A friend's parents had a similar system I thought made a lot of sense. While you were in post-secondary schooling no rent. They collected rent if you were just working or laying about, but that money was available for tuition whenever you want it.
Similarly, when I did post-secondary, my parents paid for all of my books but made me pay for my own tuition. When I graduated, they wrote me a cheque for the amount of all my tuition combined.
Wow! That sounds like my experience, except minus the part about the check. I feel like my parents did as well as they could for me though, and they taught me to save money in a healthy way after college.
I think it's pretty common in Sweden at least to pay rent to your parents that cover your cost (food + symbolic rent) if you have a job and you're done with high school + uni.
Most of the people I went to high school with? In my neighborhood/school, most children, when they become teenagers, are expected to get a job to help with the family bills. Personally, my parents didn't expect that of me, but theirs expected it of them and they both did. Most of my peers at school/work did so too. This is probably mostly a poor person thing.
However, once you're done with your education entirely, unless there's extenuating circumstances like severe disability, you absolutely should be mostly paying your own living expenses, even if you're living with someone else.
> According to a survey by My Job Quote people over the age of 18 and living with their parents pay on average £230 per month to their parents in rent – 65% less than the £690 median rent in England in 2018.
I've hear quite a few people do this.In most cases it's a way to show your kids that it's time to pack up and start living on your own,or simply explain that everyone has to chip in.
I have two properties, still live at home with mum since I'm paying her rent and both my properties sit empty while the bank keeps taking money from a fully paid off mortgage.
This reminds me a bit of "The game of life" back in the 90s
Optimizing life for filling the savings account as fast as possible at the expense of everything else has consequences and your game should reflect this.
You should have stats including your characters age, health, happiness and social skills and have some kind of social media app with your friends constantly trying to invite you out for concerts, nights out, dating? and so on so that you have constant distractions to spend your money on to make it more challenging. Not building up the happiness and social skills stats should have consequences. You should be able to buy a gym membership to keep your health stat from deteriorating.
The consequences of not building up those stats early in your life is poor health, shit social skills and no friends except for the people you work with. But yay, you're a millionaire I guess?
The real game of life is that it's all a balancing act between having your financial house in order while also having a fulfilling social life, health, and happiness
For a minority of people that's not the case and keeping up with relationships is a chore - even then, keeping some friends can be desirable, given we anyway live in a society of other human being.
In both cases, generally you spend more money with friends, for one reason or another.
In a simulator, I can live with my parents forever. In real life, I might get about a day or two.
Most people want to date and find a spouse. Most people want friend groups they have a connection to. Most people want hobbies that are interesting and fulfilling.
Being healthy is not free. Socializing, reasonable physical fitness, food variety.
Sure you could live in the mountains socializing with squirrels and doing pushups all day which would save you a lot of money - but it would not be the life most people want.
Sorry, kinda wanted to respond sarcastically, but I'll be direct instead:
Hiking, cooking together, playing board games, card games, playing music together, exploring, and just talking are all inexpensive or free. The most interesting people I've known in my life focused on those things anyway.
No doubt, those things are great. But if the reason you're doing them is because you refuse to spend the money you do have, then those start to feel pretty finite. I think it's particularly obvious during the pandemic. The first 5 times you go for a walk are great, and then you propose getting some food in the park to change it up a bit. Maybe you need to rent a car or get a minimum kind of shoe to get to different hiking spots, and your miserly friend doesn't join just because they'd rather excessively save their money. Or you don't live somewhere with hiking, or you just want to sip coffee at a cafe but they won't buy anything. Or you want to invite them to a party but they choose to never bring anything to drink or eat. It's just kinda lame.
Again, this is more about choice rather than necessity. Carries a different vibe if you're trying to do whatever you can reasonably afford, and that may mean not spending anything extra. Good friends will accommodate, but if it's obvious you're making over 100k a year (without significant dependents etc.) and won't split gas, well that doesn't lend itself well to collaborative fun times.
Edit: Also, I don't mean to suggest saving money in general is inherently bad. Obviously not. But you need to be able to find that balance. I personally tend to place higher value on the chance to hang out or have a drink than having 20 more dollars in the bank. But many drinks over many weekends maybe not as much.
That assumption is definitely wrong! Not everyone in HN is making around $200k per year. The average in the US is about $110k. And still not everyone in HN is in the US or being payed US rates.
Of course if you value your time more than what your employer is paying you then you either need to leave your current job or rethink what's the value of your time.
People like to drive outside the city to hike, travel, go to restaurants, movies, bars, ballgames, museums etc...
You don’t need to spend a huge amount on social stuff, but if you are only willing to do completely free activities, you are vastly limiting your social circle.
This was pretty much my point. If you have some spending money, and almost never are willing to spend it on things like this, then you shouldn't be surprised about significantly reduced social activity. Anyone who thinks hiking is free probably hasn't gone further or higher than their neighbourhood park.
