Not too long ago, one of my staff members received a $2 bill as a tip.

I don’t know how much the bill was for, but she was so happy, it stood out. I even took a picture because it was such a random way to tip.

So I thought: “how many $2 bills are actually in circulation?”

I researched the issue and found a video by famous producer Casey Neistat about spending nothing but $2 bills. “They are my favorite denomination ” he says.

He orders $2 bills by the thousands just to make people happy.

I liked that idea. But I also wanted to take it a step further. Using $2 bills to track spending habits of a community.

But a New Yorker spending a few hundred dollars worth of twos is a drop in the bucket. What if we could track how cash flows within the whole city?

Enter: Crosby, North Dakota.

(Not to scale. Crosby is actually *much* smaller.)

Besides making the recipient very happy, $2 bills are a great way to measure the cash spending habits of a closed population.

You see, Crosby has a population of around 2,500. Meaning the cashflow around town is a lot easer to observe than New York. So if someone were to, say, spend nothing but $2 bills for a few months, we’d see where they end up.

We could then measure comparatively where people spend their hard-earned cash.

At least that’s the theory.

Given this, I went out and ordered $800 in $2 bills.

Why $800?

Because using $200 (100 notes), according to standard proportion estimation formulae, the sample size will be much too small to accurately measure.

…And because ordering $1,000 in $2 bills at the bank would be batshit crazy.

As it turns out, $800 in 2’s is quite a pile of cash!

If I spend nothing but $2 bills for the next few months, where will they end up?

I predict the economic powerhouse of every rural community in the midwest – the bar.

In this case, my money (literally) is on Joey’s.

As a reporter, I know the “busiest” bar (at least in terms of criminal activity: i.e disorderly conducts, DUI arrests etc) stems from Joey’s Bar in “downtown” Crosby.

There are five places licensed to sell liquor in Crosby: Joey’s, Mr. K’s, the Moose, Country Club and Homestead. No matter how short (or long) my nights out are, I always tend to end up at Joey’s at the end of the night. I can’t explain how or why, but I always do.

If you ever need to locate someone in town, the sure way to find them is to start at Joey’s. Surely enough, he/she will be sitting at the end of the long bar, lamenting about how the rain is messing with this year’s harvest.

Or at the very least, there will be someone who knows, or knows someone who knows, where that person is.

And during late nights, it seems like the whole town drinks hundreds of bottles of Bud Light at Joey’s bar.

…Most people end up at Joey’s at bar close, that’s just a fact.

Therefore, in our little experiment, I will hypothesize:

Most cash spent in Crosby ends up at Joey’s.

Can we conclusively prove this in a non-scientific study? No.

Will people end up hoarding all the $2 notes because of their perceived “rarity,” probably.

But at least we can measure comparative returns easily.

…Ahh the joys of living in rural america.

Thanks to Andrea, my banker friend extraordinaire for ordering all this cash from the Bank of North Dakota. Apologies to all local bankers for introducing the notes into your cashflow.

Question of the day:

How many of my $2 bills will end up back in circulation after spending all $800?

The closest guess will win $2 (two one-dollar bills, I don’t want to waste my valuable twos!)