Say it ain't so, Hasbro! The toy manufacturer recently announced that later this year it will launch a new edition of its venerable classic, The Game of Life. This version, called Twists & Turns ($35), will replace play money with a Visa-branded card. Players insert their cards into a gizmo, called a LIFEPod, that keeps track of each player's finances so there's no need for a banker to make change. As Matt Collins, Hasbro's vice-president of marketing, explains, "We knew it was time to reflect the way people choose to pay and be paid -- and replacing cash with Visa was an obvious choice."

Not obvious to me. I'm a big proponent of using board games to teach children about money, and the classic game has always been a family favorite. It covers a lot of territory -- careers, college, mortgages, insurance, dividends, taxes -- and lets kids feel the pleasure of collecting a salary and the pain of paying for college by piling up or depleting their stacks of money. Using a card just doesn't cut it -- especially when that card is advertising a company's logo to 9-year-olds, the game's target audience. And -- yikes! -- Monopoly may be next. Hasbro has already introduced a cashless version of the game in the United Kingdom.

The adults who dream up these things say that they're trying to prepare kids for a cashless society. But they make the mistake of thinking like grown-ups instead of children. Kids see the world in concrete terms, and although the Visa Life card isn't labeled a credit card or a debit card or a prepaid card, the distinction is lost on them. To children, plastic of any kind isn't as real as money they can see and feel. With a cashless society looming in their future, teaching children to manage hard currency is more important than ever.

Pleasure and pain. Regular readers of this column know that I've been up on this soapbox for a long time. But I'm not alone. James Roberts, associate professor of marketing at Baylor University, has done extensive research on credit-card use among adolescents. His conclusion: "When you remove actual money from the exchange, it's easier to spend and more difficult to keep track of your spending."

Brain-imaging studies done by George Lowenstein, professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, show that the parts of the brain that register pleasure and pain are also involved when people make purchasing decisions. Buying something stimulates a pleasurable response, and paying for it elicits pain. Paying with plastic, says Lowenstein, has the potential to anesthetize the pain. "Swiping a card isn't like giving something up," he says.

Credit is fine as long as cardholders are mature enough to handle it. But because the brain continues to develop until young people are in their early twenties, 'tweens and teens are "susceptible to the lesson that you can finance a purchase through debt and the future will take care of itself,"says Lowenstein.

Hard to beat. Look, I'm no Scrooge. I can see how kids could find Twists & Turns to be cool and fun to play. To appeal to parents, the game will include a booklet based on Visa's financial-literacy curriculum. Hasbro says it has also enhanced the game by changing the rules: The winner will no longer be the player who accumulates the most money but the one who earns the most "life points" -- a combination of wealth and experience. And, says a Hasbro spokesperson, "if you don't manage your finances well, you can't win."

But as a way of teaching financial literacy, classic Life is hard to beat. Fortunately, it's still available -- for about half the price of Twists & Turns. Show me the money any day.

MORE: Kiplinger.com | Your Money | Magazine

TOOLS:   E-Mail Article  |  Print Article  |  Reprint Article  |  Content Licensing & Partnerships

E-MAIL ALERTS: Keep up-to-date with the latest Kiplinger has to offer

SAVE, SHARE & DISCUSS:    |   |   |   |   |    

ADD HEADLINES: