Money

If money is free you don’t learn how it works. How could you? That’s not how it works.

If money is entirely unavailable you don’t learn how it works. How could you? You don’t get any practice at all.

Video games are good for learning about some of the mechanics of money like managing a balance. But you don’t learn about loss, because there’s nothing real to lose. Nothing is real because you can always start over and easily get more of the money.

The video games we play kind of specifically train us to be wreckless with money.

In fact we go out of our way to make sure there couldn’t possibly be any real money involved because no one wants a kid to lose money. But without the risk of loss there’s no way to learn.

And then the things we want kids to do…read, learn, math, exercise, etc…there’s no money practice involved at all.

As adults you frequently have to learn how to manage money to do those things. Gotta get money to pay for the gym. Get money to pay for school. Get money to get a new certification for work. Get money to pay for the things you enjoy like scuba diving and competitive helicopter racing.

When I was a kid another kid tricked me into trading him a dollar bill for a quarter and I’ll never forget it. Because I knew I had actually lost the opportunity to buy ice cream and then I watched him eat the ice cream. What a nightmare.