The recession is teaching us all some hard new lessons about respecting money.

We all know that the love of money is the root of all evil. Yet we think of it as unclean:

o We call it filthy lucre,

o Too much of it means you are stinking rich

o Too little and you are dirt poor.

We don’t talk about money openly and we treat it as if it is a vulgar subject. We routinely ask strangers what they do for a living, but would never dream of asking how much they earn. And that applies equally to family and close friends.

It’s not always like that

Some cultures feel differently about money. When I tell people that I write about money for a living, it evokes little interest and they don’t pursue the conversation. I wonder if it would be the same if I said I was a sports or travel or food writer.

Now there’s a change

The recession has brought the subject of money out into the open and is making us love the stuff more than we did before. Most of us now believe that money is more important than it was prior to the recession. This thinking is also reducing how we value possessions. Money is a great tool and also a measure of value and a form of exchange. It buys food and clothes for us and our families; it keeps a roof over our heads, pays our bills and if we’re lucky, buys a few treats as well. So why is it so notoriously hard to earn and unbelievably easy to spend?

A lesson from the recession

Along comes a recession and changes our attitudes towards money. It teaches us to look after it and how to use it and invest it wisely. If we weren’t caught by the recession or by investing in one of the huge money frauds, we know how lucky or clever we were compared to others.

Charity keeps going

Surprisingly, research shows that people are maintaining their charitable donations and are helping family in these difficult times. It is a fact that charitable donations in the US doubled after the 1930s Great Depression because people witnessed the trauma of poverty.

More money lessons

One of the tough lessons of the recession is that of staying out of debt. Moreover, it is teaching us that saving money is good, and borrowing too much is dangerous.

We will always feel funny about money but until somebody develops an entirely different social structure, or we return to a barter system, we just have to learn to live with money. We should learn to love it, not because it’s money but for what it can do for us if we use it properly.

One of these days, man should start work on evolving a new financial system. That’s probably got about the same chance of success as developing a substitute for water!