For the longest time I had no clue what money was for. I just knew that to live in our society there are essential things we have to pay for. Things like food, shelter, utilities, and transportation. But then once those were taken care of, it wasn’t really clear what I was supposed to do with the money that was left. The prevailing thought, it seemed, was that money left over was supposed to be spent on things. Many economists and financial professionals call it disposable income after all. And I often heard people say something like what’s the point of saving so much? You can’t take your money with you when you die. There were people who mentioned the importance of saving, but they were few. And the advice often seemed more of an afterthought to the ever more important issue of which things you could afford to buy with your disposable income. So even though I avoided consumer debt in my younger years, I spent a lot of money on things I shouldn’t have. In hindsight, I just didn’t understand what money was and how it should be used.
