Harve$t Moon's Blog

About the Author

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David Perlmutter, MD, is president of the Perlmutter Health Center in Naples, Florida, and the co-founder and president of The Perlmutter Brain Foundation. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the American College of Nutrition and the Linus Pauling Award, and he serves on the Medical Advisory Board of TheDr. Oz Show. A frequent lecturer, he writes a blog at VanguardNeurologist.com and is a contributor to TheHuffington Post. He is the author of The Better Brain Book, Raise a Smarter Child by Kindergarten, and Power Up Your Brain.

Praise For…

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"Dr. Perlmutter outlines an innovative approach to our most fragile organ, the brain. He is an absolute leader in the use of alternative and conventional approaches in the treatment of neurologic disorders. I have referred him patients with wonderful results. He is on the cutting edge and can help change the way we practice medicine." --Mehmet Oz, MD

"Dr. Perlmutter takes us on a detailed tour of the destructive effects that 'healthy whole grains' have on our brains. Modern wheat, in particular, is responsible for destroying more brains in this country than all the strokes, car accidents, and head trauma combined. Dr. Perlmutter makes a persuasive case for this wheat-free approach to preserve brain health and functioning, or to begin the process of reversal." --William Davis, MD, author of Wheat Belly

"If you want to boost your brain power, keep your memory, and lift your mood and energy, as well as heal from a host of other common complaints, Dr. Perlmutter is your guide. This is the definitive instruction book for the care and feeding of your brain!" --Mark Hyman, MD, author of The Blood Sugar Solution

"Dementia and many other brain diseases are not inevitable, nor are they genetic. They are directly and powerfully linked to a diet high in sugar and grains. Grain Brain not only proves this, it also gives you everything you need to know to protect your brain--or a loved one's--now."--Christiane Northrup, MD, author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom

"This book is a treasure. It is filled with self-empowering wisdom and easily understood leading-edge science. It can help you to avoid the devastating effects of an unhealthy diet and the dietary factors which are involved. By learning from the information presented in Dr. Perlmutter's book, you can avoid multiple health and neurological problems."--Bernie Siegel, MD, author of Faith, Hope, and Healing and The Art of Healing

"A provocative, eye-opening scientific account of how diet profoundly influences nerve health and brain function. Grain Brain explains how the American diet rich in gluten and inflammatory foods is linked to neurological conditions. Dr. Perlmutter outlines a blueprint for optimal health and a more resilient brain through proper nutrition and lifestyle. Grain Brain is a must-read!"--Gerard E. Mullin, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and author of The Inside Tract: Your Good Gut Guide to Great Digestive Health

"Dr. Perlmutter is the leading integrative medicine neurologist in North America today. His ability to fully integrate conventional medicine diagnosis and treatment with the latest innovations in nutritional and environmental medicine is phenomenal. As a teacher and clinician, he has fundamentally changed how physicians and patients think about neurological degeneration and, happily, regeneration." --Joseph Pizzorno, MD, coauthor of Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine

"Dr. Perlmutter provides sound advice, supported by the latest and most well respected medical research." --Russell. B. Roth, MD, Past President, American Medical Association

"A galvanizing call to arms against a gluten-heavy diet....Perlmutter's credentials as a board-certified neurologist and American College of Nutrition Fellow make him a uniquely qualified voice in the debate about which foods are best for the brain and body." --Kirkus Reviews



"Mind-blowing and disruptive to some long-standing beliefs about what our bodies require for optimal health...GRAIN BRAIN lays out an easy-to-understand roadmap packed with the latest science." --Max Lugavere, Psychology Today



"A tour de force that is destined to save many lives. As I read this important and well-written book I found myself nodding my head vigorously in agreement at practically every page. [Grain Brain] gives us what we need to know to be well again. Please read it." --Health Central

by Becky Ferreira

It started, as many adventures have, in the town of Blackwater on the shores of Flat Iron Lake. I walked into the Gunsmith’s shop to check out his wares and saw the most provocative and expensive weapon I had ever come across—an “explosive rifle,” on sale for $10,000. Despite the fact that there were many people depending on me, the reformed Wild West outlaw John Marston, to carry out errands for them, I became obsessed with raising the cash to buy the gun.

