How to Get Monopoly Rich, Quick

It’s almost two in the morning, and I’m up playing Monopoly, dreaming, as every kid does, about all the wealth he’ll command. Trouble is, it’s just a fantasy and, well as I’m doing, happy as my life is, I don’t own much. So what’s a free, white, non-landowning male to do? So far, all I have is the fantasy. Which brings me back to Monopoly.

Who doesn’t love Monopoly? What is it that is so amazing about the game or, rather, so enduring, because pretty much every other household had it, and this is over the last, what, forty years? I suppose you could separate people into those who couldn’t be bothered, as in, “jeeze, Monopoly? No way, what’s that, like two hours? Uhg…” and those, like me, who begged for it, “two hours?! No way! No, swear. It goes fast, don’t you remember how fast it went last time, no, I know I won then but that’s only cause I got lucky.”

I was the kid who loved it. To put it simply, I think I loved the idea of ownership. Still do, in fact. Which brings me to this, Monopoly is back: The Blog for the New Monopoly.

The short of it is that Hasbro partneredup with Google Maps to make a kind of hybrid, semi-functional World Monopoly. It attempted to Launch today (had over two million hits, they’re estimating, and has been running, if at all, like my porn did back in 96′ on a 56k modem), and intends to run for four months. The way it works is when you first sign on you buy a street, any street that hasn’t already been bought, pretty much any street in the world. They give you 3 million monopoly dollars up front. Wait, hell, I don’t need to explain all of this to you. If you’re into Monopoly in any way, check the damn thing out yourself.

What interests me in this new variation of the game is the fantasy aspect and how silly it is. All I keep thinking lately (at twenty-seven years old) is, “what do I own?” Besides my stuff and a motorcycle, I don’t really own anything. And it’s not that I feel the measure of a man is in his wallet, or portfolio or whatever, just that that sort of stuff really interests me. It seems awfully exciting, for example, to own a building. Sure, there’s lots of maintenance and insurance and whatnot, but imagine walking along a street and sayin’, “hey, that thing’s mine. All those people in there, they pay me for the right to live there.” And it gets to a point, it really does, where the goddam building pays for itself. Just sitting there, making money.

I realize none of this is any kind of revalation to most people, that everyone gets that if you ‘ve got some money, you can buy a building, and that brings me to the major flaw of Monopoly or Monopoly love: the cash up front.

What nobody remembers is how, starting off, they just give you the money. I mean, imagine that. Imagine you’re just some guy, walking around New York. Sure, you’ve got a suit (probably lent to you) and that monocle (which, on a poor guy, is just what, half a pair of glasses, which is tres-wretched in most circles). You go for this little walk and, BAM!, you look down and suddenly have enough money to buy St. James Place, Marvin Gardens and goddam Boardwalk. Boardwalk, people! You don’t even have to work upto Boardwalk, you can just land on the sunnavabitch, first round the board, and buy it. Oh sure, might take you a few turns before you can really build it up with houses and all, but that property, that’s pretty much set in stone. Not like you’ll ever have to trade it.

And so that’s the trouble. I think I have all of this love, all of this appreciate for the buying and selling of real estate, and absolutely no concept, no basic plan, idea or strategy, for how one just suddenly has all that start-up cash. This, of course, is the dilemma of everyone (accounting for the, what, 99% of the world who aren’t rich). Where the hell do I get all of that money?

It can’t be hard work, right? Because, as I see it, it’s just such a goddampoor life to work my ass off, save, save, save, save, and still save, until I get just enough to buy, what, something?…Something that makes me some money? And then, save, save, again, and buy something else. What about money for a family, for fun…what about scotch?

And it brings me to this: I’d like to own something. Recently, say six months ago, I got a similar bug, with stocks. I don’t plan on starting up a company any time soon, but I’vealways liked the idea of owning a bit of a business. So I did some research and opened up an account. I bought a few, meager shares of Microsoft, a company I think will keep doing well, and Jet Blue, a company whose staff seems pretty happy (about the best signal this financially naive fellow has at for guaging a business’ competitiveness). The market was way down, and I’ve since earned about 20% on my investment. I went from $500 bucks to about %600. Not bad after only six months. I suppose had I invested, say, 500,000, I would have earned a hundred grand, but that leads me right back to the beginning, the not having $500000.

Maybe what us suckers need, is some small, tiny bit of property that we, the average folk, can afford. This isn’t the million-dollar-average house in San Francisco that is all but impossible for me to work up to, or even the $150,000 joint in Bakersfield that I’ll never want to own. This is just something small, easier to obtain, the way I can buy a tiny piece of Microsoft of Jet Blue. How about a tiny plot of land by some road off the I80. You’re saying everything good is already taken, what about cots. Sure. Just a little 10×10 foot plot of land, cost, maybe ten grand, and I could put two or three cots on it and charge $5 a night for hitch-hikers. At that rate, I’d make conservatively $300 a month, maybe a touch more over the holidays where cot-renting is all the rage. That’s some real income. With that money, I could get a loan for another $10,000 and buy the 10×10 foot plot next to it. I could upgrade the cots to tents, charge $12 a night per tent, hell, a few years of this pattern, and I’d have a little campground empire.

Now, any of you who have done your business homework, are queueing up the comments section, eager to jump in and tell me about REITs (that’s it, right, it’s not RIETs, or some other variation?). REITs are, in fact, exactly this, tiny shares of real estate that folks can invest in, just like stock. But that’s no fun. It’s entirely arbitrary. I want something I can point to. “There!” he shouts, with a demonstrable finger towards a small plot of earth, “That’s my goddam land, Shannon!”

All of this brings me back to a personal regret, if ‘regret’ is the word, that I never really got to talk with my father much about real-estate, or about, on a grander scale, how to be a grown-up. He died when I was 19, just a few years shy of having moved into the, ‘so, father, I’ve learned about being a man, about love, responsibility, how to get a good job and education and all, now, would you mind explaining real-estate acquisition?’ speech.

Maybe someone has some advice for me, maybe I just need that wealthy uncle to take me under his wing, show me the ropes, pass off a couple of properties for me to manage and, with a little work, slowly, I get my own. Maybe he lends me one for a summer, and I take that rent money I’ve earned and start that campground scheme that’s looking pretty good at about 2 in the morning.