18 Aug The Money Disease Affecting Everyone – Financial Abstraction

It’s happening to all of us and there’s no cure (unless you move to a place where the internet doesn’t exist, then no worries). However, there are ways to slow it down and even put it in remission. But sooner or later, financial abstraction, will happen to you.

Go back a thousand years and people exchanged hard assets. Clothes, animals, spices, jewels and gold were the universal currency. Fast forward a few hundred years and the concepts of money evolved into coins and quite further down the road, paper.

Now, money has reached a new form and its invisible. Digital code. Billions of transactions happen DAILY. Do you really think we’re transferring gold from bank to bank, country to country on a regular basis to keep up with all of these transactions? NO!

So for the first time in HUMAN HISTORY, we are faced with a challenge no one could have prepared us for. We are spending more money than we have, even when we consciously are aware of it at times, and yet we do it anyway. Why? Because it doesn’t feel REAL anymore. The science is conclusive. And many of us have experienced it on different levels. I mean, anyone who had a little too much to drink on a Friday night only to surf Amazon or Walmart.com and recieve a bundle of online orders 2 days later they barely remembered buying knows what I’m saying.

Spending $40 in an online store is much easier than being in a store and having to physically hand over two $20 bills. Financial abstraction comes in other forms too and the further we get away from handling physical cash, the more we will spend. Businesses are picking up on this and capitalizing on making it so easy to pay for something, you don’t even need to get out your credit card anymore. Amazon One Click Button, Disney Magic Bands for when you visit their parks, online payment platforms, storing your credit card online so you don’t have to do ALL THAT SUUUUPER HARD WORK OF PUTTING IN A 16-DIGIT NUMBER AND EXPIRATION DATE (did my sarcasm come through on that?).

The point is this. If you live like the majority of humans in developed countries, this is inevitable. It’s a money disease that is eroding our reality of worth and responsibility and it is DANGEROUS! Take this seriously and be aware of it. Keep $40 in cash with you to make small purchases. You’ll be surprised how often you DON’T buy something you don’t need because you don’t want to hand over any of your Jacksons.

Spread the word. Hide your children (actually just teach them about it). For the love of Samwell Gamgee, don’t play Monopoly with the credit cards (go old school with paper money). Build your habits to make money HARDER for you to spend because I can promise you…banks and organizations will spread this virus of financial abstractionitis to get more of your money faster than you can cough and say, “Hey! Where’d my money go?”