If you ever want to know how money works, and in particular how a fiat currency (such as sterling, or the US dollar) works, I would strongly recommend Terry Pratchett’s very funny Making Money.

Consider this description of what a penny is: in the course of the year,

“It becomes some apples, part of a cart, a pair of shoelaces, some hay, an hour’s occupation of a theatre seat. It may even become a stamp and send a letter. It might be spent three hundred times and yet- this is the good part- it is still one penny, ready and willing to be spent again.”

As an explanation of how money is, or should be, about what it can do for you, rather than as an end in itself, it can hardly be bettered.

Just one word of warning: do not read Making Money, or any other Pratchett book in a public place or in bed beside your significant other. Laughing aloud is a certainty.

“The greatest waste of money is never to use it.” Charlie Walker @cwexplore