Hay Day Economics

Hay Day

 Sorry for the lack of updates. I had Certified Financial Planner test prep classes during weekends and it took a lot out of me (not really, just looking for an excuse). I will be sharing about the things I learnt, but this article will focus on the things I learn from my daughter's (7 years old) and my (32 years old) favorite game (for a while), Hay Day.

When she started playing it, she was hooked. I had to check on what she was getting hooked on because games these days, they change your behavior. It's almost like salat, you check in at least five times a day. I asked her for a tutorial, then I started to get hooked on it and learned a few things.

1. The relationship of production and wealth.
You can only make money if you produce something. You buy machines to make clothes and food, then the money will come. Life's not so different. A company hires you because you produce something and the company gives your income in return.
If you're looking to increase your income, there are two things you can do, ask for a raise, or produce something else. I'm not good at negotiation, I cannot sell myself, but maybe there are things that people need that I can help. List the things that you can offer and how much you'll charge. Voila.

2. Accumulate by managing consumption.
One. You start with land and capital (also an important thing). Two. You buy seeds of hay and corn from your capital. Three. You produce but you don't consume all. You save some left and you start back at one by preserving the capital and reusing the land. With that, you accumulate and able to expand.

3. Expand then comes the complications and boredom
This is the part where things started to get complicated. I had so many machines and produce, it was getting a little overwhelming. It's actually where I started to get bored with the game. I'm probably not the guy to own a big enterprise. Not a future Gates or Bezos.

I'm not sure if money will bring complications and boredom, but the good news is with money all you need is a brush, spit, rinse routine to accumulate and reach prosperity.

In Search of the Way to Save

Looking to the stars - Calvin & Hobbes

Personal finance is personal. Rule-of-thumbs may be a good start, but it surely isn't for everyone. I certainly have my own way to budget, and out of all the apps I've looked through to help me, not one found to be a perfect fit. I then stumbled upon an iOS app, earmark. It's a social saving-spending app for you to set the top five things you'd like to buy and share it with everyone, including status updates when you forego spending to save for said five items. Pretty neat.

Three things I like about this:

1. Clarity. It would help me take a step back and remind myself that I have saving goals to achieve. In moments of need of clarity, I think this app would help me when my mind start playing the justifying-a-purchase games.
2. Motivation. We are social beings and our motivations sometimes require that social interaction. "Not buying this for that trip, proud of myself", and then receiving a supporting reply from a friend, "you go girl! let's make it to Makkah". Seriously, saving for hajj is hard...
3. Communication. Sometimes other people make our personal spending plans. Hanging out, do this, eat that. Those things add up.When we make it known to friends we're saving for something, it makes communicating personal intentions and rejecting an offer a lot easier.
4. Behaviour. People get easily hooked on social media outlets. If we get hooked on the app, we get hooked on our goals, we will achieve it.

What I don't like, but they might actually be right, is;

"We hate budgeting. 

So does everyone, ever.

We hate budgeting. So does 99.9% of the population.

We also like spending money. So does 100% of the population. 

Earmark helps people who hate budgeting save money while spending it."

I like that I've set myself a budget. It's life changing. But I guess for those who haven't, this app might actually work. For myself. I don't know. I don't have an iPhone. What I'm interested in most is whether I can apply earmarking [designate (something, typically funds or resources) for a particular purpose.] for myself.

So, what I'm proposing to do is to:

1. Unify my goals. I'm going to follow the findings that people become better savers when they have a single goal (pdf link). So I'll unify a single goal to the items I'd like to buy with a goal of higher calling or a long-term based goal like retirement.
2. Partition. Increase the chance of success of earmarking by separating the money physically, especially if the money has a visual reminder (pdf link). So, create a custom printed wristlet, or wallet (2), with a picture as my reminder.

Now, if I have a wallet for zakah, what are my visual cues...

"Is the description of Paradise, which the righteous are promised, wherein are rivers of water unaltered, rivers of milk the taste of which never changes, rivers of wine delicious to those who drink, and rivers of purified honey, in which they will have from all [kinds of] fruits and forgiveness from their Lord, [...]"

47.Surat Muĥammad (Muhammad; 15)

"He will forgive for you your sins and admit you to gardens beneath which rivers flow and pleasant dwellings in gardens of perpetual residence. That is the great attainment."

61. Surat Aş-Şaf (The Ranks; 12)

One way ticket to Jannah. Insha'Allah.

Has It Been That Long?

The People of the Cave

I've not written on this blog for a while, and I realized my last post was in November. It's March. I've finally awaken and realize it's been 5 months since I posted. Passing the new year, I didn't make any resolutions. I did, however, use the personal finance apps for my budgeting needs. Many things happened during the time that I gave the apps a run for their money. I'll give a short say on each of them with a very important conclusion.

Toshl Finance was coming close to a winner during my experience. It's the most easiest to use and understand out of the whole bunch, but functionality have changed during the start of my test. It's almost unusable now. So, you'd have to decide if it would fit you to continuously use it. For $19.99/year, it's a small amount if it can motivate you to get your finances together.

YNAB made the most sense. You set your budget (spending goals), you track your expense (spending), and you can see whether you made your goals accordingly. It's for those who loves looking at numbers. It's $60 for the license to use the software.

MoneyWise and Pocket Budget are excellent free-to-use-apps, mainly as an expense tracker.

There's one problem, all these software doesn't really fit me. I really hate tracking my expenses, it gets tedious after a while. I've built the habit of spending without really planning nor tracking for such a long time, that all these software would fail to be a part of my financial activities. The one closest to succeeding was YNAB since I love numbers. So, I chose to use a spreadsheet software as part of my financial activities. I really dug deep to create a system that works for ME. A combination of a cash based spending system and NOT registering any of it.

My advice?

Don't read any personal finance apps review.

Don't spend money on software and justifying that purchase by telling yourself that you will use it and magic will happen to your finances.

The best thing you can do is to get down to business and quickly figure out a system that works for YOU.