Define Money

If you’ve ever been married you know that one of the topics that is certain to start a fight or a tiff or a spat or any other word or range for argument is how money is spent. My wife and my relationship is no different and one of the constant thorns in my wife’s side is the books I posses.

I say posses because I don’t think I buy them. This was the briefest of brief discussions we had this evening. I harrumphed at her going to the Dollar Store and she told me if I could buy books she could spend money how she wants and I said I don’t buy the books to which she scoffed.

The question is what is money? In the modern sense of the term I have no idea. Most of the money I have I never touch. It is numbers on a screen. Someone pays our business with a credit card, then a portion of that money is downloaded from our business bank account to our personal one from which it is used to pay off past transactions on our own credit cards or other electronic bills. It is rare that we ever touch or exchange physical currency. We just move numbers from our clients accounts to our business account to our personal account to the account of some other person’s business where I am certain they do the same.

If money is mostly numbers on a screen then are the credit card points I use to buy books money? Is this what money is these days? Nothing that exists in reality. Only an idea and it is all about having more numbers on the screen. It is a weird thing to think about. Our money is already backed only by trust. That is the meaning of fiduciary.

Really when you think about it the credit card points are as much money as anything else and I choose to use them to turn the purchases of groceries and diapers and baby formula into books once a month. This has become my ritual. The 16th of the month rolls around and I get four to five books. Then repeat the process the next month. I am certain I could use the points to help with diapers or baby formula or whatever else we need around the house but I’d much rather have a nice reward for myself.

And that is the crux of the matter. We all deserve our little rewards and when we start sniping at other people’s rewards it is guaranteed to rankle their britches.