Why Do We Have ‘Money’ and What Would Happen If We Didn’t?

Imagine a world where you have to trade apples for bread, that’s like using money before there was money! Money makes life easier because it lets us buy and sell things without having to swap one item for another every time. If we didn’t have money, we might go back to bartering, which can get pretty messy if you want to buy a lot of stuff.

Take the quiz →

Examples

If you wanted to buy a toy but only had cookies, you might have to trade your cookies for the toy, that’s bartering!
You can’t buy ice cream with apples unless someone agrees to take apples instead of money.
Without money, you’d need to carry around a lot of different items just to make trades.

Ask a question

Discussion

Recent activity

Categories: Economics · money,economy,barter system