Healthy and Wealthy
March 07, 2011I always had a suspicion that health and wealth had a direct correlation but it’s not quite what I expected. It comes down to cash – cold hard cash. Who knew?
A recent study published in the Journal of Consumer Research cites that people who pay for groceries with credit or debit cards buy more impulsive and unhealthy items than those with cash. This may be due to the “pain of payment” according to the researcher Manoj Thomas.
Professor Thomas studied impulse items and found that people who paid with cash actually bought more healthy items. As someone who has been an observer of money behavior for many years, I find this very interesting. Over the past twenty years, I’ve seen a growing disconnection between people and their money. The debit card is a culprit because in the old days, we used to pay cash or write a check for a purchase. In both of these instances, there was a connection.
With cash, the connection is parting with something of value. When you spent $20 you knew that it was long gone after that. Once the Andy Jackson was out of your wallet, it wasn’t coming back. This was clear cut. When you wrote a check, it was a big ordeal. Imagine today the moaning and groaning if you were to write a check in the grocery line! You first of all have to actually write something: you write who the check is to, the amount in numerals and in cursive, and you sign the thing. Oh, then you write the amount in your register. You knew you wrote this check and you remember it.
Today, you slide your debit card through the machine and put in your pin number. That’s it– a little plastic and a minuscule receipt. It just doesn’t feel real.
I am not advocating that you annoy everyone by writing checks but there is a lesson to be learned here. Find ways to remind yourself that what you are spending is your money. You may want to use cash but if you don’t like the risk of carrying around cash, consider tracking your balance in a bank register (they are available for free from your favorite teller) and writing down everything you spend. It just takes a second so you’ll still be popular in line but it will help you to be healthy and wealthy. You’ll have to work on the wise.