I hear you. but do what I and some others are doing. wherever you can get away with it put the $ after, as in "10$". let's be the change we wish to see in the world. I also try to express dates in sort-friendly format wherever I can, like "2015 Feb 7" (or 20150207 if computer must parse or align, etc). I also express measurements in metric/SI wherever I can. I also never bought into this whole "put TL;DR at the end" anti-pattern I see some folks doing (assume young) when I can continue to have a "summary: foo" at the beginning, which is clearly better in two particular ways.

one could argue that "10 USD" is even better overall, with the negative of requing two extra chars.