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Money Games For Improving Your Financial Skills

Money Games For Improving Your Financial Skills

July 25, 2021

Have you ever played the financial board games like “Business or Monopoly” during your childhood?? Well, that was the first experience of me investing, buying, and even financing with my peers. That money games were addictive and insightful to our young minds to experience the world of money and banking.

Teaching business concepts at a very young age can benefit people during their later years.

Not only does imparting them with such concepts help flatten their learning curve about decision making, financial management. And also helps expand their cognitive abilities.

The same can also be said for older adults who have previously refrained from familiarizing themselves with these concepts.

An ideal way to become aware of these concepts is by adopting interactive learning mediums

A person can realize effective use of economic management, resource allocation, diplomatic trade practices, and so on—all of it merely from playing those games that offer such features.

Thus, let’s check out some top business or trade games in the market that are inclusive of such features in some way or the other.

Popular Examples of Entrepreneurial & Business Games

The following games are among the most popular titles played by people to develop their financial skills.

Monopoly

One of the most celebrated (and exponentially more hated) games of all time is monopoly/business. Because it offers plenty of things to learn as you get around the board.

At every step of the way, players will land on a property or wildcard spot that will ultimately make the player pay or earn paper currency.

Buy Monopoly

The game teaches responsible money management. Suppose you start out buying every single property as you begin. In that case, you’ll soon run out of the initial money that you could instead use to purchase costlier properties. This will naturally provide more rent each time a player lands on them.

Sure, the game involves a luck factor because the movement across the board is governed by the roll of dice but so does life.

So, practice better capital management so you can build hotels on your properties and soon start earning double or triple the basic rent.

Catan

You can consider this game to top the charts because it offers an all-inclusive business experience to manage your resources and implement strategies to emerge as a victor. However, it loses the spot because it might take a while before players learn how to play this game effectively.

The five holy resources of the game, namely the ore, lumber, wool, bricks, and grain, will collectively rule the direction the game turns for each player because without one of these, acquiring another becomes near impossible unless you make a trade with another player who will carry their own interests, naturally.

Buy Catan

You can upgrade your settlements and build roads to connect them and to acquire more resources or use ports that offer you resources at higher costs and take longer to accumulate. However, the ports are limited. Naturally, you cannot build roads that intersect other players’ settlements, thus establishing learning factors into the game like strategizing, resource management, trade diplomacy, etc.

Acquire

Enthusiasts interested in stocks, capital, acquisitions, and similar business aspects will enjoy this game that requires them to put tiles for establishing, managing, or merging their hotels on the board, whose stocks you can purchase to gain additional income. The victory criteria are simple: become the wealthiest hotel owner, which is defined by combining the worth of hotels and the owned stocks.

Buy Acquire

The players in this game must learn to maintain a balance between their investment income and liquid assets, losing either of which will soon eliminate you from the board, with another player obtaining a free merger and becoming more prosperous.

One cannot win the game ideally without buying stocks in typical scenarios as the aspect of the game is not designed to relent any player into becoming the victor without owning the assets. Furthermore, the capital you invest in stocks has a better chance of growing than simply remaining in stagnation with you.

Steam: Rails to Riches

It is one of the less than easier financial games to play as the learning ceiling with this game regarding the financial and trade aspects varies at various instances. At each turn, a player will have to govern six types of decisions, which concern (i) upgrading the trains or destinations, (ii) building more train tracks, (iii) transporting goods, (iv) Income collection/Debt repayment (v) defining your next turn’s hierarchy, and (vi) setting up the upcoming turn.

Buy Steam : Rails to Riches

Among these decisions to make, you have to build an empire by ensuring the following things at the same time:

  • Meet the demands of Business owners
  • Powering your trains
  • Manage supply chain
  • Manage and set up destination and trade paths
  • Manipulating demand of goods for profit
  • Not being absolved into debt while fulfilling your responsibilities.

All the activities are recorded in bookkeeping practices, which you can access reform strategies and planning as required, only to acquire victory points as they will win you the game, not your wealth alone.

Risk

Another one of the oldest board games, ‘Risk,’ makes the spot because it’s all about the spirit of conquest and conquering multiple territories across the board. This game might take longer than completing a game of monopoly, which is notorious for taking more than a couple of hours to complete if the objective is to win, of course.

Buy Risk Board Game

You’ll have to strategize to the best of your ability, which should also account for the best of the other players’ abilities on the board as you’ll have to plan several moves ahead, as will the other players.

Be prepared to throw the board in defeat with a classic table flip if you metaphorically lose your marbles by reconstructing your previous strategy after completing each turn taken by the other players. Whatever you do, remember that the best way out is through another player’s territories.

Honorary Mentions:

  • The Godfather: Family Dynasty
  • SimCity
  • The Market of Alturien
  • Diplomacy
  • I’m The Boss
  • Brass
  • Capitalism
  • The Forbidden Game Series by Gamewright
  • Shasn
  • GoVenture

These financial games offer hours of entertainment and severe brainstorming for strategizing and management skills, which you can hone by playing among players who take the game seriously. Still, amidst all this urgency, unrelenting chaos, and capital management, don’t forget to remember the first rule of business: Stay in business!

2 Replies to “Money Games For Improving Your Financial Skills”

  1. My favorite game is Risk. I never put all my armies in Australia to begin with, however. For some reason I’m drawn to South America and its 2-armies-per-turn generating quality. Getting a lock on Brazil so that you can fly across to Africa is vital. Risk is a shitty game when you have a player who throws in the towel and goes suicidal, attacking random countries willy-nilly. That’s the worst.

    — Catxman

    http://www.catxman.wordpress.com

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