Imagine you live on an island where everyone barters — a carpenter swaps a chair for a fisherman’s catch. It works, but it’s slow. Now imagine a world where a simple slip of paper makes every exchange effortless. That’s the magic of money. But money can also lose its value, sometimes so fast that people carry it in wheelbarrows just to buy bread. This chapter unpacks what money really is, how banks make it multiply, and what happens when inflation gets out of hand.