A hundred times this! In programming lingo I like to think about money as something akin to promises or futures. Something that 'has value' strictly in its cur

A hundred times this! In programming lingo I like to think about money as something akin to promises or futures. Something that 'has value' strictly in its current context, and even then only as a 'promise' that will yield when exchanged. With the property that the longer you have it, the less it will yield. Which is a necessary condition for the currency underpinning your economy, to force people to move it around instead of holding. When you look at it this way, getting rid of any excess I don't immediately need by getting something else (stocks, ETFs, property, whatever) seems like a total no-brainer.