Money is important and this importance in our everyday lives can’t be overstated. From paying for services rendered to receiving payment for a service you rendered, or maybe even tips and privileges such as wages and handouts.

Money in one way or the other is designed to flow, through credits and debits. Yet either way, you choose to handle money, you will agree that money is designed to spend less and less time with you and your bank account. There’s a popular saying that money enters slowly but vanishes very quickly.

To better understand this, I am going to define money in relation to expenses. Money is a medium of exchange. It is a powerful tool that can help us to live well and have an abundance of what we desire. To, however, get what we want, we have to spend money. Money then is a simple exchange of value with currency.

Money is a major player in the way we live our lives and interact with our environment. But money is not everything, and money will not buy you happiness I know.

But there are some simple facts about money; without money, we can not put food on the table and we cannot cater to the need of others, for example, those in need of food, shelter, clothing and more, even if we have the desire to do so.

Money being a major player in our lives also means we have to learn to play to its tunes at times. Money makes the world go round remember? The rich will tell you money isn’t really important but do not be deceived, money issues are real and it is known to be a major cause of divorce and anxiety in the world we live in today.

A survey carried out by ING International found that more than one in four households have no emergency savings pot.
About 27 percent of people in the UK were quoted as saying they have no savings they can quickly access if needed, excluding pensions and insurance policies.

A survey commissioned by GoCompare also found that nearly 60 percent of people have less than £1,000 of savings.

Majority of Britons consider £1,200 the right amount to keep in their bank account for unexpected expenses but still, it is surprising that a lot of people have far less than this amount in savings.

These statistics surprise me. Why? Because we live in the best of time in the history of mankind. The wealth available now is far more than any time in history. The number of overnight successes is also at an all-time high. Thanks to the role of technology, social media, and people’s general open-minded approach to new ideas.

It is then a concern to me that the abundance of money being made available to younger generations is being spent to fund expensive lifestyle instead of investing it to create wealth. It is, however, all good now as not much responsibility is attached to the teenage years and early adult years. But there is no denying that an investment made early stands a better chance of paying dividends quicker than that started later.

I am in my early 40s, I see a lot of people of my generation that do not have plans for retirement, and it is even worse in generations coming behind us. I like to think this is as a result of the example we are setting for them.

Remember I initially stated that money was designed to spend less and less time with you and your bank account? New smartphones, new smart TVs, expensive holidays, expensive luxury cars, designer clothes, and shoes, as well as parties,  are some of the things people are spending money on. These people look rich when you see them but many are actually poor.

If they lose their job, a lot of this people do not have enough money to sustain for 3 months while still maintaining the same lifestyle they have now. It is sad really.

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying compromise on your quality of living. What I am saying is stop spending money on unnecessary things and delay gratification. Think about saving money now and build wealth for the future. Now is the best time to save not tomorrow.

I am not saying do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy yourself, live well but have a balance between enjoyment and saving for the future, compromise. Remember in your old age you will not have the strength to work, what you save and invest in as a seed will grow and you will profit from it later on.

Money is the major source of anxiety and the biggest source of stress for a lot of people. Money is crucial in our day to day activities yet a lot of people feel very uncomfortable when it comes to discussing the subject of money. A lot of people are worried about their personal finances but they are not interested in educating themselves about money.

If not for any other thing, the peace of mind that comes from being a saver and investor should make people embrace the habit of saving money. A research conducted by Lloyds shows that saving is good for mental health. Savers are likely to be happier than no-savers.

Embrace these 3 tips and you will be able to save more money.

1. Savings Automation

A lot of people get cut up in over-analyzing how to save money. It is not rocket science, if you are struggling with saving money, try this. Calculate 10% of your income and set up a standing order of 10% of your income to go to a savings account. 10% is the minimum you should consider if you can afford an amount greater than 10% you should consider saving more than 10%.

For example, if you earn £2000 after tax, 10% of £2000 is £200. The good thing is you even stand to gain more by saving. If you learn about investing and start investing the money, compounding interest could transform the money to a large sum of money in the future.

This is related to the concept of paying yourself first which come from the book The Richest Man in Babylon. A lot of people do not pay themselves which is surprising. They are happy to pay everyone else but always forget to pay themselves.

This concept sounds so simple but only a few people do it.

See, you can start where you are, it doesn’t matter how old you are or how much you earn. If you are a young person that is just starting a career, you will benefit a lot from this and you will do yourself a huge favor if you can adopt this concept of paying yourself first and automating this process.

