In these modern, recession-plagued times, a self-respecting man such as myself is constantly trying to keep his wallet padded. We try to hold on to the horns of every precious buck, all the while doing our best to not seem like a Stingy Stuart.

We do our best to go to the Tolos of the world instead of the Winter Balls and to go out to dinners and movies in groups, where there is no possibility that we’ll feel obligated to cough up for our women of interest. But between the needs for food, video games, and Dungeons and Dragons books, some are able to find happiness in spending their dollars as soon as they get them.

This new strain of financial fever is known as bill tracking. Bill tracking is the idea of entering a dollar bill’s information online, along with your location, and then putting instructions on the bill about how to access the information on the Internet. Theoretically, when you spend your dollar, the person you give it to will see the instructions and if they’re interested, go online and enter their location, right above yours. Thus, you can view where your Washingtons, Lincolns and Benjamins end up after you spend them, and where they’ve been before being spent on that new Dungeon Master’s Guide.

A couple of weeks ago, I went over to the Tana Market on Cherry for lunch, and it was more or less the same as any other day. But the day before, I had come across a dollar bill, in the possession of Garfield sophomore Ian Koppe, with the words “see where George has been — WheresGeorge​.com” on it. I’d heard of bill tracking and decided to try it out.

That night, I went on Where’s George, which turned out to be one of the more popular sites of its kind on the web — kind of like the Cheerios of bill tracking — and put in my dollar’s serial number and series.

Where’s George was founded in 1998 by a man named Hank Eskin. You can track bills of any value on Where’s George, even though the site was named for President George Washington, whose face graces only the one dollar bill. My entry, serial number F1335 — 1P, a series 2003A one dollar bill, had traveled 1,869 miles in 473 days, and been used for an insurance payment (wouldn’t that be a lot of ones?) in Indiana before reaching Seattle.

There are dashes in the serial number because you can’t see the whole number online, and the next day at the Tana Market, I spent ol’ George. I was crying, he was crying, but in the end we decided to just opt for a good slap-on-the-back man-hug. It was a friend well-spent though, as I enjoyed my strawberry shortcake ice cream bar and I was going to buy Andrew one too, but Jonathan really wanted to buy him one for some reason.

That night, I returned to Where’s George, to see if I had gotten a “hit.” A hit is when someone enters the same bill you’ve entered, meaning that either the person you gave the bill to followed the instructions written on it, or someone else did, after the bill was circulated some more. For me, however, getting hits turned out to be more or less like my March Madness team getting to play Juanie’s team in the second round: it’s just not going to happen. And both involve the word “hit.”

But it turns out that Where’s George is actually a friendly place, or at least friendlier than that March Madness matchup, as no one has ever gotten a broken jaw via the Internet. While trying to figure out how to check for hits, I ended up discussing Where’s George with Terry in Alaska, a member of the site since 2002.

“I look at this site like one large dysfunctional family. The various forums allows you to find your niche,” says Terry.

The forums Terry mentions are a large part of Where’s George, as they’re the social center of the site, where people can discuss everything from record-breaking bills — the longest traveling bill has been going for a little over three years — to Where’s George bingo.

The term “bingo,” in my mind, has very little to do with movin’ green, as it reminds me more of old women, perms and mothballs. Where’s George bingo is a game in which you try to get hits from all the places in an area — for example, all the states in the U.S. This game kind of takes away the best part of playing bingo, as shouting “BINGO!” at your computer screen will make you look like a fool, but it does capitalize on the fact that bill tracking is popular all over the place, although primarily in the U.S.

“The folks that frequent this site are of all walks of life, with a wide range of life experience,” says Terry. “It’s also cool to see that an object that you once had in your possession has traveled thousands of miles and has exchanged hands several times over the course of weeks, months or years.”

But whatever you make of it, bill tracking is definitely putting a new face on old currency. And you’ve probably realized by now that you’re not going to win a million dollars by reading this article. I’m sorry, please don’t beat me up. I may be a slumdog, but unfortunately I’m not a millionaire.