Objective: “Collect money and Life tiles, and have the highest dollar amount at the end of the game.”

So I played this game with my elementary aged daughter, and she was thrilled when she won. There are several decisions that have to be made early in the game: [1] whether to go to college and take on debt with expectations of a higher salary, or to work right away with a reduced salary, [2] whether to buy a house with more debt, or not, and [3] whether to buy auto/home insurance, or to just risk it. Along the path, one may get married, have kids, pay unexpected taxes, pay for summer camps, win the lottery, have a skiing accident, buy a HDTV, have cosmetic surgery, collect an inheritance, have an auto accident, lose a job, have house flooded or hit by a tornado, pay for kids’ college, get a tax refund, win the Nobel Prize, pay for day care, have the stock market crash, get car stolen, pay for a cruise, buy a sailboat, have a mid-life crisis, need a life-saving operation, collect a pension, and eventually retire. Upon retirement, the house gets sold, the debt gets settled, and the money is tallied. Whoever retires with the most money wins the game.  

Though my daughter was happy to win, she wasn’t quite convinced that the “Game of Life” mimics the real game of life. She is hoping there’s more to life that just making money, but then, she’s still young and idealistic.

So, now we’re going to play Monopoly where the objective is “to become the wealthiest player through buying, renting and selling property.”

I don’t make the rules, I just play the games.

A Short History of Financial Euphoria by John Kenneth Galbraith, Harvard, 1990

In all free-enterprise attitudes there is a strong tendency to believe that the more money, either as income or assets, of which he is associated, the deeper and more compelling his economic and social perception, the more astute and penetrating his mental processes. Money is the measure of capitalistic achievement. The more money, the greater the achievement and the intelligence that it supports.