Is Life Really Like This?!

My 9-year old niece, Ashley, got this game, Life Twists & Turns, for Christmas. It's the same basic idea as the original Life game, but you can choose to start on 1 of 4 life paths: education, career, family or fun, or something like that. You rack up money and life points as you go, get married, have kids, earn a degree, whatever. The best part is that you use fake debit cards and a machine that keeps track of everything, it even rolls for you. We played it a few times in St. Louis with and without Ashley and then when we got back to D.C. we had to get it.

But there are a few weird things about this game that supposedly is teaching our youth about what life is really about:

1. You don't get enough points for going to school and getting a degree. If you start on the education path, you have to pay $20,000 right off the bat to pay for a bachelor's degree. Your degree only moves you up one step on the career ladder, so that's like from $5,000 to $15,000 a year. I think we should give a degree a little more credit. This is actually Jon's pet peeve on this game. He think's it discourages kids from going to college. You actually make more money by choosing a career that requires no schooling.

2. At the start of the game, you can choose a career card. They range from acting, entreprenuerial, sports star, or miscellaneous, where you can jump from nanny to car wash owner. For the careers that don't require a degree you can move up a lot faster than those with a degree.

Jon and I just played and he beat me, even though I had two kids and he had none. He won by ending up with like $5,000,000 to my $3,000,000. Go figure. Money wins everytime in this game.