Seven Money Lies from Monopoly
By Jim Wang, Bargaineering.com
When it comes to games, Monopoly is probably one of the most iconic. While I haven’t played a game of Monopoly in years (the last time was on a cruise to Bermuda many years ago), the game and its rules are still fresh in my mind. Nowadays all the board games we play are slightly more complicated than Monopoly (games like Settlers of Catan or Dominion) but Monopoly still holds a special place in my heart.
If, however, you were to look back at the game itself and compare it to real life, you’d find a lot of differences. Some of the differences are inconsequential, like the prices for properties ($400? $120?) because they reflect both and earlier time and a need to improve playability (no sense having people count out $50,000 in $500 increments, a bill that itself doesn’t exist). Others are more subtle and, if a child were to use Monopoly as a proxy for the real world, really misrepresent the world. They, in short, lie.
Bank Error in Your Favor
Bank errors in your favor almost never happen and when they do, you have to return the money! When a bank or another customer makes an error and gives you money by accident, you aren’t entitled to it. Possession isn’t 9/10ths of the law in this case (or any case, that’s just a crazy saying) and in the event you don’t report it, you may be liable for stealing.
This happened to Christopher Wink back in August of 2008. He discovered an extra six grand in his bank account. Fortunately the bank discovered it in time, before he could accidentally spend it, and pulled it out in a “retrieval withdrawal.”
Pay Cash For Property
In real life, how often do people pay 100% cash for their homes and property? Almost never. In Monopoly, you can’t take out a mortgage on a home until after you’ve paid cash for it.
Free Parking
Simply does not exist in real life. Enough said.
$200 Salary
Whenever you pass Go, you collected $200. That’s the amount you collected at the beginning of the game and that’s the amount you collected near the end. It didn’t matter how hard you worked, what schooling you received, what skills you had, everyone who went around the block got a cool two hundred bills.
Real life doesn’t work like that except in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and look how that turned out. In real life, your hard work will be rewarded. While we don’t like to believe that financial fat cats deserve their big paychecks, the reality is that for most people your salary is a translation of how hard and how smart you work. If you don’t work hard and don’t take schooling seriously, the road forward becomes much harder.
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