How Much Money Do You Start With in Monopoly? Cash, GO and the Bank

Each player starts Monopoly with $1,500. Hasbro's classic rulebook splits it into two each of the $500, $100 and $50 bills, six $20s, and five each of the $10s, $5s and $1s. Everything else goes to the Bank. Our online board keeps the same proportions at ten times the size: 15,000 per player.

How the $1,500 is split

The banker counts out the same stack for everyone before the first roll. Here is the classic split, straight from Hasbro's printed instructions:

Some printings hand out the same $1,500 in a different mix of bills. The total doesn't move. If your box has lost half its money, a printable set covers every denomination.

One ratio is worth remembering. $1,500 is exactly seven and a half trips past GO at $200 each, and our board keeps that ratio too, because 15,000 is seven and a half salaries of 2,000. The starting cash buys you a few laps of property before the salary has to carry you, and the rest of this guide is about what happens once it does.

What the banker does

The banker is one of the players, chosen before the game to run the Bank and the auctions. The rulebook asks for someone who will also make a good auctioneer, and it's strict about one thing: a banker who plays must keep their personal money and property separate from the Bank's. With more than five players, the banker may run the Bank without playing at all.

The Bank's job list is short. It pays salaries and bonuses, sells and auctions property, sells houses and hotels, and lends money only against a mortgage. It collects taxes, fines, loans and interest. And it can't run out: the rules say the Bank never goes broke, and if the tray empties, the banker writes new money on ordinary paper.

Nothing in the rules lets players lend each other cash. Families add it anyway, and it's on our list of house rules that make the game worse, because a loan keeps a beaten player alive for another hour. Online there's no banker to argue with. The game is the Bank, so the change is always right and nobody's personal stack drifts into the tray.

Passing GO: what you collect

You collect $200 every time your token lands on or passes over GO, whether you got there by the dice or by a card. Landing exactly on GO pays the same $200 as passing it. The $400 for a direct landing that so many families swear by is a house rule, not the official one.

There's one exception to the salary, and it catches people. If a card or the Go to Jail square sends you to Jail, you don't collect, even though your token travels past GO on the way. The rulebook also covers a rare double payment: pass GO on your roll, stop on the Chance square seven spaces later, draw Advance to GO, and you collect $200 twice.

We built the popular house rule in, on purpose. Passing GO pays 2,000; stopping on it exactly pays 3,000, the salary plus a 1,000 landing bonus. Across 5,076 finished classic games here, 16.7% of all GO payouts were exact landings. About 6,800 of those 22,500 landings came from the Advance to GO card, not the dice.

When the salary stops online

On a classic table the salary stops at minute 46. From minute 61 the Bank takes a cut of every rent payment: 50% at first, ten points more every five minutes, up to 99% at minute 86. The tenant still pays the full rent. The owner just keeps less of it. Speed and Showdown tables move both clocks earlier, to minute 30 and minute 40, and they start with more cash (17,500 in Speed, 25,000 in Showdown, most of which buys the properties dealt to you before the first roll). The game modes guide has the rest of the differences.

Most games never get there. The median finished classic game here lasts 37 minutes. The salary ran out in 32% of them, and only 13% lasted long enough for the rent tax to start.

Where the money in a game actually comes from

We counted every payment in those 5,076 finished classic games. An average table seats three players, so the Bank deals out 45,130 at the start. Then GO pays out roughly 57,500 more per game, about 19,100 per player, which is more than each player's starting cash. The average player collects their salary 8.8 times before the game ends.

Rent moves less money than that. Players charged each other 53,600 in rent per game, against 57,500 that came in through GO. Taxes took about 12,100 back to the Bank.

So don't sit on your starting cash. The salary refills it eight or nine times, and the player who turns 15,000 into land on the first two laps is the one collecting rent when everybody's salary runs out at minute 46. After that point the math flips: there's no more free income, a single unlucky landing can force a sale, and the bankruptcy rules decide who gets what's left.

You can watch all of this happen in one sitting. Open a table, deal yourself 15,000, and see how far it goes before minute 46.