Life is More than a Game

Posted by Mike Smith :: July 10, 2007 @ 6:52 am

Aside from a weekly allowance, one of the best ways for children to learn about the subject of money is by playing board games. One game in particular, The Game of Life, has made a change recently that will likely have a major impact on what children will learn from the experience.

In its new “Twists and Turns” edition, The Game of Life replaces the cash used in the game with a credit card. Players make purchases, collect payments, and view balances using a small card reader.

In the real world, you must be eighteen years old to be issued a credit card, but this game is recommended for children as young as eight years old. With early exposure to credit, children may have the opportunity to see both the positive and negative aspects of its use.

Using cash in games is a valuable tool for children to learn about money and finances. Through play, kids get to practice the trade-offs between wants and needs while constantly considering their dwindling or growing pile of cash.

The concept of credit, let alone fees and interest, may be too abstract for children when they are first learning about money. Many adults even have difficulty with these concepts.

Supplementing traditional education with financial education, in nearly any form, is a critical task for parents today. While it seems that introducing kids to credit cards at such a young age only adds to the mystery of how they work, it is also possible that they will be able to learn some of the hard life lessons regarding credit in a friendlier environment than the real world.

What a wonderful lesson children would learn if their purchasing power was constrained not just by their limited cash flow, but also because of poor credit decisions. To remove the magic of a card that gives you free money and replace it with a realistic picture of credit use, credit ratings, and consequences would prepare children extremely well for the world that faces them as they mature into adults.

Children born today are likely to experience many emerging methods and products for dealing with money, such as person-to-person lending, online banking, and a reduced role for cash, all of which are dramatically different from even a generation ago.

It is still vital that these children learn the proverbial “value of a dollar” and see money for the limited resource that it tends to be. Whether the new version of The Game of Life will be a valuable teaching tool or more of a marketing tool to indoctrinate the debtors of tomorrow remains to be seen.