Generational modifications in money

I asked one of my cousins who is five years old – where does money come from? She replied, from the ATM. This is a too obvious an answer because kids these days hardly get to see lumps of notes at home, or inside wallets. People have stopped conducting transactions in physical cash as electronic cash offers way more advantages in the digital world that we are in today. We do not know what a thousand rupee note looks or feels like. It is just a number.

Technology has certainly made our life easy. We get to live in a more relaxed environment than before. We hardly go to the bank to transfer money or to e-sevas to pay our bills. One touch and everything is done in the blink of an eye. Online banking, mobile banking, wallets and related applications make our lives terribly simple and relegate paper money into the background. Sometimes I feel that my generation does not value money like the previous generations did. “If you can transfer money with the click of a button, where is the value?” Counting cash makes you reminisce over the hard work it took to earn the money, but since we only transact virtually we miss out on a tangible relationship with the money, and we end up spending it without giving a serious thought.

Few years ago, taking a loan or being indebted to someone was considered a bad sign. Now people hardly live without a credit card or a personal loan. Taking loan for a purpose is valid but I am still sceptical about credit cards. (Credit cards allow us to purchase expensive merchandise by giving us an option to divide the payments into monthly instalments charging some amount of interest). Undoubtedly, it increases our purchasing power but how far this power is necessary is questionable.

This is my memory of money - The clinking of coins in the piggy bank was one of the happiest achievements of children in my generation. It used to take years to fill the piggy banks. For today’s children it’s not the coins that they get to put in, but notes which would usually contain a three digit number.

These days we see many browsing every available option to invest and grow money — from stocks to mutual funds to what not. Earlier people used to invest only in banks. “Why the risk? You should always play safe with money,” – an old pensioner suggests.

So the way we play with money has changed and it’s both good and bad.