I love ‘Monopoly Deal’. It’s an awesome card game derived from Monopoly. You win by collecting three different set of cards representing properties—before your competitors do. What makes this game so awesome, you might ask? Its pretty similar to real life personal financial management.

In order to win at Monopoly Deal, you need to make decisions very similar to the kind you need to make about your personal finances. You need to ensure that your liquid and illiquid assets are balanced. You need to plan your cash flow in advance for every turn. For our personal finances, we need to know if we are going to have money to pay for occasional spending events like big ticket purchases or year end taxes by taking into account the cash flow from our incomes and our spendings.

What makes Monopoly Deal tough to win is exactly what makes financial planning so difficult — long term planning. The toughest part about personal finances is not that it’s hard to know what your current and near-term financial situation is–with enough tools available to consolidate all your bank accounts, credit cards, loan accounts, etc in one place, it’s easy to know where you stand currently. The tough part is predicting cash flows and planning a year in advance how to meet spending and budgeting goals. Planwise is pretty much the only tool available that makes long-term financial planning simple. It takes away all the complexity of income, spending and budgeting and shows you exactly how your cash flows look all the way up to a 30-year horizon.

Next time I play Monopoly Deal, I have a plan. I am going to use the new Planwise iPad app to increase my chances of winning.

Guest blog post by Rutul Davé

Rutul is the co-founder of Bright Funds, a better way to give. Bright Funds is integrated into Planwise to provide a complete solution for financial savvy individuals to plan their future finances and charitable giving.

 

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