The name Thrifty Nickel evokes our business’s full and explicit desire to help you pave your way down Savings Lane. Under a more scrutinizing glance, if you examine it through lenses of historical phraseology concerning nickels, the name foreshadows not only savings, but DOUBLE SAVINGS.
Arguably, the most commonly conjured nickel related phraseology manifests itself in the saying “nickel and dimed” (also spelled nickel-and-dimed). As a child, your parents teach you the value of money by giving you pocket change every now and again. One day, when you’ve fattened up your piggy bank and start to smell the bacon, you crack open Babe, count your coins and discover they turn into dollars. This, essentially, grounds the nickel-and-dime-ing concept. Any time, on a bill say, a hamburger joint tacks on up-charges to certain toppings. If you want cheese, it’s .79. For any of the following toppings: onion, lettuce, tomato, mushroom, bell pepper add .50 per topping. To add mayonaise, mustard or barbecue add .25.
When the patron sees these extra charges on the menu, all individually, they sound reasonable, a nickel here, a dime there. So you get a burger, fully loaded. Added up, the up charges practically equal the price of a second plain, but juicy and delicious burger. That’s nickel and diming.
Nickel and dime may also mean “small time.” Anything that was “nickel and dime” anchored the opposite end of the “big money” spectrum.
Even lower down on the aforementioned spectrum than “nickel and dime” lies “not worth a plugged nickel,” which means completely and utterly worthless.
In the days of early monetary circulation, mints pressed larger value coinage out of precious metals like gold or silver. People would plug these coins, or remove their centers, then replace the center with a less valuable metal. The nickel, made from a copper-nickel alloy of low enough value to widely disburse as a nominal denomination, clearly lacks enough value to merit plugging. Therefore, if anyone had a plugged nickel it would be even less than a nickel. So, worthless.
There’s also the warning, “Don’t take any wooden nickels.” A saying circa the Civil War used as a parting warning about dealings with Yankees in the South. Another Southern nickel saying, less appropriate for the topic of Thrift, but hilarious insult, is “She looks like she’s been beaten with a sack of nickels.” But hey, she could look like she’d been beaten with a sack of pennies.
Therefore we, at the Thrifty Nickel, not only aim to save you money, but we even want you to save all the way down to your nickels, a coin traditionally utilized in phraseology as synonymous with near worthlessness.
Head on over to our American Classified’s website at OurThriftyNickel.com, place in ad in six easy steps! Simplify your life and save today!
Remember, Thrifty Nickel– DOUBLE SAVINGS!