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With so much of our lives everyday dedicated to the collection of money it is important to occasionally stop and think about what money is to us. This answer is different to every strata of society and varies from person to person in those strata. This means that the definition of money to you is likely not the same definition of money as it is to someone else. This understanding is important not only because it will allow you to make smarter decisions in regard to your own money but allow you to better understand the decisions others make for money.

At the first step of the ladder you find money being used for its most original purpose, that of barter. Replacing the trading of one good for another money has become the most basic of all trades. It is at this level that the poorest of the poor live. Men, women and children who are rarely if ever seen in America. These people work ten or twelve hours a day for what most Americans would consider pocket change and to these people money can only be defined as food or more basically survival.

Moving up the ladder you enter the find yourself in factories, fast food restaurants and anywhere else where an honest hours work will get you an honest hours pay. At this level of society it is usually physical labor over a period of time which earns a man money and so money at this level can be defined as stored work over a period of time. So for a man who works for ten dollars an hour a ten dollar bill is literally an hour of his life.

Next you move to the level of the skilled worker. At this point the general payment is that of a salary that is the same no matter the number of hours worked. These people can not be said to be trading hours for any set amount of money, but instead are trading in skills that they have learned, so at this level money can be said to be a representation of the value of your skill. It is at this level of society that we first begin to see the idea of money as a symbol of importance.

Next we go to the successful. Be they entrepreneurs are those who have risen through the ranks of corporate ladders they have began to move past the need for money in order to buy those things that they need or want and began to fall into the category of money as power or freedom. This choice is one that each person must make for themselves and is at the heart of many discussions of money. Those who see money as power often want more striving their whole lives for the ability to control the world around them. Those who

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