Money is to living as air is to life.  Both are necessary; both are to a degree taken for granted.  Without air we die; without money it is very difficult to achieve anything.  Money is a constant presence in our daily living.  Few are the days when we don’t handle money in one form or another.

On the other side of the coin, much of our lives are spent earning the money to pay for the living that we want.  Money is the means that we use to barter.  It’s a mechanism that we have deemed in this civilisation will be the oil that makes the markets work.  Money is the mechanism to put a cost and a value on everything, including our time.  Money is also a store of wealth; having money enables us to go and do things and buy things.  Not having money prohibits us from doing what we want to do.

On the one hand money is a straight forward numbers game – money in equals money out is a balanced budget.  Expenditure exceeding income must result in debt whereas income exceeding expenditure results in savings and an increase in wealth.  On the other hand, money is a deeply psychological and emotional factor in our lives.  Money can cause huge pain but conversely money itself doesn’t necessarily provide much pleasure.  Many of our decisions in life are coloured and influenced by our attitude to money and our attitude to money itself is often formed by our childhood experiences as well as the bombardment of messages that we get from advertising, the media and other people.