Think about it, most people can do £1 + £1 = £2 and get the right answer, even if they need to use their fingers or a calculator. That’s all there is to money.
Sure, you might need to scale it up a bit, but money doesn’t suddenly become something different part of the way through, £1 is always £1. But people! If you have one person, and add another person, what have you got? You might have a happy couple, a fight, the cure for cancer, a weapon of mass destruction – who knows?
Some people will tell you that money is really complicated. They’ll talk about taxes and money supply figures and options etc. But those are not complications of money. They are complications of people.
People dealing with money invent all sorts of ways to think about it. Thinking is a human activity. The money remains just money – it’s the representation of it, the meaning it has for us, the desire for it, the fear of it, in other words, how we think and feel, that is complicated. And the way we think and feel is about the way we are, not about the way the money is.
I’ve been a financial advisor, and I’m now a Chartered Psychologist. I used to deal with people’s money. Now I deal with the people themselves. Trust me on this, the people are far more complicated than the money ever was!
