This week, I got to meet one of my high school friend’s daughter for the first time. At one point in our conversation, we got to discussing money and investing, but Callie needed a little attention, so my friend started telling her all the video games he was going to teach her to play once she was older (she’s about two months old right now) and he started with Tetris.

Considering we’d just been talking about retirement accounts, 529 plans and investing, while he soothed his daughter by telling her about how she has to make sure she builds nice, big walls so that you can drop in the long piece and get the most points but you also have to make sure you don’t go to high, wait too long and get screwed… let’s just say, I noticed an analogy there.

So I whipped out my phone to make a note that it would be a good post while he laughed at me and now here we are.

Think about it though, Tetris is really a perfect analogy for a lot of things in life. The game is all about balancing risk and reward while making smart decisions along the way.

A simple way to get a lot of points is to use your pieces to fill in everything but that long single line section and just keep going while you wait for one to appear. Once one does, you get the maximum amount of points and your rows drop down to a safer level. While you’re waiting though, the lines add up further and further. You have to fight the temptation to drop a difference sized block in the single hole you’ve created and lower your rows to a safer level, but then you have to deal with the blockage you’ve created, hopefully before you get one of the long single line sections. And in my experience, the game knows once you’ve blocked off that spot and sends you a long single line immediately after.

However, even while you’re building up all of that other section, you still have to make good choices – even though you have more options for a while. Fortunately the game starts out pretty slow. You have time to think through what you want to do. If you make a misstep, it’s much easier to fix rather than totally derail your game. By the time the pieces are shooting down at warp speed, you’ve got a plan and you know what you’re doing.

In life, that rocket ship you’re aiming for is financial independence – either at retirement age or younger. You keep trying to build up the rest of your game with savings, 401ks, 529s, IRAs, pensions, taxable investment accounts, etc. With some things, like investments, it’s best to try to build up your game by leaving them alone. They’re really like when you build up a big chunk and wait until just the right moment to drop in the long single line.

There are other times in the game where it would be game over if you didn’t drop that weird zig zag piece into your growing tower, even though you have to deal with the obnoxious leftover line that blocks your way to major success over the next turn or two. Times like this are when you have to tap your emergency fund.

Fortunately, if you start playing the financial game while you’re young, all the pieces are moving really slowly. If you find that you should’ve flipped that one block and scooted it all the way left, but you didn’t, there’s still plenty of time to fix it. It’ll be years before the pieces are flying down at you – but you’ll have a solid foundation in how to play the game by then and you’ll be able to cope.

What games remind you of personal finance lessons?