Value-less Money

Money has lost its practical value.

I will not relate what will probably already be an obvious history, but money has become an abstract quantity. It was tied to various values, most notably the gold standard. The end of the gold standard and the beginning of fluctuating, relative currencies meant that money became valued just for its own sake.

I rush through this history so that I can relate a thought that I had a few hours ago. I was in a shop and mentally going through my usual routine. I always try to use exact change when paying for something or at least make an effort to get as close to that as possible. More than this, I have begun playing a mental game whereby I attempt to get rid of my least valuable coins. Even if I get change back, getting rid of the smaller coins gives me a small sense of satisfaction.

It seems that I want smaller physical amounts of money that are worth more value. This is most obvious when I try to use extra change in order to get a note back from a cashier. These pieces of paper are physically worth less than the metal coins that I exchanged for them. Not only has money become a relative value, it has inverted our normal sense of value. We usually think of metal as more valuable than paper but when this metal and paper is money the opposite is true.

Electronic money is certainly the next case in this unusual inversion.

-The English Student

Frugality

I have never been able to spend money with the reckless abandon of some of my peers.

There always seems to be some reason to save money rather than spend it. Over the many jobs that I have had, I have compulsively saved. In my current job (lucky that I am to have one) I am saving approximately 90% of what I am earning. This has gotten to the point that it feels like I am working for no actual reward. A bank balance becomes a meaningless number that rises and has no real consequence.

Why do I constantly avoid spending money? While the cliché of saving for a rainy day may ring true for me, I think it is a more complex process. Abstract rainy days are easily ignorable. What is not so easy to shrug off is predictable events in ones life that will require money. There is always something on the horizon that may need funds. This is even beyond recessionary scaremongering. We always find a reason to save.

Sometimes this frugality seems like an excellent idea. It is a practical application of forward planning and thinking. Yet at the same time, working and using up precious time for no real reward, or an imaginary one in the future is more than problematic. Money controls us in this way and we cannot escape its grasp while we allow it to dictate our lives. Money is simply a medium. When we earn it we should spend it and make those imaginary numbers mean something.

I am not saying that we should all drive ourselves into poverty with excess, simply that we should enjoy ourselves more while retaining our forward thinking.

-The English Student