Almost everyone can remember having a piggybank of some sort, collecting loose change, pretty coins, saving up allowance, – and putting effort into occasionally trying to pry something out again. Once it was opened, the delight to sort the money by size or color, and learning the actual value of the currency by adding up how much money it is.

I remember my daughter trading coins with her sister, two years younger: “I give you two moneys if you give me this one money”, not disclosing that she actually perfectly understood the value of the coins. She learned that size or sparkly sheen wasn’t a giveaway of the worth. It was a good teaching moment, and we still have a good laugh about this.
Today, my granddaughters get a small allowance, and their parents pay it on purpose in real coins and small bills. At their school, they can buy small items for cash, but also sell their handmade items at a “marketplace” once every few months. I assume this is a conscious effort by the school to make kids handle money and get a feeling for value.

Where will kids learn the value of money if they don’t handle cash? Money has become a virtual item, a seemingly never-ending supply from the push of a button or swipe. The quick calculation in your head of change you expect at a market sale might be a thing of the past, and so will be the searching in your wallet for the coins to make it even.
Writing a check has become rare, – one checkbook goes in our house, used by two adults, for a year or two.

However, this is creating a second-tier monetary system. The few people who don’t afford a smartphone and therefore can’t access services such as online banking, Venmo, PayPal to name just a few, are cut off from the demand of online payments. It is not rare anymore that businesses only accept card or phone payments. Street musicians, collection boxes for charities, or even our unfortunate outcasts living on the streets don’t have a way to receive your loose change. There is none.
Our societies are increasingly cash free. Handling and knowing money have become abstract.

Miss Piggybank Is Hungry

20″w x 40″h
Materials: Hand dyed cotton (by Judy Robertson), Dupioni silk, sheer fabrics
Techniques: Whole-cloth quilted, fused applique, top stitched by hand in free-motion