The interesting thing about this is that you can easily force yourself to believe that your income is £1800 instead of £2000. This is based on the example above. After you have been doing this for a while, you should automatically be having your budget on £1800 instead of £2000.

It is not complicated. From every 10 coins you earn, before you pay for the internet, mortgage/rent, food, clothes etc. pay yourself 1 coin first.

2. Embrace Minimalism

Minimalism comes in various forms. Becoming a minimalist does not mean you give up your car, TV or house. Think about having fewer things. Embracing minimalist will help you to become more of a creator rather than a consumer.

We now live in a world that people live high consumption lifestyle and this lifestyle is digging a big hole in their finances.

A tablet is a bigger version of a mobile phone and unless it helps improve your productivity, it shouldn’t be needed. If you cannot afford a tablet why do you have to buy it on credit just because it is what is in vogue? Do you really need 40 pairs of shoes? A brand new car is nice but do you need a functional car that will take you from A to B or a new car you will need to buy on credit and will leave you playing catch-up in your finances?

Do not get me wrong on cars, if you can afford it why not. But I have seen a lot of people buy things they cannot afford to impress their family and circle of friends. It is a consumption age that we are now living in. The wealthy are acting poor and the poor are acting rich.

When you incorporate minimalism into your life you will be able to focus on necessary and important things rather than superfluous. Minimalism will help you to consume less and focus on creating things as well as impact your world for good.

I like the definition of minimalist on www.theminimalist.com. Minimalism is a tool to help get rid of life’s excess in favour of more important things in order to can find happiness, fulfilment, and freedom.

The minimalist approach will help you to have a different perspective on life and you will be able to separate need from want. When you are able to separate need from want then you will spend less and save more and this will help your happiness.

3. Avoid Impulse Buy

We all have a lot of things inside our house or in the garage that we have never used since we bought them. These are things we bought without any plan in advance before we purchased them. This is what impulse buy is all about.

An impulse buy is buying based on your emotions and feelings without planning or thought of whether you actually have a need for that particular thing. Retailers are very good with the tactics that they deploy in the promotional messages which end up making us purchase what we do not have a need for.

The National Employment Savings Trust’s survey found that people in Britain spend more than £1 billion a year on impulse buys, with five percent of those admitting to spending on unnecessary purchases, wasting more than £500 in the process.

A lot of purchases big or small purchase like clothing, gadgets, home appliances could lead to financial difficulties and feeling of disappointment.

The general rule of thumb to tackle impulse buy is to give yourself a cooling off time. For big purchases usually, 30 days is a good time to have a think whether you really need that thing. During this period, you need to be real and ask yourself about what value will this appliance or gadget add to your life.

During the 30 days ask yourself, do I really need this gadget? Can I afford it? If I convert the cost of the gadget to time (hours), does it make sense for me to work for the number of hours just to buy this gadget?

Chances are you will realize that you don’t need the gadget or if you need it the price could have gone down and you will be buying it at a cheaper price.

When it comes to small purchases, give yourself 24 hours to think about it. After 24 hours you might have forgotten about it and this is a good indication that it is not as important as it seemed after all.

Another tip is to write down what you want to buy in the supermarket beforehand. And, you need to try as much as possible to stick to what you have written down.

When you embrace these three things you will be able to save more, build wealth and live in abundance.

The earlier you start investing part of your income the greater chance you have of building wealth. The simple fact is that we are creatures of habits and we are what we repeatedly do. Get into the habit of saving and investment as early as you can. The best time to start was yesterday and the second best time to start is now. Start now

Financial Independence is a subject that I came across recently and I have taken some time to understand what it really means and entails in the last one year. I have also read a few books relating to money management and discipline to further educate me on financial independence.

A study performed by the Royal Society of Art found out that seven out of ten workers in the United Kingdom are “chronically broke”. This is a very shocking statistics! However, if you don’t do your research, you will never know, basically because we are all so good at hiding our financial woes.

What Is Financial Independence?

Financial independence means reaching a level at which you have adequate time to be able to do things that make you happy and whilst doing these things you do not have to worry about money. To put this in simpler words, you are financially independent when you have enough money to finance the same lifestyle you have currently without a regular job.

In the culture I grew up in, the money subject is an uncomfortable one which a lot of people try to avoid.

