Shopping with three ZARA bags, I hurried to Tory Burch for its latest phone cases. On the way to Regent Street, I heard three singers singing “Price Tag” to celebrate the annual Regent Street Festival. But wait!

The lady in the middle was singing: “Seems like everybody’s got a price. I wonder how they sleep at night. It’s not about the money, money, money. We don’t need your money, money, money. Just stop, for a minute and smile.”

Excuse me, on the busiest shopping street in London, the three British singers told us not to care about money and price tags but a smile? Are they kidding me?

I believe many girls are obsessed with shopping like me and we have to face the fact that we do need money. We have to earn more money to afford what we want.

Sometimes, we even wonder when we can have financial freedom so that we do not need to worry about price tags and sales as the lyrics said.

Such a value system for personal finance applied to me for the past 20 years until I read a book titled “Living With Less” by Joshua Becker last week. Minimalism was a new word I learned, which awakened me to the fact that human being’s desire for money never ends! As Becker argued, “Maybe your path to financial freedom comes not from earning more but from owning less.”

Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, once said that “He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money,” and at the same time his image was printed on the largest denomination of U.S. currency — the US$100 bill.

In fact, this is not controversial but remains perfectly apt in the complicated and confusing economic atmosphere of today. While worshipping money has become a new faith sweeping the world, Franklin’s philosophical revelation tells us a lesson that we should be in charge of our money while it shouldn’t be in charge of us.

In reality, far too often, the desire for money takes root as a need inside us and distracts us from the very life we wish we were living. Many of us have tied our happiness to the pursuit of money, even though we can feel the weight and burden of it. Our desire for money is never fulfilled, even though our basic needs have been met.

However, life is much more than material aspects. Thus, it is high time to clarify what matters most for us. Love? Health? Freedom? Spiritual pursuit? In this case, the song “Price Tag” sung on Regent Street becomes a positive voice instead of an ironic one, urging us to change our view of money.

As the lyrics show, “We need to take it back in time when music made us all unite... Forget about the price tag. Just stop, for a minute and smile.”