Money because everything is for sale.

In our "civilised" world this is what it's all about. Money, it used to represent possessions, gold, jewelry, houses etc. That was in the, let's call it, more honest times. Things have changed...If you don't have money you will be seen as somebody who lets everybody else do all the work. People  who have benefits are often considered by people who have to work to pay the bills, as people who profit from the system. A system that is run by the people who have the most money. A lot of the working people, who are complaining about the benefit receiving people, are forgetting that but here's a wake up call. Those people with the most money, tell people who do not have so much money what to do. In our "civilised" world everything belongs to the rich people and everyone is kept under control by the rich people. The governments, the army and the bits of land that make that we don't have to swim all the time, the rich people control and have it all. A whole system is created around the rich people that enables them to stay rich. One of the things that are part of that system is money.
I think that it should be wise to rule world wide that banks become companies that are not allowed to make benefits and it's staff members will be paid the same way as civil servants are. And than create laws stating that you are not allowed to posses more things that amount to a total value of 2.5 million. (houses, cars, jewelry, factories, land, animals etc). I also think that you should not posses more money in your bank account than 1 million and that you can not earn more money than 250.000 a year.  If you earn more money than 250.000, the double amount of what you have earned extra should be taken from you and given where it's needed. I think that if you are unable to survive (anywhere at all) at this day of writing, (15-12-2012) while making 250.000 a year, sorry but in my humble opinion, you're an asshole.
This way of making money will create a more balanced way of living. You don't have to work that much and other people can work for those who have reached their maximum earning level for that year. Prices will stay fixed and basically, people will learn that material possessions aren't that important.
After all, once you're dead, how much money do you need?
I stumbled a few weeks ago on this video clip and I think it is time that you see this and learn from it.
Here is one important message: Don't ever use credit cards. The reason is: credit cards are not there to make your life easier. It's the opposite!!! Credit cards are there to make the rich people richer but this time they hardly provide a service for it. What it comes down to is this:
When a purchase is made, the credit card user agrees to pay the card issuer. (So you do not pay the person of whom you buy something or get a service from).
The cardholder indicates consent to pay by signing a receipt with a record of the card details and indicating the amount to be paid or by entering a personal identification number (PIN). Also, many merchants now accept verbal authorizations via telephone and electronic authorization using the Internet. Each month, the credit card user is sent a statement indicating the purchases undertaken with the card, any outstanding fees, and the total amount owed. After receiving the statement, the cardholder may dispute any charges that he or she thinks are incorrect, which limits cardholder liability for unauthorized use of a credit card to $50.

The cardholder must pay a defined minimum portion of the amount owed by a due date, or may choose to pay a higher amount up to the entire amount owed which may be greater than the amount billed.

(So if you want to pay more into your account than you actually have to because you want to reduce the amount of money you owe them, you are fined, you are punished for giving money back to the bank.)

Every bank wants you to stay in debt with them as long as they can hold on to you.

The credit issuer charges interest on the unpaid balance if the billed amount is not paid in full (typically at a much higher rate than most other forms of debt).

The result of that leads to you getting further in debt on the standard amount of borrowed money. So the monthly payments (also called interest) that you have to pay (without reducing the amount of money you actually owe the bank) are getting bigger. So it will be even more difficult to pay of the initial amount of borrowed money and that is what the banks are hoping for.

In addition, if the credit card user fails to make at least the minimum payment by the due date, the issuer may impose a "late fee" and/or other penalties on the user. To help mitigate this, some financial institutions can arrange for automatic payments to be deducted from the user's bank accounts, thus avoiding such penalties altogether as long as the cardholder has sufficient funds.

The only way to get out of this is to get a loan from another bank, pay of the entire amount of money, plus the fines and stay with the other bank and pay everything, little by little, the same amount of money every month and an interest percentage that stays the same all the time.
But it is not always easy to find a bank that will help you with this.

If you want to save yourself money, get paid in cash and pay all your bills in cash. It will make banks obsolete. Nobody can oblige you to have a bank account. You will have to endure stories about how convenient it is and that the companies that you need to pay money to do not work that way and they will try with all their might to refuse you etc but... you can, if you desire so, pay everything in cash and get paid from the company you work for in cash. There is no law that obliges you to have a bank account.

Or you can do some severe research and find out which bank is the "best" for the customer.

Maybe this website or otherwise this one will help.
Other sites that may be useful are Yahoo Finance and MSN Money