Why have Money?
Filed under: Money and You — Gloria and Alpha @ 11:58 pm
Money makes obtaining what we need to survive easier. If we strip our survival needs right back, our core need is water and food (in that order).
Now, if you live in a first world country, you’re already ahead of the game. Obtaining basics like food and water is relatively easy, depending on your circumstances. Even so, there most major cities have soup kitchens.
The concept of exchanging something for “money” is a relatively new concept. Previously, people bartered goods they produced for things they didn’t, or couldn’t produce. Even a live animal was used as ‘money’. There are still parts of countries today that count in the number of camels, cows and other animals that something can be bought with.
The earliest record of ‘money’ came in about 3,000 BC, when gold bars were weighed to measure their value, in Egypt and Mesopotamia (parts today known as Iraq). Now, that may sound a long time ago, but if you think how far back human civilisation is recorded on earth, 5,000 years ago, isn’t that long ago.
Money has, at different times, also meant shells (cowry shells were used in China around 1,200 BC), silver, and even leather currency. By the time we reach the present day, where gold and silver are no longer the universal currency, we use paper currency. Each nation, or group of nations, has their own currency and this is what we use to exchange for things we need and want.
The actual coins now hold no intrinsic value anymore. They no longer hold the value in gold or silver.
The paper on which money is printed also holds no intrinsic value. The value is what we place on the meaning of what that piece of paper can get for us. There is energy and power attached to this meaning, and more and more it drives us.
The concept of money has grown over time, just as the tangible representation of money has also changed. What hasn’t really changed is what we actually know about money and what it takes to accumulate not just money, but wealth, to the point that we can become financially independent.
How is it that some people appear to easily accumulate wealth, while others struggle throughout their life?
If you think back to your early education, both prior to school, and during the almost two decades of formal school years, how much time is spent educating children on what money is, and how it is used? Virtually none. We are ill-equipped for the world of money, and are not taught how to manage money.
We are taught how to spend it however. Consumerism is at the core of society and the wealth of a nation is a comparison between what it has and what it doesn’t have. The sooner we come to realise that our education is lacking in this area, the better. If not, there will be many years of struggle and confusion, because we don’t know what’s wrong, let alone how to fix it.
Fundamental to money is that, in order to build wealth, you must PUT ASIDE MORE THAN YOU SPEND, then you need to wisely invest what you save, so that your money works for you to grow and grow. This is behind the concept of passive income.
This may sound like a pretty simplistic and obvious statement to make, but it is the fundamental foundation for wealth building. To start you thinking, what percentage of what you earn is saved and kept untouched as wealth creation?
Putting money aside each time you are paid should be a habit, and something we’ll explore further in future posts. For now, I’ll leave you with this quote by Benjamin Franklin:
“If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting”, and I’ll add, “and think of giving as well as getting.”
It is only through fair exchange that you acquire wealth.
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