Steve Lear

Top Purposes of Money

We recently sent out a survey question, asking “What do you think are the top purposes of money?”

Forty-five people responded. I thought their answers would rank as follows (in order of most mentions):

• Necessities
• Experiences
• Stuff
• Time
• Security
• Helping Others
• Joy

However, here’s how participants actually responded:

• Necessities
• Helping Others
• Security
• Stuff
• Experiences
• Joy
• Time

Necessities, Helping Others, and Security were nearly tied for the top spot.

As I looked at the list of respondents, it was not surprising that most of them were peers or people close to my age of 68. I’m fully aware that if I had posed this question to a different demographic, I would have received different answers.

To be clear, there was no formal analysis of this information; it was simply an informal questionnaire submitted to my peers. I just wanted to give you a brief report on the survey’s outcome. I will now try to interpret some of the commentary and (in my opinion) unexpected ranking order.

One conclusion is already obvious: I hang out with some pretty cool people. My sincere thanks to all who participated!