Money Madness and Financial Freedom

Martha Wilson is Canadian correspondent for the Japan Times (Tokyo) and
a Toronto-based freelance editor and writer.

Money Madness and Financial Freedom, which examines “our psychological
relationship to money,” tackles such topics as “Money Magic”
(“Early coins usually bore the image of the

king ... [and] the person with money is still treated like a king”)
and “Major Money Meanings.” The latter include Money as the Supreme
Good (“Many people view money as the most desirable object in their
lives”), Money as Anxiety (“Such people also report spending money
to make themselves feel better and report feeling anxious when they
don’t have enough money”), Money as Power-Prestige (“They are very
competitive, want to be seen as successful, and admit to using money to
impress and influence other people”), and so forth. This is all pretty
obvious, though Benner has created a confusing number of categories.

Next Benner addresses our irrationality about money, especially as seen
in figures of speech. Here we descend into total silliness. “Money as
Food” comments on the significance of “bread,” “dough,”
“clams,” and “gravy.” “Money as Excrement” couples
irritating simplicity with truly stomach-churning detail. Benner
describes how children progress from playing with feces to playing with
mud, sand, pebbles, bottle caps, and finally coins. Our obsession with
money, he concludes triumphantly, is a toilet-training issue.

In Part 3 Benner takes on money-management issues. Work, we learn, can
be a source of identity and status, as well as income (surprise).
“Financial Freedom” does offer some good thoughts on instilling
healthy financial attitudes in our children.

This book—the byproduct of many tediously long questionnaires—is
what you would get if your hobby were phoning up strangers to plot their
spending styles on persnickety graphs in your notebook. Almost all of it
is common sense; little is useful. If you want to remind yourself that
money is not what life is all about, Lewis Lapham says it more
thoughtfully every month in the pages of Harper’s.