Learning Investing and Money Management Through Playing Games

Anyone who has watched young children at play knows how powerful games are for teaching new things. New skills are developed as a child pushes a toy lawnmower alongside his parent mowing the lawn. New ideas become less intimidating and more accessible and ultimately usable when they are woven into a fun activity. We don’t learn our ABCs by memorizing them one letter at a time – we sing them. Visit any early elementary classroom and you’ll see any number of fun games being played that are actually teaching important skills and ideas.

I remember volunteering in my son’s second grade classroom and playing a game that made us count money. The teacher didn’t hold up various coins to make the children recite their names and values, rather she had them practice handling the different denominations (with fake, yet realistic money of course) while having fun using them in a game.

I could go on. Look at any selection of preschool toys and you will notice a theme of practical make-believe. Cash registers, kitchen sets, toy vacuums and play lawnmowers are all fun items that teach life skills. Well, why should the fun-part stop as we grow older? No one expects us to stop learning, but they do expect us to be more "mature" about it. There are many things that teenagers and adults need to learn that would be so much easier through play.

Unfortunately, most of the formal education or courses that we can purchase do not employ fun, interactive methods. They do not help us to develop mastery of new knowledge through playful repetition.

The interactive, online game that we are developing does. Learn To Be Rich.com is in its infancy, but we have plans to make it the ultimate teaching tool, with the power to educate anyone, teenagers through adults, about investing and money management in a way that is fun and accessible yet utterly practical.

There is an urgent need in today’s world for people to learn about money. The media encourages us to buy on credit and to receive instant gratification. Every retail business that I can think of, from my local tire shop to national electronics chains, have plans for each and every one of our tax rebates.

I’m not here to tell you what you should and shouldn’t buy, how much to save or to spend, or what to invest in. Rather, I would like to give you the opportunity to see for yourself, in as little as a single afternoon, the practical financial lessons that it can take a lifetime to learn.

Our game gives you the opportunity to test out various investment strategies and spending patterns to see how they will pan out over a lifetime. We have plans to make it competitive, so that you can see (if you want to) how your financial style matches up against your peers.

Our game, at LearnToBeRich.com is completely free. It is our vision to bring this powerful teaching tool into the lives of as many people as possible. We want everyone to have a chance to continue their financial education in a fun and risk free environment. As I have said, we learn by doing things. Children imitate the adults in their lives as they play at mowing the lawn, but we are rarely given a real opportunity to play at making serious financial decisions. That is the power of Learn To Be Rich! You can put on many different caps and experiment with numerous financial strategies.

Most of our real life financial habits or investment strategies take a great deal of time to mature and show us what their long term effects will be. It is also very difficult to see the big picture as we live out our lives day to day. Learn To Be Rich can give you that perspective by condensing a lifetime of spending and/or investing patterns into a clear snapshot. By the time you read this, we will have added a graphical summary of your end game results that can be a powerful assessment tool for seeing what kind of fruit different financial habits will yield.

As I said, the game is in its infancy, and we have great plans for it, so keep watching as we add new features and ways to gain practical experience in financial matters.

Until my next post,

James