Prosperity: Planning Your Future (0)

Prosperity: Planning Your Future looks like Monopoly on the surface, but is a much more sophisticated game intended to teach children the realities of earning a living and keeping the family solvent and safe. Each player starts by picking a profession at random, with salaries ranging from 120 pounds a month for a postman to 300 pounds a month for an actor.

Player tokens then proceed around the board with opportunities to make investments in either unit trusts (which pay triple at game end) or a house, to use hire-purchase to buy household appliances, to put money into or take it out of banks and building societies (paying 8%) or Local Council (10%), as well as to encounter Accidents or Unexpected Expenses and to buy a wide variety of Insurance Policies against such ills.

Purchasing a property requires a minimum deposit, surveyors fee and solicitors fee, as well as monthly repayments of about 1% of the mortgage amount. Passing Start provides monthly salary for the occupation less all monthly payments (rent or mortgage, insurance, hire-purchase). The winner is the first to accumulate total assets of 15,000 pounds.

This made-in-England game is undated, but the graphics point to late 1950s or early 1960s (the family father on the box is smoking a cigar and wearing a jacket with cravat). The box claims a copyright, but there is no indication of the copyright owner or publisher, with the possible exception of a small cathedral-like logo on all four sides of the box. The rules and play suggest it might have been produced by a company in the investment or insurance business.

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