Money Habit

You check your banking app before you're even out of bed. Balance, incoming, outgoing. You do it again at lunch. It feels like a modern habit, born from apps and notifications. But the real answer is far stranger. That anxious little ritual isn't a product of capitalism or smartphones. It's a leftover instinct from a brain that evolved to survive in a world with no money at all. Your habits around money are older than money itself. What is money, really? Paper you can't eat. A number you can't touch. Yet you feel dread when it's low and relief when it's not. That feeling evolved long before coins existed. So where did it come from?