You may have caught on that I’m not referring to real places or people, but rather locations and characters in the 2010 Rockstar game Red Dead Redemption. Like many fans of the game, I was completely sucked into Marston’s world, which is why I was surprised by how easily the explosive rifle derailed me from the main storyline. Ever since that frivolous quest, I’ve frequently found myself chasing virtual big ticket items in games like Skyrim or Horizon Zero Dawn, while holding off on other more pressing missions.

The result has been some weird lessons about money garnered from video games that are intended to be dazzling narratives, not financial primers. Because most immersive games mimic the real world to some extent, they weave in at least some rudimentary economic principles—a bank account, means of income, and products that can give you an edge when achieving your goals.

These systems are an important functional feature of the playing experience, but they also spotlighted some of my own financial strengths and weaknesses, and reinforced basic principles about real world finance. Here’s some examples of ways in which the bank accounts and wish lists of my game characters got me thinking about my money habits in real life.

Credit Impacts Pricing

Like most action-adventure games, it’s fairly easy to rustle up some cash in Red Dead Redemption, so my Marston took off to bag outlaws for the bounties, gamble, collect valuable herbs, and hunt game to sell in general stores.

When I eventually circled back to the Blackwater Gunsmith to collect my rifle, my Marston had also done a bunch of good deeds, apparently enough to accumulate the positive “honor” to be ranked a Peacemaker in the game (this status reflects how noble Marston has been in past social interactions; if you play as a scoundrel, you get different rewards). This cut store prices by 50%, and suddenly the explosive rifle was only valued at $5,000. Marston’s good behavioral track record had become a kind of permanent discount card.

In the real world, we have a similar system—credit scores—though it is correlated with the ability to consistently pay debts. That metric is not necessarily related to honorable actions in this day and age, yet does evoke however, an old-world honor when debts were a sign of weak will and questionable morals, and we hadn’t yet created a system that saddles people with an average of almost $40,000 of debt by their early twenties. But the point is the same: Consistency, whether it’s good deeds or paying bills, enables prices to fluctuate in your own favor.

When I played this game back in 2010, I was already aware that it’s a good idea to work on your credit score, but I hadn’t put much effort into it. Marston, wise rogue that he is, was part of the reason I got more invested in building better credit by prioritizing paying off debts and working to have low utilization ratios on my cards. I hope Red Dead Redemption 2, which is due out this October, will have other weird finance lessons in store for me.

Mo Money, Mo Problems

Notorious B.I.G.’s hit about the trappings that come with wealth is a timeless classic, and his point is borne out by some evidence (for instance, an estimated two thirds of lottery winners wind up going broke within a few years, according to the NY Daily News, and they are more likely to declare bankruptcy than the average American).

I recently experienced a similar effect in the addictive and beautiful game Horizon Zero Dawn. Like Red Dead Redemption, this game has some extraordinarily cool weapons that require some extra effort to obtain. In particular, I coveted enhanced versions of weapons called the Icerail, the Forgefire, and the Stormslinger, and I was overjoyed when I finally got together all the goods to claim them.

Unleashing the power of these weapons on the game’s robotic beasts was a literal blast. Suddenly I could do exponentially more damage to my adversaries, plus the enhanced guns are very fun to shoot.

But I quickly learned that the weapons were serious resource guzzlers. I had over 10,000 “metal shards,” the game’s currency, when I first got the guns, but because I had to constantly buy more juice for them, I ended up totally broke after only a few fights with machines. As with the real world, I found that there are plenty of hidden costs associated with shiny new toys that can lead to debt or bankruptcy if you’re not careful.

For me, IRL versions of these temptations are things like boats or horses, both of which are somewhat notoriously impractical purchases. Not only do these types of luxuries have big upfront costs, but they also demand an unpredictable amount of money to maintain and repair, in the case of boats, or keep healthy and safe in the case of horses (as the Simpson family learned in the classic episode “Lisa’s Pony”).

Learning to anticipate the actual experience of life with an impulse buy, as opposed to the idealized version we have in our heads, is a big factor in staying solvent. Aloy’s adventures with her advanced guns—as cool as they are—was a reminder of that reality.

