Monday, July 24, 2006

Another reason for me to hate Monopoly

OK, as you may or may not know, I'm a board game fanatic. I love the fun of sitting around a table with friends or family playing games.

For those of you who have played with me likely know, I absolutely HATE the game Monopoly. There are many reasons for this loathing, but just today, I have found another one.

Click the link for the full story.

Essentially, Monopoly makers Parker Brothers have decided it's time to get "with the times" and replace all the money with a Debit card system.

Ugh! I am probably one of the few people my age that still prefers to carry cash even to a checkbook...and prefers to use a checkbook over a debit card. Back in my teenage years, when I got my first job and first checking account, I had a debit card. I used it a little bit the first few months, but it quickly lost its novelty and I resorted to using checks or (most of the time) hitting the ATM and taking out cash.

The potential for irresponsibility bread in using solely credit and debit cards is the primary reason I'm against them. People just swipe their card and as long as the transaction goes through, they often think nothing of it. I know people who seldom or never write down any of the many transactions they make with their debit or credit card and instead make a daily phone call to their bank or cc company to get their balance.

Adding this kind of system to Monopoly only helps to perpetuate this problem amid the poor souls who get conned into playing this game in the first place. Furthermore, it makes it difficult to quickly determine the game leader by scanning piles of money...and it removes the monopoly money from the library of game tools that can be used for other things (how many people have used monopoly money for something other than playing monopoly).

I'm thinking of starting a petition to keep money as an option...maybe give a "cash discount" for properties payed for with cash. ;)

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