Decently socializing with me would require a modicum of effort on each of our parts to engage in stuff. If the activities tend to cost something, and you choose only to conserve your money, then you wouldn't really be doing that would you?
If all the activities were costly, and I didn't put effort in to do other cheaper/free stuff to socialize with you, then I'd be the asshole.
Looks like their website is kinda crappy which is a shame. Anyway, my parents bought it for me and my siblings when I was a kid. And playing it definitely helped me appreciate the fact that I was a member of the lucky sperm club compared to the vast majority of the global population.
Thanks for the feedback. Yep I'm planning to add dating / social features where you can build a family up over time and see how that affects your finances etc.
Just wanted to get something basic working for the moment as I know adding all that will get pretty complicated.
I played for around 10 minutes, quite fun. Some comments:
- how would you get 4% gains in real life? it makes a massive difference, but you're unlikely to reach this unless the money is put into the stock market
- was unable to sell my property (the "request valuation" button does nothing)
- the university option never showed up
- there were no further jobs after ~12 years of career (stopped at something like engineering manager at ~45k/year which is very low for London)
- advancing month-by-month is pretty slow. there should be a way of fast-forwarding to important events (new job, promotion, housing market goes up/down, etc)
- had to transfer $ to savings / pension in batches every year or so, losing out on a lot of interest. should be possible to set a monthly amount
- the expenses are way too stable to reflect real life
I ended the simulation at 35 years old, with €200k savings, €60k mortage equity, and €80k on a pension fund. Living on a €100k house, no car, no gifts, no travel, no family. It's not bad, but for someone saving fiercely from 18 years without any major expenses it's not a great result. Getting a high-paying job (80k+) around your 30s will land you in the exact same place, while giving you 12 years to live more liberally.
Ha, I want to add investments but it would have to be random-ish. No point in using historical data for share prices because that would make it a bad simulation if you already know the result.
That's not what I remember. I couldn't find data for 2002, but this[1] shows that savings accounts paid 0.6% at the end of 2003. Savings rates also generally track short-term Treasury rates, and those were below 2% for all of 2002. [2]
Edit: Never mind, OP said this for the UK (which, nice rates btw). Leaving this comment for the links to US comparisons.
So you're assuming you're lucky enough to get a fairly high paying job (for 2002) straight out of school within walking distance of your mum's house, first job you applied for too? The rent is tiny, the expenses seem really low too.
For comparison my first job which required a uni degree and was in central london in 2003 was £18k a year. Rent on a bedsit was £520 a month, transport was £120 a month, student loan £59 a month, leaving £100 a week for food, bills (internet, electricity, tv, council tax, laundry+dry cleaning, etc), travel to see families, etc
It's a great way of showing the massive leg-up that people who have parents living in the London commuter-belt get though.
I changed job and suddenly started paying rent to mum even when I've had my own house for 2 years... payment for mortgage and to mum are right next to each other.
It would be nice if the houses showed the energy expenses and fees. And mortgages show the interest rate and the expected monthly payments.
Oh, and every property still shows the green "Purchase successful" message since I bought the first property.
Really liked the idea and spent 15-20 mins playing it. Would be good to save your progress. To be more realistic I shouldn't be able to buy a house after about 5 months of salary. Make the house prices 10 times more expensive if you want it to more like real life!
Also It's not clear to me if I take the job I can't go to university? I took the job in the absence of another choice, like real life if I got a great alternative offer I would leave the job and do that instead.
> I shouldn't be able to buy a house after about 5 months of salary
Why not? If you have the cash for the downpayment, a fixed contract, and the property is within 4-5x your yearly salary, you can definitely get a mortgage. I've seen people do that within a month of arriving in a new country & job, depending on the local market it's a very smart thing to do.
Great work. I was surprised to see it UK based but it was good. I think it'll help reinforce ideas of saving, pensions and forward thinking. Things you may want to consider:
- Gain graph? Some type of means to show how the gains have earned. Understand you're opting for a simulation of reality but it might help with understanding what is going on.
- Economic changes / opportunities? New stock, new financial products or travel opportunities. The email inbox is quite neat and it allows perhaps for these events to be introduced.
Get any job, then edit the "next turn" button to include an id.
Then just run this in the console:
const but = document.getElementById('theidyoupicked');
for (let i = 0; i < 500; i++) { setTimeout(() => but.click(), 1000 * i)}
You can lower the amount of time on the timeout, but it seems like there is some logic to prevent too fast calls.
But be gentle, it seems like it does a http request each time you click on "next turn" (I hope the author has some stable hosting because people who play will spam this button anyway).
I have hundreds of thousands of money but I cannot see a single property or car. It seems like there are a few bugs still.
That's the most important missing feature. After 20 years in the game, I have a house, a pension fund, and a savings account with a montly growth twice my monthly expenses. At this point there is zero incentive to continue working for ~30 more years.
