Читать книгу Money Mammoth - Ted Klontz - Страница 12

You are wired to share and not save. That makes it a significant challenge to deal with modern personal finance. But we have another significant challenge: We are also hardwired to spend. Not all that we gathered is given away. We use it; we spend it now; we don't invest in our future. So why do we have that impulse? It's the same reason we have a problem with obesity. We can blame our DNA.

Your ancestors did not live long by engaging in moderation. When there was something to eat, they ate as much of it as they could. They didn't say, Oh, I think I have had enough, I'll quit now, and save some for later. They didn't avoid eating fatty or sugary foods; they thrived on them. There were probably those who thought they should eat in moderation, but in prehistoric days, when people didn't know when or where their next meal would come, they were less likely to survive to pass on their DNA. So, the survivors, our ancestors, were consumers. Consuming as much as they could, even beyond when they were full. They did so because the next meal was not a guarantee and any food that went uneaten would quickly spoil.

This consumer programming helps to partly explain our current obesity crisis in America. We are no better at managing our calorie intake than we are at saving money. In many ways, money is our food. We love to consume it as we find it!

If we get the chance, we will consume more than we need. But now we have the ability to consume more than we even have. We call this buying on credit. Businesses understand this human need and seduce us to consume our money, borrow more, and consume that too. They are just capitalizing on human nature. So modern society has created a situation in which our ancestral programming sets the stage for our becoming obese and broke.