When the subject of money comes up in a conversation, many people end up quoting verses and give various reasons as to why money doesn’t really matter to them. The most popular is a verse from the bible which states that “… money is the root of all evils”. This is the bible being quoted wrongly.

I have to say I am not yet financially independent as at the time of writing this but I am actively working towards being financially independent.

Here is a question to ask yourself, “If I do not go to the job I currently do for six months or one year, will I be able to pay for my mortgage or rent, utility bills, clothing, car finance, fuel, insurance, entertainment, fend for myself and my family, as well as put food on the table?”

If your answer is no then you are not financially independent.

Some people mistake earning a high salary for financial independence. The fact is it does not matter how much you are earning, if you are not financially literate you will struggle to achieve financial independence. It is not about how much money you earn but how much money you can keep. How much of that money you can make work for you.

You can ask how I know earning a high salary does not equate to financial independence. Well, a lot of people earn a high salary but at the same time, they have a lot of outgoings, for example, mortgage, luxurious cars on a high repayment plan, expensive holidays and especially tax!. Although they are on high salary but the rate at which the money is spent on bills will always leave them waiting for the next paycheck in order to go through the same cycle ‘over and over’ again.

A good example is the case of celebrities who are creative and earn a lot of money from their talent exploit, a lot of them end up going bankrupt quickly because they do not have financial advisers who suggest to them how to manage their money and still live a fancy lifestyle. A lot of them even lack money management skills.

The question I asked myself when I started my journey towards becoming financially independent last year was; “How can I gain financial independence as quickly as possible?”

In order to achieve anything in life, it is important to have a number of set goals with actionable plans to make them a reality.

Greg Reid once said “A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.” This is a very powerful quote which I have started applying in my daily life.

There is no point in having a goal without a plan in place to help you achieve it. Do not be like a sluggard that says “one day I will be rich, one day I will lose weight”. If it is not backed by an actionable plan it ends up as a mere dream.

Steps to Financial Independence

Here is a list of steps I think can guide a person to financial independence:

1. Know where your money is going.

Call this budgeting or any financial term you want to use. The truth remains that if you do not know where your hard-earned money is going you can never achieve financial independence. A lot of people are scared of looking at their bank statement or even reluctant to open any money related letter that comes in the post, it is better to face your fear and deal with any financial issues before they get out of hand. That said, I do not study my bank account with hawkeyed vision but I most definitely know where my money goes when I get paid.

It is not the responsibility of the bank to check your bank statement for errors that might have come from the wrong deduction in bills or some subscription you thought you cancelled but the subscription fee is still being deducted from your bank account each month. That is your job. You should stay on top of and up to date with your finances.

2. Spend less than you earn.

An old adage says “cut your coat according to your size”, in actual fact that is wrong. I will say cut your coat according to your cloth. You cannot cut your coat according to the cloth you do not have, so it makes more logical sense to cut your coat according to the cloth you have not your size.

This quote really comes into play here. Spending less than you earn is not rocket science. For example, your current monthly income is £1000; if you do not have any other means to earn more, then you need to spend less than the £1000 you get paid each month.

Save up for things you want instead of buying it on credit card. Do not do an impulse buy and before you buy anything, shop around for discount, you might perhaps be able to get it cheaper somewhere else. If you do not have a lot of money and you are too busy shopping around, I do not think you can achieve financial independence. Whatever you cannot afford please do not buy.

If you are already struggling with your personal finances, do you really need that sky or satellite subscription? You can easily watch Freeview TV or instead spend your time educating yourself on things that will help your personal development and even your finances.

Do you need that gym membership? Go for a run instead, it is cheaper and you will get to enjoy the free natural air.

A lot of people go into debt chasing want when they already have what they need. Here is another statistic for you to ponder upon: ‘The number of motor finance agreements for new and used cars had grown from around 1.2 million in 2008 to around 2.3 million in 2017’

Is it really necessary to drive the latest car? I still drive a very old car and as long as it can take me from A to B without breaking down all the time, I do not really care what it looks like. A lot of people get into debt showing off and impressing their family and friends.

3. Increase your income

It was not until I celebrated my big ‘Four 0’ that I realized that I could increase my income outside my normal day job.

Do not get me wrong, you can still increase your income in your normal job. Maybe this is a topic for another day but the following are my tips to increase your income;

• Negotiate for a pay rise from your employer.
• Improve your skills or add more skills to your skillset and look for another job.
• Change career.
• Start a business, this one is my favourite and this is what I am doing at the moment.

