It is paradoxical, but true: among quite prosperous people who have a bank account, there are those who almost never have cash with them. Why do they dislike carrying money around so much?
Elizaveta, 37 years old, director’s assistant
“I don’t have money in my wallet – I’ll spend as much as I have. So I just don’t take them with me. But when I got a job, it became a problem. I did not even have a couple of coins to drink coffee with colleagues at the coffee machine. And they began to consider me a miser. How upset I was when I found out! And she made it a rule to always carry three hundred rubles with her in order to be able to treat her colleagues. But no more!”
“I rarely have more than two hundred rubles with me,” admits 34-year-old Yulia. – Fortunately, shops usually accept bank cards for payment. I don’t even remember the last time I went to an ATM.” Approximately 4% of Russians do not carry money with them at all*. Why such a dislike for cash?
I avoid unpleasant associations. “The fear of contact with cash indicates that a person sees a danger in them,” says psychologist Tatyana Voskresenskaya. “Often this attitude has to do with how parents handled money.” How were they treated in the family? How often do disputes and conflicts arise on this topic? If so, a child suffering from family conflicts may blame money for their troubles. “As an adult, he tries to symbolically get rid of the source of unpleasant experiences by removing cash from his eyes,” the psychologist concludes.
About it
“Psychological traps of money. Why smart people can’t manage their money – and how to fix it” Gary Belsky, Thomas Gilovich (Moscow, Albina Publisher, 2010).
Unconscious Thrift. Taking a taxi, having lunch with colleagues, chipping in for a birthday present – during the day there are various reasons to open your wallet. But if we don’t have cash, then others will pay. At the same time, no one can accuse us of stinginess, even our conscience: we do not refuse to fork out, we just cannot do it right now. “A small amount allows you to forget about the debt,” says psychologist Anna Fenko, professor at the University of Twente (Netherlands). “The end result is savings. True, there is a risk one day to discover that no one else wants to go to lunch with us.
Sublime image of “I”. Refusal to contact with material money in the form of coins and banknotes may indicate a desire to create an image of a person who is far from mercantile worries, who has an elevated way of thinking. Such a position is enshrined in culture – let us recall at least the most noble of the three musketeers, Athos, who “never bargained” and generally refused to think about money. “Behind the contempt for money lies a disregard for the ordinary acts of life, and indeed for those around them with their “boring” material problems,” emphasizes Anna Fenko. – But such a separation of oneself from “everyone” leads to great loneliness. The building of the Rotterdam Conservatory is decorated with the motto: “A musician is a person like everyone else.” If we replace the word “musician” with “businessman”, “politician”, “scientist” or “surgeon”, we will see that this motto can be useful for us too!
* According to the Superjob.ru portal survey, December 2011.
What to do?
Listen to your emotions
The lack of cash in the wallet causes completely different feelings for different people. Hear what this means to you. “What do I feel when I leave the house without cash? Do I experience anxiety, excitement, or, conversely, relief? How do these emotions manifest on the physical level, how do I feel them in the body? Already the first observations will help you realize whether you really need to work on yourself and change your attitude towards money or not.
Recognize your desire to save
Don’t be ashamed of it and don’t hide it from yourself. Try to implement it not at the expense of small underpayments here and there, but at the expense of more rational budget planning, bulk purchases of products and energy savings. Thus, the quality (greed), which is not very approved in the Russian system of values, will turn into a limitation of expenses, an element of a respectable ecological approach to life.
Treat money like a tool
Money is the tool of modern society. We do not condemn the scanner, calculator, compass or phone and use them as needed. Try to treat cash the same way.