Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was the unlikely personal finance teacher of my childhood.
You’d think that an 18-rated game played almost entirely by 15-year-olds was bad parenting, but on reflection: I disagree.
Here are three lessons from Grand Theft Auto for financial independence.
This is pretty light reading for the Financial Independence Campaign. Can’t be super-serious all the time!
Grand Theft Auto? Wait a minute, isn’t that the one where…
Rockstar North released this series of games from 1997 onwards, but the series really hit pace around 2002 with the release of one of my favourite video games ever: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
In the game, you play a 1980s Italian-American mobster called Tommy Vercetti, who has just been released from prison and sent to the pseudo-Miami of Vice City to set up a new arm of the Italian mob. On arrival, Tommy is ambushed in a drug deal, from which he barely escapes.
A tale of morality, this is not.
The game is then split into two halves:
- The first, where Tommy is trying to find out who set up the ambush.
- The second, where Tommy starts establishing himself as the top crime lord, kind of like Scarface.
Truly weird missions, dark comedy and extreme video game violence abound.
I’ll link the official trailer below. I warn you – this is Not Safe For Work. It’s not even safe for semi-polite company. Probably best not to watch it in public places or without headphones.
What does pixellated crime in 1980s Miami Vice styling have to teach about personal finance?!
No, I’m not recommending a life of crime.
1. Take your risks early, while they’re small
For pure gameplay reasons, the weapons available to your character improve throughout the game. You have to purchase them from weapon shops, such as “Ammu-Nation”.
As you progress through the missions, you unlock the ability to buy better versions of the weapons you can carry.
The thing is, the price of the weapons doesn’t grow in a predictable linear fashion, and the effectiveness of the weapons isn’t linear either. Your second tier pistol isn’t twice as effective as your first tier pistol, but it almost costs twice as much.
Oh, and if you die in the game, you restart at a hospital empty-handed.
Impulsive gamers will simply try to buy the best weapons they can, as soon as they can. After all, it’s a video game, you don’t need to worry about the consequences of your actions (thankfully!).
However, savvy gamers will make do with what they have early on, when missions are still simple and having the best weapon selection isn’t that much of an advantage. This allows the player to build up a substantial amount of cash quite early on while the stakes are low, which comes in helpful for the investing section in the next part of the game…
The lesson?
Delay gratification now, while the benefit is small. Get bigger rewards later.
2. Invest wisely early on and things get easier
In the second half of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Tommy suddenly gains the ability to buy business assets. Car showrooms, taxi cab firms, an ice-cream parlour, a nightclub… there may be a few more I’m missing.
If you buy the asset and complete a few simple activation missions, this then starts generating passive income that you simply need to pick up on your way past.
Yup, Grand Theft Auto was teaching kids about passive income in the early 00’s, before it was cool. You thought video games were teaching kids to be violent, but instead the gamers became investors.
After a while, the passive income generation dwarfs the money you can make from doing missions. This funds your character’s reign of terror, allowing you to buy the tools you need for whatever you want to achieve, all without a second thought.
Rockstar North took this even further in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which is another exceptional game.
You don’t have to buy all the business assets if you don’t want to. Or, at least, you don’t have to maximise their income potential. However, the game becomes significantly less of a grind and more of a gleeful romp if you do.
Lesson: invest now, get more freedom later.
3. There’s always another way to earn money
Not all of the game is committing audacious crimes for cash.
You can also side hustle in the Grand Theft Auto world. Early on, that can be quite helpful. Your character can become a taxi driver, a paramedic, a vigilante, a pizza delivery driver or your regular drug-dealer in an ice-cream van, pretty much as a side-hustle on demand.
It’s possible to grind out early on and build up investing capital if you really want to. There’s no need, but if you like variety in your missions it’s one way to accumulate capital to buy the more expensive businesses earlier.
This applies to the real world. There’s usually a side hustle you can pick up somewhere. It may not be big cash, but if you’re looking to find a few extra pennies early in your FI campaign it’s a nice start. You can read about some of the side hustles I’ve tried out on this blog.
There isn’t one rule that works for everyone – there’s always another opportunity somewhere else.
Final thoughts
I feel that this should go without saying, but: this post is an entertainment post. Do not, under any circumstances, misread this blog post as some attempt to glorify crime, violence, cultural stereotyping, overt sexism or anything remotely similar.
Ironically, the protagonists in Vice City and later San Andreas actually stand to make a lot more money from their legitimate businesses than from their lives of crime. It just keeps flowing in. By contrast, there are only so many other rival mob bosses you can kill off, even in a game, and some of those missions are outright stressful.
Here’s the thing, though: of all the hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of players who grew up playing these games, how many invested in businesses or real estate? How many people – myself included – simply overlooked that part of the game mechanics?
In marketing there’s a concept by Dr Jeffrey Lant called the “Rule of Seven”. The idea is loosely that to convert someone who’s never heard of you into a customer usually requires about seven touch points, starting with making them aware that you exist. Here’s an article from a marketing company about the rule of seven.
I wonder if investing is the same. Until you’ve had those seven touch points telling you “hey, this investing lark is pretty smart!“, perhaps you aren’t ready to commit to investing in assets at all.
If so, I’m both somewhat proud and conversely slightly ashamed to admit the Grand Theft Auto was probably one of my seven points.
Perhaps inspiration and motivation can come from the most unlikely sources?
Anyway, must dash. I’ve got to hijack an attack helicopter and hunt rival gang members. Bye for now!