Money Is Not the Same As Value

I recently played through Super Mario Odyssey, one of those games in which money is literally just lying around for the taking wherever you go. But while coins are easy to come by, the game’s main currency is Power Moons, which can be used to unlock new worlds and to fuel Mario’s airship. The Power Moons are normally awarded after completing levels or mini-games within the worlds, or figuring out how to obtain them from difficult to reach places.

But the stores in the game also sell Power Moons, so I thought maybe I could cheat a bit by just buying a bunch of them to fuel up the airship. As I quickly learned, though, before you’ve beat the entire game, you can only buy a single Moon at any shop. The game shows that buying a reward is less satisfying than “working” for the reward (not that it feels like work to play this very fun game).

This emphasis on hard work is central to morality tales about money that date back centuries, such as Aesop’s fable of the grasshopper and the ant. When money is inherited or otherwise not directly earned by an individual’s labor, there’s more of a social stigma attached to it compared to money that is earned by hard work (see: the negative archetypes of the “trust fund baby” or the “trophy wife”).

I admit it’s a stretch to think Super Mario Odyssey is intentionally making a point about how pursuing valuable items through effort is more rewarding than simply buying them outright with easy cash. But the game plays on that psychology nonetheless, in order to encourage richness of gameplay experience, rather than Mario’s literal richness in coins.

Many of us may experience some of the same effect once we start becoming financially independent from our parents. It can be initially intimidating to have to start balancing your own budget, but there’s a satisfaction that comes with earning and spending your own money that can’t be learned secondhand, or through lucky windfalls alone.

Likewise, Super Mario Odyssey reinforces the idea that the gratification of a reward is related to exploration and discovery of pursuit, and the pleasure of new skills, which is more valuable in the long run than any bank account balance.

Of course, plenty of video games are built on some rather bad or even illegal financial habits (looking at you, Grand Theft Auto). But one of the joys of exploring these imaginative worlds and living through a character’s perspective is that every player has a unique individual experience. The above lessons are not revolutionary, and it would be disingenuous to say I spent hours playing these games because I was looking for financial guidance. But encountering money principles in these games enriched my understanding of how I manage my finances in the real world—an environment in which, unfortunately, cash isn’t just littered all over the ground.

(I've always wondered what this spinning top is about. Interesting! ~Moon)

Money Lessons from the Game of Dreidel (Gambling)

by Sebastian and Tawnya

We are now officially in the midst of the holiday season.

While most can readily point to the dominant holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year, they aren’t the only ones.

In fact, the holiday season is filled with several other holidays you may not even be aware of.

One such event is the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Also known as the Festival of Lights, Hanukkah is an 8-day celebration commemorating the miracle of the oil during the rededication of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

 

One of the most recognized and beloved traditions of Hanukkah is playing the game dreidel, and is something I do with my students every year. I firmly believe in teaching tolerance for differences and beliefs, and so I spend a great deal of time exposing my students to different cultures and traditions.

While my students have a great time playing dreidel, it is far more than just a game. In fact, dreidel is a fantastic teaching tool, especially when it comes to money.

Those of you familiar with dreidel already know its many relations to money, but for those of you who don’t, I’d like to break the mold this holiday season by focusing on a non-dominant tradition and the lessons we can learn from it.

I want to share with you money lessons from the game of dreidel.

But first, a little history lesson.

 

The History of Dreidel

Dreidel originally developed from a gambling game played in various parts of Europe that used a top called a teetotum.

However, the game of dreidel became solidified within the Jewish culture during the reign of the Syrian king Antiochus IV, who ruled what is modern-day Israel in 167 BC (the start of the Maccabean Revolt).

Antiochus had attempted to force the Jewish people to convert and worship the Greek gods by forbidding Jewish religious practice. With this decree, actions such as studying the Torah were punishable by death.

Although still very dangerous, the game of dreidel was developed as a shield for Jews who were illegally studying the Torah. If Syrian soldiers or officials came around, the Torah scrolls were hidden and replaced by dreidels.

Thus, dreidel originated as a way for Jewish individuals to access their religious teachings.