IRL I hope to be there around age 50. No matter how much I enjoy my job, 40 hours of "enjoyment" per week is a lot more than I want.
Great build! I won't go through the glitches that people have found since they seem to be pretty common.
I would, however, like to have the ability to automate my contributions to savings and the pension (like in real life). Other than that, I am going to park this in front of my high school senior to see what kind of decisions he makes. Thanks for building this!
This is really really cool and is the kind of thing schools should use to teach kids about money management.
I would make the next turn button a bit more prominent as I did not notice it at first. I would also maybe add a bit more of a tutorial. Really cool and keep it up.
Concept wise I would agree with some tweaks of course.
However, I think the style of the browser game might be a little off-putting for kids as they are not familiar with the "old windows" and generally more pixelated style.
1. don't know why it need to calls to get https://simulator.money/img/windows-xp-bg.jpg and dings/chimes.mp3 on every month. (Although cached by browser)
2. After purchase a property, it does not listed under properties tab in the bank, even with monthly utility bills.
3. Some missing mails there, maybe associate with mismatch unread count.
4. As a player, I am not sure what is the unit of "mortgage last", is it month or years?
Very looking forward to other options such as college/cars/jobs, etc. Great work!
I'm really glad I read the disclaimer and didn't make financial decisions based on this game! I wouldn't want to count on no inflation, 4% interest, and a junior dev job straight out of high school
I know this is typically not a well-received style HN comment, but the name of the Pension website made me spit out coffee... this is a wonderful creation.
Is it correct that the mortgage keeps on billing me even though it is in negative balance = paid off, and the 1 year I have set it to has also expired?
The idea is great, but it gives some very weird ideas, like having 4% interest p.a. (not something I think still happens in the west). Maybe add a stock market fonds aspect in there (which may rise and fall), have more risky, more potentially lucrative, and less risky, more stable fonds in there.
Most of the features don't work, and there is no guidance at all.
I can't declare bankruptcy (the spelling is also incorrect), buy a car, sell a property, request valuation, etc...
It was a good idea, but it doesn't do what is meant to do.
Interesting to see KnockoutJS still being used in the wild! Cool game. Would like some more unexpected events to happen, and the Mortgage and Pension emails don't load, and neither does the "request valuation" of a bought property.
Haha yeah, I've been using KnockoutJS since 2015 and use it on all my projects. I should probably learn React or something but if it does the job I don't see any reason to change yet.
Yes unexpected "life events" is definitely something I want to add in the future. Still a very early stage MVP at the moment"
I get it. I was in the same boat, and played around with Vue and React for a couple projects, but since I've discovered Svelte, it's blown me away. It has the best of ALL worlds :) and it's super easy to use.
Interesting, fun. Would be a good idea to put a Settings option in the Start menu so that we could change things like bank interest rate (4% is nuts, nearly everything in the US is .01%) and the currency type, among other things.
Clearly still a work in progress, but the idea is really fun, if you're into this sort of thing... I guess I am!
One thing though, the font is cool and stuff, but really hard to read.
Please think of a way to make a board game that teaches folks the consequences of all the typical life decisions we have in common. I think it’d be a considerable service to society.
This is exactly my type of game. I love the concept. There are a lot of bugs though. Do you have an issues page or anything? And are you open to working with other developers on it?
Neat looking, but I've already been playing this "game" IRL for the past couple of decades; I really don't feel like grinding all over again from scratch.
Kudos for the idea and execution. Microsoft Windows layout is a killer. I'm not sure about saving the game progress though. Bookmarked the app. Will play it again.
There are too many problems to count. I got a message with the subject "Mortgage in principal" and no text. Same with pensions.
The browser opens new pages without hiding old ones.
Inbox count is wrong.
Buttons aren't responsive (no, I don't mean mobile design). They give no indication that something is happening.
Dragging windows is buggy.
There is no loading animation on clicking "next turn", nothing that indicates that the month has passed. Just add a dark overlay with a black and white loading bar and show the date afterwards.
I tried this in Chromium and Firefox and the problems are the same.
If it's a matter of storing state, you could improve performance by storing all of that in localStorage and only periodically flushing it to the database backend.
Hopefully the author takes the critiques as validation that the idea is so interesting that rando Internet people will provide free bug reporting. The game concept is good, and it was brave to release it in an unfinished state to get feedback. Hope author stays encouraged and buckles down to fix the bugs now. Cool concept. The Windows UI isn't my cup of tea but that's subjective. I like the idea of a personal finance simulator/sandbox.
Would be cool if you could do a "quick" game that was year-by-year steps.
this is super cool... i want to have my kids do it, but it's a bit too buggy - it has to work for teenagers, with zero bugs... open a patreon, and I will donate!
- I have an unread email in the inbox but I can't find it
- The banks send me emails with no content in the body, some email glitch on their side
- I tried to buy a property, lost my solicitor's fee but never got the property
- There are no good jobs available except one underpaid junior position
- I pay way too much in tax compared to what I make