4. Saving And Investment.

I will write in detail about this another time but this is the real deal if you want to actually be financially independent.

One of my earlier points stated the need to spend less than you earn if your expenses are less than your income, what do you do with the leftover? The answer is simple, you save and invest what you have leftover.

A study commissioned by Skipton Building Society shows that a quarter of the British population has no savings. The sky-high monthly outgoings and attempts to clear the substantial debt before putting money away regularly emerged as the main reasons.

Saving is one part of the equation and investment is the other part. It depends on what you are saving for but it is important to put some money away to look after those unfortunate life occurrences.

I remember an incident that happened a few years ago, a strong wind took off some of the ridge tiles on the roof of our house, and the cost to fix it based on insurance valuation was around £304. But unfortunately, our excess was £300; this means the insurance company was only going to pay us £4. Would it have been worth it to claim from the insurance company? We decided not to claim and pay for the repair ourselves. This is a simple example of life’s unfortunate occurrences.

If your goal is to be financially independent, you need to learn about investing. Investment simply means that you put your money where it can work for you even while you are sleeping.

There are lots of passive investments which means you don’t have to do much, the common example is stock and shares, property could be passive as well if you have a management company looking after it for you.

An investment could be risky and it usually depends on your risk tolerance. It is always better to seek the advice of experts before you carry out any investment. In investment, there is no guarantee that your money will grow. Investment is still a better way to grow your money than savings if it is done the right way and for a sustained period of time.

Financial institutions are not really going to help you grow your money in a savings account. Do not get me wrong on this; you need to put some money where you can reach it when life’s unfortunate situations happen. And the rest need to be invested in shares, bonds etc.

Savings account could pay you interest of around 2.5% annually while investment in stock and shares historically could return up to 7% and even better, a property could earn you up to 12% annually.

I hope you have been able to find value in this post. If you like this post, please click on the like button and also share it with your friends and family.

Money: the center of our madness as humans, the reason why we run helter-skelter all day long and at times even night. The reason why we must find purpose and work towards making that purpose the best it can be. As humans, whether you agree or not, we are money driven.

But this generalized madness has to have a pattern, or is there no pattern to this madness? Read on to better understand the pattern to this madness.

A lot has been said about money and its concept. The argument will probably go on for generations to come. But should there really be an argument about it? What I think is that the concept of money and its psychology is just perspective, at the end of the day we are all saying the same thing. This has been said a lot of times. I will say it again here.

Money above all else is leverage. Money in terms of psychology can then be referred to as a tool that can be leveraged to achieve our needs and wants. It is a tool that can be leveraged to achieve freedom. It offers security and peace of mind. No doubt money can also bring you happiness by helping to tick lists off your bucket list.

Look at it this way, it’s the end of the month and you have just been paid your salary. After paying all your bills there is little or no money left right? Then you are already immediately looking forward to the next paycheck. It is how the cycle goes.

You are driving an old car and on your way back home in the evening you hear a noise from the car, you managed to get the car home without breakdown. The following day you have to take it to the mechanic workshop to check what is wrong with it.

On getting to the mechanic workshop, the mechanic runs some diagnostics and checks the car. You are then told it will cost you in the region of £700 to fix the car and get it to proper working condition and it needs to be fixed as soon as possible. Failure to do so means you risk the car breaking down on the road and it will cause more damage which will cost more money to fix.

If you have enough money saved for emergency or you have car insurance, you won’t have to worry too much. But let’s say you do not have any money saved you will have to resolve to the use of credit card or another form of borrowing. This is what I mean about money offering you security against unfortunate occurrences.

There is an adage in my mother tongue; here I am talking about the Yoruba language. “A janilaya bi ailowolowo, ailowolowo ohun gan ni baba ijaya (nothing frightens like lack of money, lack of money is the mother of all frights)”. This Yoruba adage is talking about having money to look after important necessities of life without having to panic to meet you and your family’s needs.

I have identified 6 things you need to know about money and I hope it will help you have a better understanding of the psychology of money.

Money Is Attracted By Idea

One idea can make you wealthy. Look, I am not talking about wealth in terms of health or relationship. I am talking about wealth in terms of money.

The good thing is that we all have ideas. Actually, an idea is very cheap. But your idea is worthless until you take action and turn it to money. A lot of wealthy people’s wealth comes from ideas, I am talking about self-made millionaires and billionaires who built their empires from scratch.