 

How Do You Play Dreidel?

At its core, dreidel is a basic gambling game.

A dreidel is a four-sided top, with each side displaying one of four symbols. The symbols are letters from the Hebrew alphabet, and stand for Yiddish words.

The four words are:

Nun = “nothing”

Hay = “half”

Gimel = “everything”

Shin = “put in”

 

Aside from a dreidel, you’ll also need a good amount of gelt (the Yiddish word for “money”) to play the game. These typically take the form of chocolate coins, but real coins can be used as well.

The setup for dreidel is somewhat like poker, except there is no dealer and strategy doesn’t play a role. Any number of people can play.

To start, everyone puts one piece of their gelt into the pot. Each player takes turns spinning the dreidel, and acts according to what symbol they land on.

• If you land on Nun, you do nothing.
• If you land on Hay, you take half of the pot.
• If you land on Gimel, you take everything in the pot.
• If you land on Shin, you put one of your coins in the pot.

When the pot is emptied or has only one piece left, everyone must add a piece of gelt. Once a player is out of coins they can either be out or ask another player for a loan.

You win the game of dreidel by getting all the gelt, or by whoever has the most gelt if the game is ended early.

 

Money Lessons from the Game of Dreidel

Aside from being a lot of fun, the game of dreidel also carries the potential to teach some serious money lessons.

 

Knowledge is Power

The first lesson is more of a general one, but can easily be applied to money.

Simply put, knowledge is power, and it’s important to pursue knowledge even when there are risks for doing so.

Dreidel was born out of a necessity. A severely oppressed Jewish population used dreidel as a means to cover up their studies of the Torah, which was an essential element to keeping their religion alive.

Fast forward to modern times, and while we don’t find ourselves being outright banned from pursuing money knowledge, our educational and consumerist systems are set up for us to fail when it comes to money.

We simply don’t emphasize money education in this country, and our capitalist economy takes advantage of our lack of money knowledge. Corporations make money when you buy their products, and lending institutions make money when you accrue debt and pay interest.

Both of these capitalist giants are banking (pun intended) on you being financially illiterate and walking right into their spending trap.

Lucky for us, corporations and lending institutions don’t have the same power that Antiochus did. We don’t need a dreidel to hide our learning, it’s right there for the taking.

We have more knowledge, and the means to access that knowledge, than at any other time throughout history. The educational system may have failed us, but that knowledge is ready and waiting at the fingertips of anyone who wants to take it.

If you like, think of personal finance sites as a great big cyber dreidel. Just spin (search) and knowledge is there for anyone willing to put the time in to pursue it.

The origins of dreidel teach us to pursue knowledge despite the challenges, which includes increasing our financial literacy.

 

Dreidel, a Game of Chance

Another important money lesson learned from playing dreidel comes from being at the mercy of the odds in a game of chance.

Dreidel is a simple gambling game.

Although the odds are much more favorable in dreidel than in other forms of modern gambling, the players are still relying on chance to either build or lose their fortunes.

Odds, or probability, is a difficult concept for most people to grasp, in part because it’s not very intuitive.

The biggest culprit of confusion with probability concerns whether or not past events influence the likelihood of future events. For instance, if a person flips a coin several times and it comes up heads, they will tend to believe that it is more likely that the next flip will be a tails because the tails is “due.”

This is a gamblers fallacy, because no matter how many times in a row you flip a head the next flip will still have a 50% chance of being either heads or tails. The probability doesn’t change because of past events, but our brains like to organize and rationalize events and so we are often duped into believing that there is a pattern where none exists.

Because probability is so challenging, dreidel can present a simple way to explore probability and gambling concepts without risk of actually losing anything.

A dreidel has four sides, so each spin presents a 25% chance of landing on any of the symbols. You have a 25% chance of landing on Gimel and taking the pot, but you also have a 25% chance of landing on Shin and having to relinquish one of your gelt pieces. These percent chances will not change no matter what has been spun before.

Dreidel can be a very frustrating game. I’ve played before where I kept landing on Nun or Shin, and it seemed like I could never get a Gimel. The important thing to emphasize is that no matter how frustrated you might become playing dreidel, you still have a 25% chance of taking the pot on every spin.

