Why you shouldn’t play the Monopoly boardgame
Hey guys,
One of my fondest memories as a kid was the family getting together to play a hard fought game of Monopoly. Me, Mum, Dad, and my two brothers would sit down and learn the 80s style of financial competence. Little did I know that some of the lessons learned around that monopoly table would set the course for my financial future. Monopoly remained my preferred board game until Robert Kiyosaki brought out the CashFlow board game in the late 90s.
Anyway that’s not the point of this blog… It’s actually about my absolute disappointment at the new Monopoly board game.
I just bought the new version of Monopoly — the one with the credit card machine instead of the cash. Apparently they are adapting to the new way money works! But the problem is that they lost one of the most essential skills in financial competence.
Keeping track of your finances is so much easier when you have cash in your hand rather than credit on the card.
Having the cash in front of you on the table meant that you knew exactly where you are at financially. It made it very easy to make financial decisions. The problem with the credit card is that you don’t exactly know where you are. It’s harder to track a balance and it makes it harder to make sound decisions. During the one game I played I felt out of control. It wasn’t a good feeling.
The first thing I thought was how many people are in the same position with their own real life finances? How many feel (and are) out of control?
I had a meeting with a client who was buried in debt. He had been late in payments for over 3 years and had a number of accounts with the debt collectors. The thing that surprised me was that when I asked about what he owed and to whom, he had very little idea.
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Monopoly with the credit card machine is a stark reminder of what it’s like in our own lives with our finances. If we had to live with cash and no credit we’d know exactly where we were, making it a lot simpler to manage our money. The moment you have credit with little or no cash you must immediately change the way to handle your finances. So many people don’t realise this and as a result are at a financial disadvantage for the rest of their lives.
The trick is to have the right tools available to you that will help you track your money and know exactly where you are at. I have developed several of them for my own and my clients’ use, including Ezytrac, the portfolio management software through to simple rules of thumb to ensure you are spending and saving correctly.
If you want to know more, have an initial chat with your Property Consultant - they can start you on the right path. Keeping track of your cashflow and finances is a vital part of building a portfolio and your Portfolio Manager will explain in detail how we suggest that you do it.
Live with passion,
Brett :-)
PS. I do recommend both the Monopoly board game (only with cash) and the CashFlow board game.
PPS. Monopoly is a trademark Hasbro Inc and CashFlow is a trademark of Cashflow Technologies Inc.