Why aren’t today's youngsters interested in understanding money?

Betrayal (n): In its most heinous form, when an Arts major switches courses to study Finance. 

I think my friends overreacted. It was hardly like Arts and Commerce were enemy camps. The dirge got even more amusing when they were sure that the dark side was getting stronger. But then again, there was this burning question: Why aren’t people interested in money?

A lot of us take courses like Media and Arts to be passionate about work; lashing out like rebellious teenagers against the rather parental aura that money seems to have. Later working for a pittance, from 10 am to unfixed (anything’s better than nine-to-five), money should have become a criteria in retrospect. But there’s nothing that a 70% off at Zara and Instagram filters cannot rectify.

In a forward society where morals are outdated, people seem surprisingly moralistic about money. Like an ex you’re obsessed about hating, one might not want money but another having more than their share is outrageous. When Freud proposed defense mechanisms, he couldn’t have fathomed its future value, especially when applied to money. Rationalization is back in a whole different avatar, sitting at a bench in a bank, disdainfully looking at this month’s statement. Fantasy walks by barely towing the credit limit,  and while Regression starts crying and Sublimation calls her mother, Projection laughs at all of them. 

‘Happiness’ seems to be archetypal to income; because you have to choose one - 19th century essential reading has told us this. Also, the socialist glint in advice from the yesteryears has made this divide a practicality we live with. Some of us decide to choose professions that will guarantee money, probably fueled by a similar practicality? Be sensible because it’s better to cry in a Rolls Royce than on a cycle.

Acquiring is easier than earning, and we come to a screeching halt at the glass wall that bounds the class we’ve come to be born in. Yet, some of us stand there with a sledgehammer, only to knock - building wealth through association. Notice amongst us, people who stand seeing money as an eventual goal to reach and shoulders that’ll carry them there. Inheritance slash marriage. 

There is another kind of us who love money like a formless Greek goddess, something bigger and more beautiful than what we see around us. We know we want it, and are almost sure we can’t get it right now. We daydream a map to this far-flung paradise of an Ivy League MBA, a job in America, bank accounts in the Caribbean, a beautiful face… The nebulousness of the situation almost makes money even more romantic.

I think I should go back and change the title. It’s not that people aren’t interested in money; in fact, they seem all too interested in it like it’s a permanent solid state, a reason to do even rebel and not do. We’re obsessed with it like it’s something bigger than us, a formless structure that amasses in quantities akin to termites, not something that could be built penny by penny - a little investment, a little research, a truth probably more shattering than what hit your seven-year-old self when you saw a parent stuffing the stocking on Christmas Eve. 

Funnily enough, money isn’t as big as we make it out to be. It doesn’t kill passions, create monsters, build families, make junkies, ruin education, create superiority, or change you. For a person who lives vicariously and simultaneously in all the observations made above, this is more of a note to self. 

Stay tuned; we have just broken the mantle that finance was sitting so proudly on, the pieces are on their way. 

When she isn’t running away, Pranika is studying Finance and losing her heart to start-ups.  Having studied in Bombay Dubai and Edinburgh, her life is constant search for balance between her love for all things non-finance and her degree.