Five ways mahjong can teach us about managing money

Mahjong may be having its money moment.

While it may look like a game of tiles, luck and socializing, mahjong can offer deeper money lessons, too.

Mahjong mirrors many of the decisions people face in their financial lives: When to take a risk, when to hold back, when to shift strategy and when to accept that you cannot control everything.

“You go into each game knowing that you might have to pivot and make changes,” says Mary Ware, a senior wealth adviser at Carnegie Private Wealth in Charlotte, North Carolina. “That’s absolutely true in financial planning — life happens, and we pivot.”

Mahjong is a complex Chinese game that dates back to the late 1800s in which four players race to build suits using a variety of tiles. There are various spinoffs — in the American version, which is experiencing a renaissance in the U.S., you play with 152 tiles, an annually updated card of required winning hands and use Jokers like wildcards.

Yelp recently named mahjong a top trend of 2026, noting that searches for mahjong clubs surged 4,467% year over year for the period from September 2024 to August 2025 while searches for mahjong lessons rose 819%.

Human connection is driving the current wave, says Marissa Broman, founder of Mahj with Marissa and a New York City-based mahjong instructor. She notes that the game’s popularity also soared in the Roaring ’20s on the heels of World War One and the Spanish flu pandemic.

“People wanted to hang out again after COVID — and it’s something to do that is off our phones,” Broman says.

There are clear parallels between a game of mahjong and managing your money. Here are five ways mahjong can teach us about financial planning.

Embrace uncertainty. No matter how well you map out your initial strategy, market conditions — and life — will throw us unexpected twists and turns, says Malone Lockaby, a financial services executive in Charlotte, who is Ware’s mahjong partner.

For example, you identify a mahjong hand to assemble, and then your strategy falls apart if the tiles you are trying to collect are thrown out by another player early in the game. “Things can change quickly,” Lockaby says.

Diversification is key. Every spring, the National Mah Jongg League releases a new card with different hands and rules. The changing parameters mean you can win with a variety of hands, which is a lot like investing, says Lisa Clements, a financial adviser at Clear Springs Wealth in Kansas City, Missouri.

“Every year there’s a different combination of winning asset classes,” says Clements, who started playing mahjong six months ago. “And it’s dependent upon the economic environment. What’s inflation doing? What are interest rates doing? How are stocks performing?”

Balance your offense with a strong defense. Chasing returns (offense) is only half the battle. Preserving your wealth through risk management and tax planning (defense) is just as critical to your overall success, Ware notes.

“To be really good at mahjong, you also have to be aware of what’s happening with the other players and potentially adjust or play defense accordingly,” Ware says. “Sometimes the best offense is a good defense.”

Optimize limited resources. In mahjong, you are limited by the tiles on the table. In life, you are limited by your income and your time. You must allocate these resources very carefully to avoid taking on unnecessary costs, Ware says.

Discipline pays off. Financial literacy and wealth both compound with patience. The longer you stick with a disciplined investing strategy, the more intuitive the process becomes.

Mahjong also gets a lot easier the more that you play it, notes Ware, who co-hosted a mahjong boot camp for more than 60 women last month. Similarly, with financial planning, it gets easier to make decisions the more you talk about money.

The ultimate payoff of mahjong — as well as investing — is reaching your goal: “It’s more fun to win. It’s more fun to be financially successful,” Ware says.