Is $1 Worth $1?

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The short answer is no. It's not. What a dollar is worth depends on who you give it to. Because what determines its real value is what someone does with it. And this isn't just about how they might save it. It's about how they might spend it too. $1 looks the same to all of us. On the surface, its face value is constant and well defined. But it's the intrinsic value which is most important to consider, here. For a lot of people, $1 is worth exactly that. When they get it, they spend all of it. But to someone else a dollar might be worth more depending on whether or not they spend some of it and save some of it, and what those savings generate depending on where they put it. Two people could, for example, have exactly the same items in their shopping cart when they buy groceries, but the cost could be entirely different based on where one went to get them. Another person might spend 75 cents and save the quarter, and what that quarter generates adds to the value of their dollar. For other people a dollar is worth much less. Some people spend more than the dollar when they use credit, for example. As I have said many times, money is not about actual money. It's about the mindset, and how we think about it, and how we value it in our minds. An investor sees an opportunity to grow it. A spender sees a new pair of shoes. A person gains wealth not through big paychecks and handfuls of cash. They gain it through understanding the real value of money. And just like a very poor person earning a low wage can become wealthy, a person who makes a lot of money can become poor. Because again, it depends more on how money is treated and thought about than how much is actually in the bank. What's a dollar worth to you?