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Villages that gained a reputation for producing really good wine, olive oil or ceramics discovered that it was worth their while to specialise nearly exclusively in that product and trade it with other settlements for all the other goods they needed. This made a lot of sense. Climates and soils differ, so why drink mediocre wine from your backyard if you can buy a smoother variety from a place whose soil and climate is much better suited to grape vines? If the clay in your backyard makes stronger and prettier pots, then you can make an exchange. Furthermore, full-time specialist vintners and potters, not to mention doctors and lawyers, can hone their expertise to the benefit of all. But specialisation created a problem - how do you manage the exchange of goods between the specialists?

Many blood donors take pleasure from the idea of giving blood, but when they are offered a monetary sum for it, the shift from contribution to transaction ruins the pleasure, while the sum being offered isn't enough to make up for it, let alone the time and pain of having a needle stuck into one's arm.

Now the thing about virtual currency and these IOUs is that to work they need a great deal of ... faith. Mr Nabuk had to believe - he must have had faith - in the willingness and capacity of the controllers of the granary to give him the grain he was owed once it was produced. And others must have believed that too before accepting Mr Nabuk's shell-IOUs in exchange for oil or salt or in order to help him build his hut. This is the origin of the word 'credit': it comes from the Latin credere, which means 'to believe'.

Remember that the only purpose of money is to get you what you want, so think hard about what you value and put it above money.

A thousand dollars. Extra. That I did not immediately need. It took weeks for me to come to terms with this fact, but as I did, I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money.

It's interesting that wealth tends to skip a generation. Overwhelming abundance often leads to a lackadaisical mentality, which brings about a sedentary lifestyle. Children of the wealthy are especially susceptible. They weren't the ones who developed the discipline and character to create the wealth in the first place, so it makes sense that they may not have the same sense of value for wealth or understand what's necessary to keep it. We frequently see this entitlement mentality in children of royalty, movie stars, and corporate executives--and to a lesser degree, in children and adults everywhere.

It's senseless to have making money as your goal as money has no intrinsic value--its value comes from what it can buy, and it can't buy everything. It's smarter to start with what you really want, which are your real goals, and then work back to what you need to attain them. Money will be one of the things you need, but it's not the only one and certainly not the most important one once you get past having the amount you need to get what you really want.

Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable While you're being miserable. ~ Clare Boothe Luce

Each of us has an individualized perception of the purposes of money, and we have various emotions associated with spending it. Some of us have a spending orientation. We feel good about ourselves when we are spending money. Others have a saving and investing perspective. We feel good about ourselves when we are saving money and investing it wisely.

Perhaps it is one secret of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, they know that history is inflationary, and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard.

Money isn't attracted to selfish people. It is attracted to businesses that solve problems. It's attracted to people who fill needs and add value. Solve needs massively and money massively attracts. The amount of money in your life is merely a reflection to the amount of value you have given to others.

And it seems that the same goes for other nations. In the first episode of the US podcast 'Bad with money', comedian Gaby Dunn approaches some young people in a coffee shop in LA and asks them what their favourite sexual position is. Without much hesitation one says 'Reverse cowgirl.' Gaby then asks how much money is in her bank account, and she says: 'Wow, yeah, I don't want to answer that one!' Too personal.

the reality is that money per se is never the real problem or solution. If there are any issues with money, it is down to how we approach it, think about it and handle it day to day. It should go without saying that people who think negatively about money, or dislike thinking about it so much that they ignore it, are more likely to be plagued by financial problems. Whereas those who feel more relaxed about money and that it is in their control are more likely to be successful in any endeavour to increase the amount they own.

'The love of money as a possession ... will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.'