The Misplaced Enjoyment Of Money

The love of money is a dangerous thing, when laced with the wrong motivations for actually loving it. To be truthful, I'm not even sure it's possible to love money itself in a "correct" way, since it's really money's buying power that is attractive. In fact, money left unspent is just a large pool of potential, and stays as potential until actually spent.

Of course, it's also true that money kept in reserve has its uses, such as for unforeseen crises. Such as sudden unemployment, illness or something of the sort. It pays to keep such a reserve. Yet the reserve provides such comfort that some have transferred their enjoyment from the items money is spent on, to actually watching their bank accounts grow. From an individual's perspective, that really makes little sense since they'd be quite unable to enjoy those funds once they're old and infirm, or if they suddenly die.

Sometimes I wonder at those who just love watching their accounts grow (while not actually saving for anything, like a crisis fund or the next really big ticket purchase like housing). For those, wouldn't it simply make more sense to just program a number simulation that constantly ticks up the amount of money in a virtual bank account? After all, given their spending habits, they'd never spend enough to realize that the numbers are fake, so all they get would be pure, unadulterated satisfaction.