Unique Habit 6 – Clean Cash

Money is dirty. I don’t mean the “illegal” kind of dirty. I mean the filthy, germ-riddled kind of dirty. It’s been passed through so many hands and stuck in so many unclean places that it is literally (and I mean scientifically proven to be) as dirty as a public toilet.

You don’t have to give up money and live as a hermit in the woods. Just pay with your card when you can and wash your hands if you handle money. You don’t have to use any special, extra powerful cleanser. Warm soap and water will do the trick. Treat handling money the same way you treat using a public toilet.

Washing your hands regularly just makes sense in general. The world is filled with bacteria and germs.

Sure, lots of them are harmless and some are even beneficial but there are definitely plenty of dangerous, mean bacteria out there that you don’t want living on your hands and spreading to your mouth, nose, or eyes.

You can’t avoid coming into contact with these dangerous germs unless you decide to cut off all contact with the outside world and live in a sealed bubble. So, there’s no reason to panic and try to avoid all contact.

Just make sure to wash your hands regularly and avoid touching your eyes, mouth, nose, or ears after handling money or using a public toilet (at least until you have washed your hands) .

ACTION PLAN

To make sure that hand washing is effective, use soap and warm water. Massage the soap into your hands and wrists for at least 30 seconds before rinsing it off in warm water again.

You don’t need to use antibacterial soaps. These are not any more effective than regular soap and can actually cause harm in the long run. If you look at a bottle of antibacterial soap, you’ll see that it never claims to be 100% effective.

It always says something like “99.99%” and in most situations in life, that kind of statistic sounds like a sure thing—it’s basically 100%, right?

In the case of bacteria, the opposite is true. That 0.01% of bacteria that survive the antibacterial chemical in the soap will reproduce themselves on your hands, producing even more of the kind of bacteria that are resistant to that soap. This means that each time you use an antibacterial soap (or hand sanitizer), it becomes less effective than it was before.

At the same time, it breeds even more resistant, stronger bacteria than before. This will put you at an even higher risk than you were before.

So avoid antibacterial soaps (and hand sanitizers). Instead, just use normal soap and warm water. By massaging the soap in for at least 30 seconds and rinsing thoroughly, you will successfully wash away the bacteria.