Leaping From The Box

Each year for Christmas I try to find one board game (or other type of game) that the whole family will enjoy playing. I have had some successes or many failures. It seems like each member of the family likes something different in a board game. One year Kat preferred Mancala to all other games. Charles always wants to play Risk. David usually prefers PC games to board games. Fluxx is a card game that all the children love to play and has been a popular one to take along when visiting friends and relatives, easy to learn and a fast moving game. My favorite board game is Pente. Well, actually it is Scrabble, but rarely will anyone play that with me, so my second favorite is Pente. Bill has never really cared for board games; he much prefers playing the card game Euchre.

This year my board game choice was Cashflow 101, produced by Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad fame. I have looked longingly at this game for the past two Christmases, but the price always made me turn away and purchase something else. I have no clue what games I did buy those two years, as no one played them, therefore making them bad investments. Cashflow 101, though, has proven to be an excellent investment, even with its hefty price tag. The only one who has not played it at least twice so far is Bill. My son-in-law has even taken to driving a four-hour round trip on his days off to play the game. I am not sure that is a good investment on his part, given the price of gas. But it was nice to see my four children (three children, one son-in-law) all around the dining room table playing at getting out of the rat race.

Escaping the rat race is the main goal of Cashflow 101. In order to accomplish this, the game forces you to begin thinking differently about your money. A big screen TV is not an asset, nor is a boat, not a true money-earning asset. By delaying purchasing things you want in the game and actually putting your money to work in a money-making asset, like a rental home or dividend paying stock, then you can begin to use the money your assets are earning you to finance those things you want to buy. The key is to see those moneymaking possibilities, to recognize them as opportunities rather than throwing up your hands and declaring that you cannot afford them.

Each person in the game begins with a career and an accompanying income and expense sheet. You quickly see that while some careers pay more, there are also more expenses (college loans, etc.) and it seems that those who make more always have higher expenses (bigger house, more toys, etc.). Having a child greatly increases your monthly expenses. Along the way you have the opportunity to buy stocks, invest in real estate, buy boats, give to charity, all real-life possibilities. In order to get out of the rat race you must grow your passive income (income earned from investments) to the point where it is higher than your expenses, thus allowing you to quit your day job.

Once you have played the game successfully a few times, escaped the rat race, then you are encouraged to make up your own “career” cards, using your current, present-day career and expenses. This enables you to see how you can actually implement the ideas of the game into your own life, using your own finances.

Not only is this a great game for beginning to view your finances in a more opportunistic way, but it is also a great game for honing your math skills. Each roll of the dice causes you to have to refigure your balance sheet, make decisions based upon ROI (return on investment), bank loan repayments, percentages, etc. Lots of math involved here!

Final analysis? Even though this game has a pretty hefty initial investment, it’s ROI appears to be very good. Only time will tell whether the game truly makes a difference in our financial lives. But its entertainment value is high and it is a great learning tool for reinforcing ones math skills. That makes it a better investment than many other games I have purchased in the past. I definitely recommend it for your family.

The New Year is a good time for house cleaning and resetting priorities. The original intent of this blog was to keep subscribers up-to-date on new happenings at the Leaping From The Box website, along with reporting homeschool items of interest. Instead, over the past year or so, it has turned into my personal blog. No more!

If you would like to continue sharing my personal musings and mischief, please mosey on over to Musings, Mischief and Mayhem. I would love it if you would subscribe there also!

For the next few days, this site will be undergoing some changes. A new background will soon appear, along with revamped homeschool links. The archived personal posts will disappear (don’t panic! You can read them over at Musings, Mischief and Mayhem), leaving only those relevant to homeschooling / unschooling and the Leaping From The Box website.

Hopefully the changes will result in a more relevant and helpful blog. If you have suggestions about what you would like to see here, please leave me a comment!

Made in USA is a phrase that has taken on new meaning over the past several months. With recalls in food, toys, makeup, etc., many of us have been having second and third thoughts about purchasing items that are made in China. Not too long ago there was a news story of a family that went a whole year without buying anything made in China. Their book, A Year Without “Made In China”: One Family’s True Life Adventure in Global Economy (by Sara Bongiorni; ISBN: 0470116137) sounded like it would be an interesting read.

So lately I have been checking the labels of items I want to buy just to see where they are made, mostly out of curiosity to begin with, but now with more concern. For several months I tried to find bath towels that were made in the USA and fit my budget, two seemingly disparate criteria. Finally I found some at Sam’s Club, of all places! And just yesterday I was looking at potato mashers at Publix. They had three different brands, all made in China. Now a potato masher is probably not going to have lead paint on it and likely is pretty safe to buy, no matter where it is made. But still! Is there anything still manufactured in America?

With all that in mind, I have been thinking ahead to Christmas and what I might want to get for Miss Munchkin. She recently discovered baby dolls, but a trip to Toys R Us a couple of weeks ago was not real fruitful in that department. So I spent part of this afternoon looking for dolls made in the good ole USA. And actually found a couple. And some others that were made in Europe. Research indicates that the EU (European Union) has more stringent quality controls that the US, so likely any toy made in the EU is going to be as safe, if not safer, than any toy made here. That’s good to know.

I liked the Corolle dolls found at Kazoo Toys. Their website indicates the dolls are “designed in France” but does that mean they are made in France? I guess I will have to contact them to be sure.

The Kinder dolls at www.usmadetoys.com are cute.

Nico & Zoe has some cute cloth dolls.

If you are looking for toys made in America, or at least not made in China, here’s a couple of websites that will be very helpful:

10 Lead-Free Toys Made in USA.

Toys Made in America — Extensive list of American toy companies, brands and products.

I am definitely looking for a baby doll suitable for an almost two-year-old little girl this Christmas, so if you know where I can find one that is not made in China, leave me a comment! Thanks!