Compare that to hitting the jackpot symbol on one reel of a slot machine and your odds are typically at around 1 in 64, or 0.015%.

However, most slots contain three (or even more) reels, and you typically have to hit the jackpot symbol on all three to hit the big money. This gives you odds of 1 in 262,144, or a 0.00000381% chance of hitting the big jackpot.

As you can see, the odds are significantly more in your favor to hit the jackpot playing dreidel than with slots, which can be used as a teaching point when playing.

Another point of emphasis is not only the chances of winning, but the chances of losing.

In dreidel, you have a 25% of taking the pot, a 50% chance of winning something (Hay or Gimel), and a 25% chance of losing something.

Compare that to whatever 1% minus 0.00000381% is and you’re losing nearly 100% of the time. Furthermore, with real gambling this high losing percentage also means you’re giving up your real money at an extremely high rate.

Thus, while probability is a difficult concept to grasp, playing dreidel presents a simplified version of gambling that can teach not only simple probability, but present the dangers of real gambling in a safe setting.

 

The Different Sides of Money

The last money lesson taught by the game of dreidel concerns the many sides of money, or more specifically, the many things we can choose to do or not do with our money.

The four sides of the dreidel call for four different actions to be done with your gelt, and represent four sides of managing your money in real life.

In the game, Nun means do nothing, but we also find people landing on Nun in the game of life. Many people are doing nothing with their money (except maybe spending it). People aren’t investing, saving for retirement, or saving at all. Nothing productive is happening with their money, and so in effect they are stuck on Nun in the real-life version of dreidel.

On the other hand, some people might primarily land on Shin. In dreidel, Shin means put in, and the player contributes a piece to the pot. In real life, those on Shin are focused on giving, and may donate their time and/or money to various charities. They may also be generous with their money and time in their own family.

Next up is Gimel, or everything. Gimel is the most desired symbol in the game of dreidel because it means you get to collect all the gelt in the pot for yourself. In real-life, Gimel isn’t nearly as desirable because it represents greed. That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t be striving to better yourself, monetarily included, but money should not be all that you’re playing for.

Finally, the symbol Hay represent half in the game of dreidel, and those who land on it take half the pot. This is the most desirable symbol in the dreidel of life because it represents a balance between giving and taking. You are working hard and prospering for yourself, but also using your increased prosperity to give and help others. While often the forgotten symbol of dreidel, it represents the most desirable trait in the real-life game of dreidel.

When represented in this way, the game of dreidel is the perfect avenue to teach your students, kids, or anyone you play it with about the ways you can choose to manage your money in life, along with the benefits and drawbacks to each.

 

Moral of the Story

The holidays are a joyous time of year, but one that is dominated by just a few traditions and topics.

While most personal finance blogs will be talking about ways to save on your holiday shopping, I thought I’d go outside the box and present some money lessons from the game of dreidel.

Dreidel is a staple of Jewish Hanukkah celebrations, and while a very fun game, it can be much more than that.

Dreidel developed as a way to cover up the studying of the Torah, which was punishable by death under the rule of Antiochus more than 2,000 years ago.

A dreidel is a four-sided top with symbols that direct the actions of the spinner. You can either lose your chocolate gelt or win it all depending on what you land on.

The teachings of dreidel extend far beyond the basic game. The history of dreidel teaches us to seek knowledge despite the challenges. Like Antiochus, modern society has been set up to limit financial knowledge, but unlike ancient Israel, we don’t need a dreidel to cover up our learning. We have ready access to whatever knowledge we seek if we only put in the effort to grasp it.

Additionally, dreidel teaches us about probability and gambling through a simplified version of slots. While the odds of winning are high in dreidel, the game can be compared to modern day gambling to dispel the gambling fallacy that often tricks people out of their hard-earned money.

Finally, the four sides of the dreidel represent four ways we can manage our money throughout life. We can do nothing, give, be greedy, or have a balance between giving and taking.

These are the money lessons from the game of dreidel. Who knew that such a simple top could contain so much financial knowledge.

How to Play Dreidel