The Smell of Money

Have you ever taken a moment to give your wallet a sniff, and noticed the smell of money?

For me, it has two smells. One is the money elders gave me at festivals. The other is the coins at the temple, while counting them. Both smells take me straight back.

That is no accident. The part of the brain that processes smell is closely connected to the parts that hold memories and emotions. So a smell can bring back a moment, and the feeling that came with it, faster than almost anything else. And money carries plenty of feelings: success, security, reward, the ability to get what we want or need.

What does money actually smell like?

It turns out the scent of money is a blend. Part of it is the paper. In India, banknotes are printed on paper made from 100% cotton, which gives them a soft, cottony smell. Part of it is the ink: special inks are used to print them, and they add their own sharpness.

But much of the smell isn’t from the money at all. It is from us. A note passes through hundreds of hands, and carries a trace of every one of them. Coins are stranger still. In 2006, chemists found that the familiar metallic smell of coins is not the metal itself: it is the oils on our skin reacting with the metal, and the smell appears only once we have touched them. The smell of money, in other words, is partly the smell of people.

Why it stays with us

Perhaps that is why the smell of money moves us so much. It isn’t really about cotton or ink or metal. It is about the hands it passed through, and the moments it belonged to: money from elders at a festival, coins counted at a temple.

So the next time you catch a whiff of your wallet, ask yourself: is it the money you are smelling, or the memory?