Coin Values
Coins are small pieces of metal money. Each one is worth a different amount, even though some coins are bigger or smaller than others.
Bill Values
Bills are pieces of paper money. They're worth a lot more than coins — even a single bill can be worth several dollars!
There are other bills too, like the $2, $50, and $100 — but we'll stick with these four for now.
Writing Money Amounts
There's more than one way to write the same amount of money, and it helps to know both.
When you write just cents, you use the ¢ symbol, like 25¢. When you write dollars and cents together, you use the $ sign and a decimal point, like $0.25. Those two numbers are actually the exact same amount of money — just written two different ways!
The two digits right after the decimal point in a dollar amount always tell you the cents. So $3.50 means 3 dollars and 50 cents.
Whole dollar amounts can be written either way too — $5 and $5.00 mean exactly the same thing.
Paying with Cash
When you buy something, you hand the cashier coins and bills that add up to at least the price. The cashier counts it, and if you gave the exact amount, that's it — you're done!
But what if you don't have the exact amount? You can pay with more money than the price, and the cashier will hand you back the difference. That's called change.
Say a toy costs $3.25. You only have a $5 bill, so you pay with that instead. You paid $1.75 more than the price, so the cashier hands you back $1.75 in change.
Getting change back is really just subtraction: what you paid − the price = your change.
Activity: Count the Money
Add up all the coins and bills shown below, then type the total.
A Penny Update
Pennies have been in the news lately — here's what's going on.
In 2025, the U.S. Mint (the place that makes coins) stopped making brand-new pennies. It was costing more than one cent to make each penny, so the government decided to stop.
Pennies aren't disappearing overnight! All the pennies already out in the world are still real money. You can still spend them, save them, and count them — just like we've been practicing on this page.
Since no new ones are being made, though, you'll probably see fewer and fewer pennies around as the years go by. Some stores have started rounding cash totals up or down to the nearest nickel (5¢) instead of giving exact pennies in change. If you pay with a card instead of cash, the price still stays exact to the penny.
So for now, pennies are still worth knowing how to count — you're just learning about a coin that's slowly becoming more rare!
Practice: Make the Amount
Click coins and bills to add them to the counter until they add up to the target. Then hit Submit!