During the Christmas holidays I had the opportunity to dust off bingo , cards and board games . Among the latter, I rediscovered Monopoly . If you didn’t know it, Monopoly is a classic board game where players aim to earn money by buying and renting real estate.
Returning to play made me reflect on what I have learned in my path of financial growth . Of course, Monopoly is just a game, but the mechanisms that govern it are the same that allow you to make money in the real world. If you understand them, there is no financial goal that is not within your reach.
If reading the previous post you have chosen as a good resolution to create your first nest egg of € 1,378, in today’s article I would like to talk to you about 3 rules to earn money , inspired by Monopoly. You are with me? Then we roll the dice and go 😉
Rule # 1: Acquire valuable assets
André and am I not a carpenter? What board do I have to buy ?!
Assets ( assets in Italian) are tangible or intangible assets that allow you to generate income (money!). In Monopoly the land, the railway stations and the municipal utilities, present in the various boxes, are assets. In general, the more squares a player acquires, the more likely it is that other players will have to pay him rents; these rents will also tend to grow over time, as the land acquires value thanks to the construction of houses and hotels. Not only that, not all land / assets are the same: the land that you meet at the beginning of the tour is of little value, but the further you move away from the “Via”, the more the value grows, together with the rents that must be paid by the unfortunate players who stop on these boxes.
In Monopoly, the player who manages to grab the most valuable assets often wins.
The same principle applies in real life. Yet the vast majority of people limit themselves to generating income with a single asset, moreover of little value : their employees (for those who still have it). Don’t get me wrong, in times of crisis, having secure income is important, yet an employee remains an intrinsically ” poor ” asset. Let me explain.
The steady job is the worst “box” for earning money
The income generated by your employment is almost always a function of two variables: a) the hours worked and b) your hourly wages . If you want to earn more money you must necessarily:
- getting a raise, practically impossible nowadays.
- work harder, provided they pay you overtime and you give up your private life.
In short, no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to escape the iron mathematical formula that governs employee work and in general any activity that involves the sale of your time for an hourly rate.
In conclusion
The first rule of Monopoly for earning money is to quickly acquire (or create) valuable assets . As we have seen, the coveted permanent job is not a valuable asset, indeed it is perhaps one of the least valuable assets at your disposal: to generate income it requires your time (a finite resource) and a decent hourly wage (an increasingly more resource). poor).
If you want to earn money you have to acquire valuable assets, or assets that generate money exponentially and regardless of your time: don’t you have the faintest idea what I’m talking about?
“If you want to get rich, you have to be able to make money even while you sleep.”
David Bailey.
Rule # 2: diversify your income
In one of the last games I played in Monopoly, at one point I found myself literally “bloated” with money, with my only surviving opponent reduced to the streets. I lost . Yes, of course, my opponent’s luck and skill played an important role, but if I lost it was because I didn’t differentiate my income sufficiently. I had staked everything on a single property, which was my only source of income.
Make the same mistake in real life and you’ll find yourself in serious trouble:
- If your job is your only source of income and you become unemployed: you are in the poop .
- If you live by renting out real estate and a super tax is set up on the house: you are in the poop .
- If you bet all your money on an investment warmly recommended by your American third cousin and for whatever reason the investment goes wrong: you are in the poop .
In short, to understand it well, if you put all your eggs in the same basket: you are in the poop .
In conclusion
The second rule of Monopoly for earning money is to diversify your income . This does not necessarily mean navigating through a thousand part-time jobs; in fact, there are 2 extremely effective diversification strategies:
- Horizontal diversification . You develop totally independent projects, linked for example to your passions or your business ideas. To be very practical, here is the example of a friend of mine who currently works in one of the most important companies in the aeronautical sector and at the same time has developed, together with some partners, a business idea in the hi-tech jewelery sector, which they are financing thanks to the crowdfunding site Kickstarter . In the last 6 years I myself have developed my career as a Management Consultant, becoming a manager in an important American multinational, and at the same time I have created my first sources of passive income, in the spare time, thanks to EfficaceMente. Today more than ever, thanks to the internet, you can monetize your passions and finance your business ideas at no cost; stubbornly clinging to a steady job is increasingly a mortal risk.
- Vertical diversification. There’s no point in making fun of yourself, not everyone has an entrepreneurial spirit, and that’s right; but that doesn’t mean we can’t (must) diversify our income in any other way, for example by finding new ways to resell the same skills we use every day in the workplace. A teacher can give private tuition or collaborate with schools that organize courses for immigrants. A Rome gym instructor can share their experiences on effective training methods with thousands of readers across Italy by opening a personal blog. An actor can organize effective communication courses for company managers.
Acquiring valuable assets and diversifying them are 2 fundamental rules for earning money, but there is still an equally important one …
Rule # 3: Avoid liquidity deception
In Monopoly a moment you find yourself with a “fracco” of money and the next moment you are forced to mortgage your underwear too. This happens when you give in to the liquidity deception : most likely you have a nice nest egg, but few properties (you haven’t diversified) and what’s more, the ones you have, suck (that is, you have low value assets); strong in your bank account, you continue to play your game, under the illusion of being able to maintain your lifestyle; yet you are unable to generate “fresh money” and a few unfortunate hands are enough to leave you on the road.
The same situation repeats itself every day in real life: people accustomed to a consumerist lifestyle who find themselves up to their neck in debt at the first unexpected event. Lottery winners who lose most of their prizes less than a year after winning. Heirs who squander the fortunes built by their fathers.
In conclusion
Don’t be fooled by the zeros in your bank account, or by that unexpected sum that you found in your pocket:
“You are only rich to the extent that you can continuously generate new income.”
A final wish
In life there are things far more important than money, yet we damn ourselves to earn our loaf every day; What if we change our attitude? If we considered money as a simple game, like Monopoly; certainly a serious game, but still a game with rules, rules that we can learn, rules that we can dominate .
So I hope that the 3 rules inspired by Monopoly will help you to mature this new attitude and that they will be for you the starting point of a path of financial growth full of challenges and satisfactions. Have a good week. Andrew.
