When I was a kid, and on many a wet school holiday there was a place in our house we’d always visit to stave off boredom.

In the mid to late 1980’s, the era in which I was fortunate to grow up, personal computing was still in it’s relative infancy (games came on a tape which took thirty minutes or more to load), the world wide web in it’s current form didn’t exist the default option to relive boredom involved my BMX bike and the open road.

However on rainy days this wasn’t an option…

…So I used to visit this place in our house.

The place in our house used to contain boxes. All with bright pictures. All with vibrant colours. Many with the same logo on the side…

A Bright red “M” and a bright blue “B”

MB Games made some of my favourite “Boredom Busters”…

Battleships. Yahtzee. Simon. Connect Four.

However Milton Bradley’s first board game (and the game which, due to it’s success, launched the first successful “parlour game” business back in 1860) was a game which simulated an individuals journey through the trials and tribulations of our existence.

A game which featured up’s and down’s, win’s and losses and combined skill and luck.

and

A game where the decisions you made impacted whether you won or lost.

The game I’m talking about .is of course…

Twister!…..

…..only kidding!

The Game I’m talking about (of course)…

is The Game of Life.

I remember spending hours playing the Game of Life as a kid.

Making decisions about whether expensive ‘college’ would set me up for a better longer term financial future or whether I was better off at work, the synthetic joy of a fake in-game promotion and the  short lived tragedy of a lost career (only to find a new one at the turn of the next card).

Interestingly some of the choices you need to make in “The game of life” remain interestingly relevant today….

Whether to get into the larger more superficially prestigious house but by getting yourself into greater debt,

Whether the cost of ‘college’ pays off

and, in later versions,

Doing ‘good’ (like recyling and helping the homeless) making a difference to your final ‘score’.

However, after not playing it for years, when I revisited the “Game of Life” a couple of years ago (when Charlotte my eldest daughter got to an age where she could play board games properly) I realised the game had a fatal flaw…

How it ended.

At the end of the game you reached ‘retirement’. You tallied up your cash (winning bonuses for certain ‘life’ events) and the one with the greatest pile of cash wins and you go off to retire at ‘Shady Pines’….nice and easy.

However we all know that life, with all it’s fabulous complexity, just isn’t like that!

For many of my clients they wouldn’t dream of going anywhere near ‘shady pines’ with many feeling more comfortable travelling the world.  Also, many of my clients wouldn’t dream of a conventional “retirement” at a specified age.

For many of my clients life doesn’t slow down or stop when the commitments of career reduces but actually gets interesting!

For many of my clients the game of life isn’t won by accumulating ‘piles of cash’ but in spending it to create fantastic memories for them and their families, helping people they love and also those less fortunate than them and ensuring that they have relevance, significance and purpose. Their Money then just becomes the facilitator for them to enable to do this…

and I firmly believe our clients are right.

and, although as one of my favourite boards games, the “Game of Life” is wrong.

Oh well…I suppose I’ll have to look towards another board game to learn some lessons in both life and money…

…anyone for Connect 4?

So, what do you think?

How has the nature of retirement changed in the past 30 years?

Are we now more ‘plugged into’ the idea as money as a tool to enable our lives….or have we always been this way? and what financial inspiration do you get from the unexpected?

As ever I look forward to your thoughts…