Most public economic discourse focuses on visible money: salaries, interest rates, taxes, and stock market returns. Yet an increasing share of household financial erosion in Israel does not stem from dramatic mortgage decisions or catastrophic investment mistakes. Instead, it emerges from a series of small, everyday, largely invisible decisions, made precisely at moments of stress. These decisions are rarely perceived as problematic in real time. They are not labeled as "wast

Over the past several decades, classical economic theory has operated under a simple and elegant assumption: money is fungible. One dollar is equal to any other dollar, regardless of where it came from or how it is spent. In theory, rational individuals should treat all money identically and make decisions based solely on total resources and expected outcomes. Human behavior tells a very different story. Why does spending fifty dollars on coffee and pastries feel acceptable,