There are a lot of wealthy people that I can use as examples that you possibly have heard their name before but the obvious examples are Richard Branson, Bill Gate etc.

The even best thing about ideas is it doesn’t have to be fully original; it just has to be unique in its own way. Because trust me, I don’t believe in original ideas, an idea that strikes you as original is also being thought of by at least 6 million other people. The thing with ideas is that it favors the brave and the most determined.

Richard Branson wasn’t the first to think about hot-air balloons and airplanes, neither was Bill Gates the first to think about the idea of a supercomputer. Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t even the first to think about social media and Steve Jobs wasn’t the first to have an idea of what a super smartphone and computer should be.

But the similarity between them all is that they all had an idea and they all worked hard to see it become a reality. Hastiness in ideas is wealth.

Their businesses that generate millions of dollars today started with an idea, whether original or not.

Money Can Get Bored

The economy of the world operates on money. Money moves fast, and the velocity of money is what makes economies grow and boom. Imagine if everyone keeps money under their mattress and in their wardrobes. The economy of the world will not grow, it will stagnate and there would be no need for banks.

With this concept in mind, we can agree that no one can get rich just by saving their money. I am not asking you to go and invest your money without first learning and inquiring about how investment works. What I am saying is that money must go round for it to be of any real value. You spend money to get money.

Money likes to reproduce; if you do not allow it the freedom to produce babies for you then it will go after people who will give it the freedom to produce babies for them.

Let me put it in another way, money likes to work so it does not get bored. This is the reason why wealthy people are wealthy because they know how to enslave money and make it work hard for them. The idea is simple; you spend money to get money.

Money Is Shy And It Likes To Be Attracted

I saw this concept in Napoleon Hill’s ‘Think and Grow Rich’. Poverty does not need to be attracted because it will come to you itself. Poverty is harsh and bold while money is shy.

If you want to get rich and wealthy, you need to attract money, it will not just come to you because it is one of its nature to be shy. You have to persuade it and know the way to attract it to come to you. Ideas, savings, and investments have proven to be money’s best magnet.

Money Likes Genius And Creativity

I am sure most of you will be thinking, I am not a genius, I’m not even sure if I have a high IQ. Well, I have good news for you, we are all geniuses, you only just need time to understand yourself and discover the area that you are genius in.

Somebody once said, take Tiger Wood in all his glory to the football pitch and see how he will perform. Actually, as at the time of writing this article, Usain Bolt has undergone a trial in Australia and he is now on his way to becoming a professional football player having achieved extraordinary things in athletics. This is an exception but really he is not going to be able to compete at the highest level in the top leagues.

Rumour has it that Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of the biggest social media platforms is a very poor programmer but look at the empire he has gone on to build.

The point here is to discover yourself, master a trade or develop a high-income skill. And thanks to technology, we are lucky to be living in the best time in the history of mankind. You could become an expert in a particular topic in less than a year and monetize your knowledge.

Money is attracted to creative people and the world now only cares about the value you can bring to the marketplace. It doesn’t matter where you’re from in the world, your color, sex, religion or whatever. People only care about the value you are offering them and they will be happy to part with their money for a valuable service or product. It’s just how the world is now.

Money Likes Service

What do I mean by this? This nature of money is biblical and it comes from your ability to serve other people. God loves it if we serve His other children. In the book ‘Business Secrets’ from the Bible, Daniel Lapin talks about the fact that serving others is something that God is really interested in.

Do you know what? The more people you serve the more money you make. Instead of chasing money, think about how you can serve by offering quality products and services that will solve a problem. That’s the easiest way to build a profitable business.

Our hands were designed to create things just like how our legs were designed for transportation. Traditionally, people will create a product with their hands and walk with their legs to the market to offer it to people in the marketplace for a price and they will make money. This is what serving means.

The money that comes from service is the evidence that you have served. It is compensation that you get after you have served.

Money is the consequence of serving other people. This is the spiritual nature of money.

Let me give you one example. Shea butter is mainly found in Africa. If you have taken time to source for shea butter in African and take it to Europe or America. By doing this you have helped take the product from a place that it is in abundance to a place that it is scarce. This is service and the more people that buy it in Europe or America the more monetary reward you will get.

Serving others can come in various forms. If you are ready to serve money will be attracted to you.

