Playing a REAL real estate game on Christmas Day

Sunday, December 25. Christmas day at our house: After church, gifts, and food it was time to get seriously down to the game of real estate: In this case the real estate game was a multi-hour experience with my daughter-in-law's brand new Monopoly game.

It wasn't just any old ordinary Monopoly game....it was a special Monopoly game for lovers of Yorkshire Terriers - Yorkies.

As a breeder (formosayorkies.com) of those wonderful little dogs, she surely qualifies as a lover of them.

I joined in ONLY (mind you) to see what this game could teach me about real estate in 2012. :-)

The game is called Yorkie-opoly...one of serveral versions of the old board game themed to various specific dog breeds. Here is the board:

Let me repeat: I only agreed to play this game because I figured I might learn something about real estate investing that I could use in 2012. And the best part is: I did.

The moral to this game (and all other versions of Monopoly) is: invest early or you will regret it later. If you are not in possession of enough real estate assets, toward the end of the game you may go bankrupt...making some other player fabulously wealthy and the winner of the game (like maybe your winning-centered, wonderful daughter-in-law).

There is a great life lesson there.... and an example/argument to use when advocating the merits of investing

in what you/we sell.

Stop to think of it. There was even a lesson in the game for bankers: Even if you are playing the role of game banker....you can go bankrupt, too.

Unless, of course, you are too big to fail. (I wasn't!)

A word or two of advice about the game:

If you play this, or it's Doggie-opoly sisters: Look out for the Good Dog cards...they're bad for you. Don't sweat the Bad Dog cards, they're usually actually good.