Venerable finance game abandons cash for credit

Susan Beacham can’t remember when she started playing The Game of Life with her girls. But they were well below the recommended age of 9, she said. And it quickly became one of their favorite games.

Allison, now 15, always wanted to handle the cash. Amanda, now 13, accumulated stock.

For Beacham, who has since started an Illinois-based financial education company called Money Savvy Generation, the game provided a way to introduce her girls at a young age to the financial choices people face every day.

She’s not alone. A number of kids and money experts say they, too, used this board game to discuss real-life money dilemmas.

The Game of Life, launched in 1960, simulates the road from high school to retirement. It allows kids to make choices about college, jobs, insurance and investments, while they negotiate life -- marriage, children, wages, taxes, homeownership and medical emergencies.

Parents such as Beacham appreciate that the game has always offered important lessons. For instance, players get to choose whether to go to college.

Like real life, college doesn’t necessarily guarantee a higher-paying job -- just more job choices. You can buy insurance, or go without. Sometimes going without saves money. Other times, you land on the wrong square and being uninsured costs you -- again, just like real life.

Pawtucket, R.I.-based Hasbro Inc., which has introduced many adaptations of the game over the years, has teamed up with San Francisco-based Visa for a new version.

To the horror of some of the game’s biggest fans, the partnership is getting rid of cash and replacing it with a branded Visa card.

That’s infuriating some experts on children and money, who say the update, scheduled to launch in August, will unravel the game’s sage money lessons and inculcate the preteen set with a credit-card mentality.

“Oh, Lord. It’s terrible,” said Janet Bodnar, parent of three and author of “Raising Money Smart Kids: What They Need to Know about Money and How to Tell Them.”

“It’s bad enough for teenagers to have exposure to credit cards. It is really bad for a 9 year old,” she said. “This is exactly the age group when you want to be teaching about cash money.”

Beacham agrees. “To succeed in real life, our kids need to learn to manage money -- starting with hard cash,” she said. “The child who doesn’t may end up back in their old room after college with nothing but a boatload of credit-card debt in tow.

“A credit card is a valid update. But I can’t agree with the removal of cash from the game.”

With the revised “Twists & Turns” edition of The Game of Life, players will get a Visa-branded card at the start of the game and an electronic “LifePod” that will keep track of players’ financial data and monitor their game status. The player with the most accumulated cash and “life cards” -- experiences such as having a child, inventing a product or earning a Nobel Prize -- wins.

“The flagship version of The Game of Life has been updated many times since 1960 to ensure that it matches modern-day life,” Matt Collins, Hasbro’s vice president of marketing, said in a statement issued by the company.

The designers of the new edition knew it was time “to reflect the way people choose to pay and be paid,” he said. “And replacing cash with Visa was an obvious choice.”

A Visa spokesman also heralded the change, which backs up the San Francisco-based company’s marketing slogan: “Life Takes Visa.”

“It’s a chance to learn how people use electronic payments in their daily life,” said Michael Rolnick, director of corporate relations at Visa USA, who also defended the money lessons of the revised game. “You can’t win the game without accumulating the most points. You can’t accumulate the most points if you spend beyond your means.”

Visa plans to include money management booklets in the game.

Marketing experts call the game’s Visa-branded card a classic example of a product placement -- a growing practice that allows companies to get their names or products in front of potential consumers in a way that’s more subtle than traditional advertising.

Product placements permeate the movies, where actors may be munching on a strategically placed bag of Doritos or schlepping the kids to school in a Volvo, and are also showing up on TV and even in books. There’s more to come.

“Advertisers are looking for new ways to market their products because the 30- and 60-second advertising spots are not as effective as they once were,” said Linda Swick, president of International Promotions, a North Hollywood-based product placement firm. “Recorders are allowing people to zap out their commercials. So wherever a company can get their brand name out there, they’re going to do it.”

Visa and Hasbro say that no money changed hands under their marketing deal.

“What Visa is going to do is advertise this game now in all of their different outlets,” Swick said. “That’s a lot of money for Hasbro. Even if it is not dollar transferred, they get a lot of advertising in all of their different venues.”

A Hasbro spokeswoman said the game would still impart valid money lessons because it cannot be won without managing money wisely.

Indeed, the update may provide an opportunity to teach children to be skeptical about advertising.

“As a mom who is in the advertising world, I am constantly making my kids aware that they are being advertised to and that they have to be very careful about evaluating any messages they’re receiving,” Swick said.

“I have normal kids who say, ‘We want this because they say this about it,’ ” she added. “I say, ‘Wait a minute. What is the perspective that they are coming from? Is the information biased? What is best for you?’ ”

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Kathy M. Kristof welcomes your comments but regrets that she cannot respond to every question. Write to Personal Finance, Business Section, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail kathy.kristof@latimes.com. For her previous columns, visit latimes.com/kristof.