Life Matters Blog | Money Matters, Life Matters

Money Matters: Why is Money an Emotionally Charged Topic?

Today’s post is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I find it interesting that, like many taboo topics, discussions about money can get heated rather quickly. The topic of money can be very emotionally charged.

When explaining money to my kids, I tell them it’s just paper and metal we exchange for the things we need and want. People may think my description of money is disrespectful and that we need to treat money as the precious commodity it is. For me, this is where the problems start.

After spending far too much time thinking about money, I wanted to get to the heart of the matter: Why did thinking or talking about money make me feel so emotional? And when I say emotional, I don’t mean I was overwhelmed with happiness. I felt a range of things, but none of them were happy: anger, sadness, despair.

Given that I know I’m not the only person to feel this way, I started researching why money makes me feel like this, so I could turn those feelings around. To my great shock, there wasn’t a lot of information about our emotional connection to money. Perhaps I’m the only one that feels this way, or maybe I was entering the wrong key terms into the search bar, but I refused to let the subject drop.