Alan Bollard, for example, tells us that: "It is by no means clear how the international financial system will be organised in the future."
While, US academic, Professor Eric Leeper, throws in a few ideas about how fiscal and monetary policies can work together.
"I think that economics is at its best when it's useful," Leeper says in the Q&A piece.
Cool idea. Or, "groovy", as Leeper says with his last word.
Don't forget those coins.
David Chaplin
Toss your coins into the economy
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