I was about 8 the first time I played Monopoly. My friend Stacey laid out the board and I watched how everybody fought to be the banker… and then everybody fought to get the token they wanted. I was just thrilled to get free money. Wouhou!

And so, I rolled the dice and made my way around the board, (darn old shoe) picking up cards, passing go, getting stuck in jail and getting out again… What a boring game; I thought. So this went on for a (long) while and by the end of the game I had a little pile of money and 0 (read, no) properties.

I remember looking around the table, my chest swelling, and thinking I was the best player since I seemed to have more money than everyone else. Oh shure, they had properties… Ha! But they were broke. Keep in mind that we didn’t even know what those little plastic red and green things were for… (cut us some slack… we were a bunch of 7-8 year olds)

I also remember feeling really, really, REALLY frustrated when I had to pay to get out of jail or for some other rotten card. Awww No fair… ! No wonder I got bored with the game pretty quickly. Barbies anyone?

I refused to play for the longest time… then I said: Ok. I’ll play if I’m the banker. I remember feeling important and I was happy to be handing out money and having an even bigger pile of cash in front of me. I guess I didn’t even really realize that the Bank’s money wasn’t my own personal wealth… (Kinda like I viewed credit I guess)

Fast forward about 25 years. Last Christmas, my rather shy and quiet brother in-law suggests we play a game before dinner. Let’s play Monopoly he says. Uggh… I thought as I sat down to play. Ok. But I’ll be the banker. (hehehe)

Watching my brother in-law Dave play Monopoly was a real eye opener for me. For one thing, the brainy quiet intellectual became a competitive, confident and unbelieveably good strategist and negociator. Who knew???

As I watched him play, I finally understood how the game was meant to be played. As I went around the board, still not buying anything for the first few times around… (sigh…) I watched him buy every single property he landed on.

While I slowly went around and collected my measly income in the hopes of having a nice pile of cash in front of me, he was running on empty but he owned a ton of properties and he was beginning to acquire the properties owned by the other players. Furthermore, as soon as he would earn a little money, he bought houses, hotels and more hotels … I was starting to wonder if he was Mr. Hilton’s long lost son!

As it turns out, there was method to his madness.

Needless to say, I was the first one to file for bankrupcy… and he raked it in every time people landed on his properties.

Of course he won the game and laughed triumphantly as he counted his bounty. (Eeeexcellent Smithers… he said as he brought his fingertips together… Very fitting as it was a Simpsons Monopoly Game)

I truly had an A-Ha! moment on that fateful night of Monopoly mahem. I realized I treat real money the same way I treat my Monopoly money. Needless to say, it was not a good, solid relationship and I figured it was time to start treating my money with more respect.

On that night, I learned that :

• I didn’t know the rules of the game when it comes to money. (I’m learning)
• I preferred having a small pile of money in front of me rather than spending it on a sound investment. (still like seeing money in the bank even though I carry a debt)
• I was not much of a risk taker. (At least not financially)
• I was not much of a negociator because I would make deals that were a “win” for my sister in law (read : give away) because I really like her (and wanted her to wipe the smugness off of Dave’s face… hehehe)
• I didn’t take it (the game) seriously and had no real strategy for winning. (Same with my personal finances)
• I liked giving it out… playing the banker made me feel like I was helping the other players. (my Mother Teresa Side)
• My game strategy, or lack thereof, only brought me stress as I had to constantly pay out and I only made a few dollars on the crappy properties I had been willing to buy later in the game.
• I was out of the game almost before it started and I’m sure if there had been a Monopoly Visa card, I would have applied for it and racked up some heavy debt to pay off Dave and his evil hotel empire on those expensive properties.

I see the game in a new light now…. and although I have no ambition of building a real-life monopoly of any sort, (I believe there is more than enough to go around) I have more fun playing with my money now… both on, and off the Monopoly board.

Oh and Dave, if you read this… be afraid… I’ve learned my Monopoly lessons and have done my research (mou ha ha haaaa!) You will have a worthy opponent next year before Christmas Dinner.

