"Will Work For Food"
by Wray Herbert
Article reprinted with permission from Mr. Herbert's insightful blog We're Only Human...
The words are often scrawled on a piece of cardboard and always painful to read, because they remind us of life’s fragility. They also pluck a deep chord in our psyche, because they reduce life to our most fundamental needs. After all, the sentiment behind those poignant words can be traced all the way back to the African savannahs, to a time when our earliest ancestors did indeed do just that. In the eons before minimum wages and credit cards and 401-Ks, the closest thing to earnings and savings was bounty from the hunt. Food was more than nourishment; it was an asset.
Given this deep and ancient connection, it’s not implausible to think that food and money might still be tightly intertwined in our psychology, even deep-wired in our neurons. And in fact, behavioral scientists are very interested in the links between scarcity and hunger and gluttony on the one hand, and frugality and charity and stinginess on the other. Put simply: Could comfort food translate into feelings of financial security? Might there be a link between satiety and generosity? Can we literally be hungry for money?
Continue reading "Will Work For Food: The Primal Connection Between Food and Personal Finance"
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Or, Best and worst decisions with a financial imapct for 2006
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