Getting Back to Basics

If you grow up in a family with very limited financial resources, there are two ways you can go as an adult: you will make the getting and spending of money the center of your life, and base your self-esteem and self-valuation on how much of it you have. Or you will have learned to appreciate its value so that you can use it to enrich your life rather than let it control you. Two very different relationships to money, and two very different interpretations of “learning the value of money.”

It’s possible that those two different approaches can also be true for people who’ve grown up with so much money that they take it for granted. But being able to take something completely for granted usually means that you fail to appreciate it or understand its true value. It’s a simple fact of human psychology that we place more value on what we’ve worked for than on what we’re simply handed, almost as a matter of right. Money that you’ve worked for represents your skills and the investment of your time. Money that is handed to you represents the work of others. It has little value aside from what you can spend it on.

If you’ve grown up poor and you work for your money, you understand its importance; you understand the fear of its loss and the possibility of sliding into real poverty. You understand what it means to others like yourself and you can empathize with them, and try to work for a society in which no one needs to fear going hungry or losing their home. If your money is handed to you, what you fear is having less to spend on the luxuries that you feel are your right. You have no understanding of what it means not to have enough for the most basic needs.

The real value of money is what it tells us about ourselves if we have the courage to listen.

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