Money love people that respect it

There are a lot of people that live a high consumption life. One of the natures of money is that it likes producers more than consumers. That is why you see somebody on a lower salary having more net worth than somebody on a high salary.

Remember it is not how much you earn but how much you keep. A lot of people earn a high salary but they spend it all to finance their lifestyle, their status means that they have to buy expensive houses, cars, and expensive holidays abroad to maintain their status in the society.

Let’s compare a Doctor and a Civil Servant. A Doctor will normally ear more than a civil servant. A medical doctor sometime might think he has to look good in front of his patient, he might put himself under pressure that he needs a big house to match his status, he will go on expensive holidays. On the other hand, people generally will not expect a civil servant to own a big house and expensive cars. If the civil servant respects money, lives within his means, saves and invest the remaining, he can achieve financial independence before a medical Doctor who spends all his income to impress people.

Do not get me wrong here, I have a lot of Doctor Friends who know what they are doing and manage their money well and on the other hand, I know people on low income who do not know what to do with money.

The point here is that money does not care about your profession or status, if you understand it, respect it and treat it well it will stay with you and work for you.

Give an average person £1000. He will go and spend it all on gadgets, shoes, concerts, and cloths. But for people that understand money, they will turn that £1000 to £1010 and £1100 and it will soon grow into double or triple its worth within a few years.

Tell me. What will you do with £1000?

I have heard this phrase that “money is not everything” a lot.

Money is nothing but a medium of exchange. Let me explain. Ideas rule the world, but it is when you turn your ideas into money and you use that money to acquire tangible asset before the money can become valuable.

It is true, I get it that money is not everything. Depending on what time of the day you are reading this article you have possibly spent money today. If you have not spent money yourself somebody else has possibly provided you a service or help that cost them money.

Think about a car without a fuel inside its fuel tank. It doesn’t matter how expensive the car is and how powerful the engine is, the car will not be able to run. The way fuel is to a car so is money to the world and day to day living.

The truth is the world runs on money. If you don’t know before now you know.

You need money to pay your bills, you need money to put food on the table, and you need money to help people in need if you have the same ambition as me. Even money is what you use to generate more money. You must spend money to make money.

Now that you know that the money runs the world, let us dive into a brief history of money.

Brief History Of Money

There are 2 types of money, the first one is commodity money and it is now history, the second type is fiat money which we use today.

Money is a means of exchange. This was evident in the olden days when farming and hunting used to be the major form of profession. Think about a farmer that only plants corn, he will solely depend on his corn to feed his family. I can imagine that his family and himself will never attain a balanced diet if they relied on corn only.

To get other farm produce or meat, he will need to approach another farmer who has what he needs and is interested in his. He will then, for example, trade his corn for chicken. Put it in a simple way, he will give the chicken farmer corn and he will have chicken in return. This way it is a win-win situation.

At a point, this approach to trading no longer made sense. Why? It is simply because it is difficult to judge the values of what you are using to exchange another thing with.

Throughout history, a lot of commodities have been used as a form or means of exchange. Gold, feathers, and cowrie shells are some of the commodities that have been used as a medium of exchange.

Gold is the interesting talking point. Gold is a valuable commodity and during the 16th century, it became a medium of exchange.

Gold was usually stored with Goldsmiths and the people were issued receipts when they kept their gold with a goldsmith. The receipt could then be converted back to gold at the goldsmith shop.

The burden of carrying gold around made people to start using the receipt as a form of exchange. These receipts became the first form of bank notes as we know it today.

Think about the receipts that represented gold. This means that the receipt was not just a paper. It had value and the gold was its value.

People could decide to use the receipt or bank note to trade and pay for items they bought and if they like they could use it in exchange for a gold equivalent.

The Bank of England is one of the central banks in the world that has been issuing banknotes for up to 300 years. Bank of England stopped the exchange of bank notes for gold in 1931.

Bank notes before used to be backed by gold. Bank notes worldwide today are not backed by anything. It is just a paper, an illusion. It is only backed by a promise as shown in the banknote below and the one you have in your wallet.

Money Is An Illusion

The fiat money which is not backed by anything but just a promise is an illusion. Based on what is happening in the economy, the central banks of various countries in the world print money according to the supply and demand.

Money itself has no value, it is only valuable if you offer a service or product and you get paid for this. It is when you use the money you were paid to acquire something valuable before you can say you have money that has value.  This is the reason why the richest people in the world are not just cash-rich but rich through real estate, assets and companies they own.