Money has meaning

- What does money mean to you? That simple question probably prompted a lightning fast association. Some people might flash on happiness or a burden. Even before there's a word, there might have been a feeling, somewhere between excitement and uh-oh. On one level, money is a numerical tool that provides a fluid means of exchange and storing value. But money also taps into our lives and culture on multiple levels, from family dynamics to social norms, from our sense of survival to our need for belonging. Money means far more than just rational decisions about dollars and cents. For example, have you ever known someone who's really tight with a dollar? I'm not talking about someone who has to be careful to make their income stretch. I'm talking about a person who scrimps beyond any financial reason. This person may frustrate those around them when they balk at paying their fair share, or take extreme efforts to do something on the cheap. I once met with a woman who was so worried about having enough money in the future that she would live on the barest minimum while socking away every dollar she could. Even when she lost her job and was living on unemployment, she continued to try to save. When she was unable to manage, she asked her parents for help. She came to me because she was terrified they would stop sending her money if they learned how much she had just sitting in the bank. For her, the idea of having to withdraw any money from savings, even to keep a roof over her head, flooded her with panic. Is this behavior rational? Most of us would agree that it's not. But sometimes it's hard to see when a basic belief about money, like the benefit of saving for the future, is shaped by our emotional needs instead of a clear-eyed assessment of the facts. Let's look at the ways in which money has meaning beyond just the numbers. The ways your financial life reflects your expectations of how someone like me should think about and use money. The ways that money determines the groups you belong to, reinforces your important relationships, or causes you to be excluded. The ways you feel prepared or not prepared to direct money and assert your right to be in charge. The ways that money protects you from harm or future need. The ways that money itself is a source of fear, degradation, or shame. So where do these associations come from? In general, meaning gets attached to money in two ways. One is through our previous experiences, messages, and relationships. What we see and learn as children has an especially profound effect on how we think about and use money as adults. The other way is simply in effect of how our brains work. In his book, "Thinking Fast and Slow," psychologist Daniel Kahneman outlines how mental tasks can be thought of as falling within one of two systems. System one, our fast system, is basically our automatic pilot. It's the way we engage the world. System one senses danger, perceives patterns, and makes inferences based on certain cognitive shortcuts called heuristics. This system is fast because it uses our past experiences to make predictions about what to expect in the here and now. If you've ever felt in your gut for example that five dollars is an obscene price to pay for a slice of pizza, you're not checking your bank balance or assessing the cost per ingredient to make that decision. That reaction is just system one quickly skimming through your pizza history and coming up with a handy belief about what one should pay for a slice. Our second system, system two, is activated when a task requires specific attention and mental effort, such as reading a textbook or following directions to an unfamiliar destination. You might think that most of our financial choices would be handled by system two, but, think again. Unless we're performing a complex evaluation or trying to do something different with our money, system one will quickly use meaning as a way to help navigate the volume of simple decisions we face each day. I want to be clear that these associations with money are completely natural and the goal here is not to strip them away. Instead, we begin by appreciating that while they help us to act efficiently, sometimes they can be obstacles to the life we want, like the woman in my earlier example who realized that her fear of being unprepared for the future hurt her ability to deal with the challenges today. Simply bringing awareness is always the first step.