Where does my money go after I pay in a shop?

Think about the last time you paid for something in a shop. You held the coins in your hand, cool and a little heavy, and then you gave them to the cashier. Clink, and the coins left your hand!

You walked out with your apple, but your coins stayed behind. Where does your money go after you pay in a shop? Let's follow it and see.

First, the cashier puts your money into the till, the drawer under the counter with a space for each kind of coin and note. The till keeps all the money together so nobody loses any of it. When the shop closes, the owner counts everything in the till to find out how much money came in that day.

Next, the owner carries the money to the bank. The bank keeps it safe for the shop, so the money is not sitting in an empty shop at night.

Now there are empty spaces on the shelves where the apples used to be. To fill them, the owner pays a supplier, which means a farm or factory that sells things to shops. The supplier's truck brings fresh apples, so the shop has more to sell. Who else do you think needs a share of the shop's money?

The workers! The cashier, the shelf stackers and the cleaner all get wages, which means the money they earn for their work.

The owner also pays the person who owns the shop's building, so the shop can stay there. On top of that, the owner pays the electricity company to keep the lights on and the freezers cold. Without a building and electricity, the shop could not open its doors.

Once the owner has paid the supplier, the workers' wages, the building's owner and the electricity company, some money is left over. The owner keeps it as profit, which means the money that is left after paying for everything. Profit is the owner's pay for running the shop.

And your money keeps travelling. The supplier pays wages to its own farmers and drivers, and the owner spends some of the profit in other shops. Your coins move on from hand to hand and from shop to shop.

So, when you pay in a shop, your money goes into the till and then to the bank. From there, the owner shares it out, to the supplier for new things to sell, to the workers as wages, to the building's owner and the electricity company, and the bit left over stays with the owner as profit.

Tomorrow morning, a fresh apple sits on the shelf where yours once was. Somewhere across town, a coin that once clinked into that till is already rolling toward another shop.