Frame from the film. A deserted highway, a broken-down Plymouth finally broke away from the chase. The driver (with a girlfriend) brakes furiously, jumps out, nervously opens the trunk. Modest suitcase. Cover up — and there are neat bundles of dollars, dollars, dollars! The final. Kiss on the diaphragm. And what’s next — you thought?
Where are they, poor fellows, with this suitcase? Do they, generally speaking, think beyond the Mexican border? Say “money” in front of me personally — anxiety immediately sets in. Starting with the innocent: «How much does it cost?» and until late at night, be the mentioned tax return — everything leads to tension.
Then the theme develops without difficulty:
- Borrowing is unpleasant
- Lending is even worse
- Spending is scary
- Saving is stupid
My relationship with money reminds me of relationships with men. At first you are afraid that they are not and will not be. Then you worry that they are, and you don’t know how to manage wealth. Then — bam, some kind of devaluation, not to fat, you adapt to the new mu … rate and then you really start to be afraid of losing.
The only thing that is not in doubt is that it is pleasant to earn good money at your favorite job.
Now I want to figure out why there are so many side effects for one definite plus. And how to deal with it. Understanding, I realized that the conflict is located in two planes.
1. Imagine that you catch a taxi in the evening, and when you are habitually interested in the fare, you hear in response — come on, I’ll take you like that. (And even better this way: imagine that you — a woman — catch a taxi in the evening, and then about for free). Disturbing, isn’t it? And why? Indeed, in principle, we do not like to part with money, we are used to haggling, obediently pecking at discounts and generally for reasonable savings. And here it turns out that our hopelessly economic world has taught us that relationships based on profit are much safer than disinterested ones. Excluding, of course, relationships between loved ones. In all other cases, it can’t be that they don’t want anything from us at all, if not money, then what? The generation that received the pseudo-communist inoculation is generally in cognitive dissonance — on the one hand, it yearns for free and cheap, and on the other hand, it does not understand how you can get something of high quality without overpaying as it should. The market has partly abolished these torments, but we still cannot come to terms with the fact that money is a blessing, not a problem.
2. One day my classmate Nina stopped being frankly poor, and became such a normal middle-class girl. I signed a contract in some kind of glossy magazine, and it began. We meet with her at the session — nothing looks like this, she began to wear parting on the other side. But only! That is, not what happens to Cinderellas after trying on shoes. “You know,” Nina admits, “I had a great life when I had two hundred dollars every month. This is the greenest budget for me. First, I knew that there were two hundred of them. Secondly, I was a great cook, and it was a real meditation. What did I give my friends for their birthdays? She made rag dolls herself, and it was incomparable super! Now the life of a completely different person has begun — everything is like everyone else. Nina is not so afraid of money — she is afraid that they will replace Nina herself in Nina. Money is not only the equivalent of a commodity or labor invested in a commodity. It is also, as it turns out, the equivalent of our temperament and our own modus vivendi.
Have you ever played Monopoly? I’ve watched how two beautiful teenagers behaved in this fun. One bought the coolest lots «for everything» — and then feverishly sold, so as not to end up in a debt hole. The other spent strictly two chips per object, but covered the entire field. And he was not sorry to part with insignificant investments in the event of a profitable offer. That is, money is the topmost “bows” of our life strategies. Of course, they deserve attention and experience — but exactly in the same proportion as the packaging requires compared to the content.