We live here now.

Yesterday I came across the game “Mansion Impossible” (http://3form.net/mansion_impossible/) which hass a very simple premise: buy houses you can afford, sell them at a higher price, use that profit to buy and sell increasingly expensive houses for increasingly bigger profits until you can afford to buy the mansion. So what’s so great about this game?

1. In the beginning, your options are very limited, just like in real life. You’re not buying $100,000 properties right off the bat, although most of what you’ll see for sale is in the hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars. When you start this game, Trump you ain’t. But, through patience and persistence, you work up to those million dollar homes.
2. You don’t have to go for every deal in your price range. In fact, you usually can’t. There are way more houses on the market than you could possibly buy (although, not so many that the game is confusing) so you quickly accept that you’re going to buy some houses, and do your best with those.
3. Owning more than one investment at a time means settling for a good, though not optimal return. If you only own one house, then it’s easy to watch its property value go steadily up, taper off, sit at a peak, then start to go down. Keeping an eye on the going price of two different houses at the same time means that you will notice when the price starts to go down, but you probably won’t cash out at the peak. And, that’s OK! You can try out both strategies (single or multiple ownership) and see which one works better for you.
4. When you can afford the bigger properties, don’t waste time on the smaller ones. Or in other words, invest according to your means. If you have big bucks to play with, you should be taking advantage of bigger deals. Sometimes, it only takes one or two big houses to propel your status into the next level. But, if there’s a slow market and there are no big properties for sale . . .
5. Your money does you no good just sitting in the bank. Instead of sitting there, killing time, buy a small property or two. Every little bit helps, and it’s only by actively doing that you increase your bankroll, and therefore get closer to your goal.
6. Your goal is tangible and your score is measured in time. Money isn’t the goal of this game; it’s the means to the goal. And, you’re evaluated based on how quickly you reach that goal. This teaches us what should be lesson number one of personal finance — it’s not about money, it’s about time.
7. You will win, it’s just a matter of time. In fact, if you just keep playing long enough, even with the most conservative strategy, you’ll eventually win. But, will you be alive to enjoy it? (You don’t actually die in this game. I mean that your “score” could be 100 years.) What I like about this lesson is that it shows how from meager beginnings, everyone can work his or her way up.

It’s true, you do start with $100K in the bank that is entirely available for purchasing real estate. Perhaps this isn’t reality for most. And, your properties never require maintenance. They don’t burn down. Tenants don’t trash the place and pipes don’t burst. But, it’s a simple introduction to acquiring wealth that introduces some basic principles of investing. And if you wanted to, it’s fun enough that you could just play it like a video game.