Tales of My Childhood #24

The photo above is of the house I grew up in…but not really. The house I grew up in was considerably larger, it wasn't green, it wasn't plastic and while real estate was pretty cheap in 1953, my father paid considerably more than $180 for it.  But it was on a street called Tennessee Avenue.  Also, there were other houses on our Tennessee Avenue and no one acquired four of them and then replaced them with a red plastic hotel.

My father was not wealthy, then or ever, but in 1953, he had what it took to buy a two-bedroom home in a fairly nice neighborhood.  What it took was a steady job. Wouldn't it be nice if that's all it took today to make the down payment on a house and get a reasonable mortgage via which to pay the balance?  For that matter, wouldn't it be nice these days if everyone had a job as steady as they wanted?

I first played the game of Monopoly® at my grandparents' home in Hartford, Connecticut. This was in the summer of 1959 when I was seven years old.  My mother took me on a trip back east — to New York, Hartford and Boston in that order — partially to sight-see and partially so I could meet some of my relatives and they could meet me. In Hartford, we stayed with her parents and they had a very, very old Monopoly set with wooden pieces. Today, that set would probably sell for more than the cost of rent on Park Place with a hotel on it.

I picked up on the game right away and became so good at it that I won almost every time. Yes, I was very smart at that age…though not smart enough to realize that Grandpa, Grandma and my mother were often letting me win.  Still, I might have won anyway because of my strategy. I always managed to acquire the three properties in the orange group — St. James Place, New York Avenue and Tennessee Avenue. I wanted it for two reasons, one being that it included Tennessee Avenue, the street upon which I lived.

And the other reason I wanted it was simple: It was orange. As I've mentioned here in past Tales of My Childhood, orange was my favorite color and it still is. There are a number of things I own for no absolutely no reason except that they're a nice shade of orange.

But as I found out years later when several different people wrote articles and books about How to Win at Monopoly®, buying up the orange group of properties is a pretty wise strategy. One reason of several: You can pretty much count on everyone going to jail one or more times during a game. One way you get out of jail is to roll doubles…and if you roll two threes, you then land on St. James Place (which is orange) and if you roll two fours, you land on Tennessee Avenue (also orange). And if I own the orange group and I've built hotels on it, you owe me $950.

I was so expert at it that at age seven, I got to experience the sublime joy of bankrupting your grandmother.  I think I did that every single time we played…and little did I know then that someday, I would do that for real.

What I just typed there is not a joke. When my grandmother was 89, via a series of deft financial maneuvers, I managed to acquire enough of her assets to render her indigent. I actually did that…

…and she was very happy I did. At that age, she was widowed, living alone and unable to take care of herself. She wanted to spend the rest of her life in a certain assisted living home where several friends of her resided but there was a waitlist that could have meant years before there would be an opening for her.

An 89-year-old woman can't wait forever. She needed a new place to live a.s.a.p. so I got a lawyer. He investigated and he found what good lawyers are supposed to find.  He found a loophole.

There was some law in Connecticut which I won't pretend I understood.  All I needed to know was that if Grandma had fewer assets — house, bank account, investments, etc. — she would qualify for some special program and we could get her in there faster. We had to get her net worth under a certain level so we did. With her trust and just enough understanding to okay the whole thing, I acquired enough of those assets to get her into the place where she wanted to spend her remaining years. She spent the rest of her life there and I paid for everything.

Some months after she passed, I thought to ask a question of my Business Manager Person who had arranged most of that great financial maneuver. I asked him if I made a profit from bankrupting my grandmother. He said, "It's a matter of perspective. You could have incurred a significant loss if she'd lived another year or two. As it was, you made a little money on the deal but since years earlier, she'd made you the sole beneficiary in her will, it's money you would have received anyway."

I think I'm remembering that correctly. All I'm sure of is that he agreed with me when I said, "So I didn't really make a profit bankrupting my grandmother — not in playing Monopoly® and not in real life." He said that basically, I had it right. So I pass on to you this simple lesson: If you have a grandmother and you're thinking of bankrupting her, don't bother. There's no money in it.