How real is money

I read an interesting personal finance article in one of the local papers while I was at work. It talked about rising debt levels and a lack of financial planning. One person talked about how money just didn't seem real while he ran up about $4k of credit card debt. Money definitely doesn't seem real to me. I don't think of it in terms of the work I did, or what I can buy. I have trouble visualizing sums of physical money.
To me, money is numbers on a screen. I go some place every now and then, they put some numbers on one screen and I move it to another where it slowly grows. Maybe it has something to do with playing too many video games when I was younger. Money always exists as numbers on a screen. It usually gets off to a slow start in games, but quickly picks up. Then in most games, with the exception of real-time strategy, it seems like there's hardly a shortage. Hopefully money will be plentiful in my future. For now though, it's slow and waiting for things to pick up.