Seems like all the planets are aligning to make June a very interesting, perhaps pivotal month. I guess everything that has gone on in the past 3 years have brought me to this point and I’m taking another leap of faith. I’m also doing something different this time. Instead of going at it alone, I’ve joined forces with other people who are willing to make changes to their lives. This is very exciting!

I decided to join the Zen Habits June Challenge.

If you’ve never been to Zen Habits, please, please put this high up on your to do list. Make sure you have some time for browsing though because Leo provides volumes of fantastic articles, posts, tips and inspiration. Zen habits has become a habit of mine and it’s the first blog I check out in the morning.

So the goal with the Zen Habits June Challenge is to form a new, positive habit in 30 days. I want to form 3 new habits (being a multitasker I think 3 is reasonable hehehe.) I want to laugh, meditate and play outside with my son every single day. I’m looking forward to seeing the positive change this will bring about. As I get older, I find I am way too serious and I have always spent too much time in front of the computer… Should be fun! Looking forward to hearing how others do as well.

I’ve also been playing the Prosperity Game.

This is a site I stumbled upon through my google ad surfing and I’ve been hooked ever since. It’s a free online game that helps people shift their attitude towards money. To play, you have to create a list of 100 things you would like to have if you could have anything in the world. (this is harder than I thought. I only have 44 things so far…) No money limits.

Then, every day, you log in and there is a virtual cheque in your name and you are free to spend it as you wish. Fun!

It’s a very eye opening experiment for me. I realized that I even feel guilty spending fake money. Sheesh.
When Elyse, the site’s creator, sent me an email regarding their Play your way to Prosperity experiment I signed up right away. This should also be a fun experiment and will likely help me along the way as my goal for this year is to owe 0. See my Io0 blog if you are also on a path to financial freedom.

The ultimate goal for June will be consistency. It’s easy to sign-up for things. Now the goal is to follow through!

Love, light, gratitude and peace.

Yan

In “The Secret” Mike Dooley introduces the simple “Thoughts become things” catch phrase. (Actually, Mike has been saying this for years on his “Totally Unique Thoughts” site but I recently rediscovered him in the Secret.)

This is a concept that I’ve experimented with for many years and I have found to be absolutely true. It’s not a new concept and many, many, many people over the years have talked and written about it.

Our thoughts create our reality. If you believe that you don’t have enough money, you will never have enough. If you believe money is hard to come by, it will be.

Up till recently, the idea of poverty is what I created for myself. I left my parents house when I was 16 to go to College and University and from that day on, I felt dirt poor. I felt like I didn’t have enough. I felt trapped. Thanks to my tuition fees, I felt like I would have debt my whole life. I looked at people with money and felt it was so unfair for some to have so much when others have so little. When friends or family wanted to give me gifts, I felt unworthy and would often turn them down. I was the epitomy of the “poor me” mentality and this way of seeing things became so engrained into by being that even though I was making a ton of cash after University, I still felt like it wasn’t enough. So after years of feeling poor I created real poverty in my life.

Now, let’s put things into perspective… I was part of the middle class which made me rich by 3rd world country standards. I always paid my bills on time, put food on the table, clothes on my back, a good roof over our heads … really I had everything I needed. But I felt poor because I couldn’t just get everything I wanted when I wanted it. Because of that I always felt frustrated and it created this negative spiral that prevented me from living the life I wanted… and from seeing what was in front of my nose; I was already wealthy.

Like everybody I know, I’ve been sprinting my life marathon since I left my parents house: Highschool, College, University, Climbing the corporate ladder for 10 years till one day a boss told me he owned me. Quit the corporate world, started a business and had a child at the same time. Honestly, I never had time to stop and think about anything. I just kept running and spending like so many other rats in this race.

By today’s standards, we owe very little. I look at other blogs where people owe 60K or 130K or even more. We don’t owe anything near that. But for us, it was as far as we wanted to go in our poor us mentality.

Wealth is a state of mind not just a number on your bank statement.

Now, we are learning to shift our thinking from lacking to abundance. We express gratitude for all our blessings… big and small. We treat our money with respect and reward ourselves frequently for being money conscious. We enjoy simple things that cost nothing that enrich our souls and we have a mini celebration everytime we pay our bills and our cc debt because we know that we are getting closer to our goal of owing nothing.