Bridging The Gaap

Part 1 - Don’t Neglect Your Professions - Part 2 - One Crunchy Serpent At A Time -

Part 3 - Don’t Touch Your Money!

If you can be disciplined enough to function at an elite level in a game, there’s absolutely no reason why one can’t transfer those skills to real life. In some cases, you won’t even have to lift a finger (automatic savings withdrawls from one account to another means you don’t even have to think about saving!).

In World of Warcraft, I play a level 70 Undead Mage named Chainface. That’s her on the left, hangin’ out with her good buddy Whiskers the Rat!

One day I decided I wanted my end game status symbol: I wanted my epic flying mount.

While trying to scrounge together 5200 gold for my epic flying mount (improves flying speed by 280%! Whoaaaa!), I realized that there were three fundamental financial lessons that this virtual experience was teaching me about real life money management. So without furthur ado, here is how I earned my epic mount, and the three money management skills this experience has taught me:

1. Don’t Neglect Your Professions!
2. Small Amounts Add Up (or…One Crunchy Serpent At A Time)!
3. Don’t Touch Your Money!

1) Don’t Neglect Your Professions!

This piece of advice is self-evident in both worlds. Whether you’re looking to make money in a game or in your real life, you simply cannot afford to neglect your professions or any other marketable skill you may have. for Chainface, this means taking advantage of her two chosen professions (Mining/Engineering) but also in the skills that she developed along the way (ex: Cooking and First Aid). In reality this ensures that you strive for and obtain a marketable profession or trade that you find agreeable and which can provide you a decent income.

In life, just as in World Of Warcraft, you have to ensure that your professions are a) marketable and b) offer a decent income. Often, this will involve some real world leveling up of skills: really that’s just a fancy way of saying that your education should be a priority.

You “level up” your real life professions by educating yourself, by earning degrees or certifications in a given field, by learning a trade, or by using other innate or situational skills to your advantage (ie: artistic, charismatic, languages etc…).

Good news: it’s not all about being a doctor or a lawyer anymore. There are plenty of non-traditionally high paying jobs that are becoming high paying jobs simply because no one wants to do them. BTG’s “How Can I Make More Money?” article has much more information on the subject, but let me show you how this worked out to Chainface’s advantage:

Chainface is a Miner/Engineer. I make a decent amount from mining and smelting ore into bars and selling it in the Auction House, but I make almost nothing from engineering. I chose engineering because it was fun and I could make a neat hat (a part of my profession I enjoy), but I chose mining because it could provide a fairly good income at higher levels (which is the part of my professions which provides a decent income). But Chainface is also a master cook, and while all players can choose this skill, very few people invest the time needed to level it up.

Let’s see: marketable skill almost no one is leveling up?

Jackpot.

Let’s see how this worked to Chainface’s advantage in Part 2: One Crunchy Serpent At A Time…

Part 1 - Don’t Neglect Your Professions - Part 2 - One Crunchy Serpent At A Time -

Part 3 - Don’t Touch Your Money!

Part 1 - Don’t Neglect Your Professions - Part 2 - One Crunchy Serpent At A Time -

Part 3 - Don’t Touch Your Money!

2) How Do You Make 5000 Gold? One Crunchy Serpent at a time…

I should explain. I took advantage of Chainface’s marketable skills as a cook: cooking and selling food became the main source of my income very, very quickly. Specifically, I sold Crunchy Serpents, a delectable morsel which has the ability to increse a spellcaster’s damage by 23. This increse in damage, I soon found out, was highly sought after by high level players, for whom even a slight increse in damage can mean the difference between being useful or useless in some of the endgame dungeons.

For whatever reason, almost nobody is able or willing to make it and sell crunchy serpents. There was a hole in the market.

Ohhhhhh yeeeeeeah…Jackpot!

A stack of 20 crunchy serpents sells for 29.99 (29gold 99silver). Individually, 30 gold a piece doesn’t seem like much, especially with a lofty goal like 5000 gold. But as I began to take advantage of my marketable cooking skill, selling Crunchy Serpents for 29.99 a stack, I noticed something.

Small amounts, in large volumes, add up to large amounts!

Here is what 20 stacks of Crunchy Serpents looks like. Recall that each stack (of 20 individual units) sells for 29.99.

You are looking at just under 600 gold worth of food.

Individually the stacks are not worth much, but when you add them all up, YOWZA!

It’s the same thing in real life. A lot of people feel that because they do not make large incomes, they cannot save for retirement, for emergencies, for purchases, for anything.

The trick is to start getting into the saving habit by saving small amounts at first, and work up from there. Start by finding some way to save even a little bit (you could, say skip buying a drink everyday at school like I did!), and plunk that into a no-fee high interest saving account. You can see the effect of saving small amounts for yourself by palying around with ING’s Savings Calculator, which I have used to illustrate the following example:

If you save even a dollar a day, you’ve just saved ~$30 a month, or an incredible $365 a YEAR. If you continued this dollar a day savings plan for 5 years, earning an interest rate of 3%, you’d have just over ~$1900, $139 of which is pure interest!

If you save 2 dollars a day it’s even better: after 5 years at 3% you will have a total of ~$3800, $278 of which is pure interest!

So the lesson here is that even small amounts add up, and add up quickly! This is how Chainface was able to gather 5000 gold, 29 gold at a time. And here’s a real world bonus: Chainface didn’t have the advantage of compound interest! She didn’t get to earn free money from the interest earned on her money sitting in the bank. So what are you waiting for? Start saving today!

Speaking of money sitting in the bank, that ties into our third and final lesson, which we’ll discuss in Part 3: Don’t Touch Your Money!

Part 1 - Don’t Neglect Your Professions - Part 2 - One Crunchy Serpent At A Time -

Part 3 - Don’t Touch Your Money!

Part 1 - Don’t Neglect Your Professions - Part 2 - One Crunchy Serpent At A Time -

Part 3 - Don’t Touch Your Money!

3) Don’t touch your gold!

Seriously, I don’t care how badly you need gems in those sockets, don’t touch the gold you make from any of your professions: that is earmarked for your savings goal, your epic flying mount.

Quest for some extra cash if you need gold for other things, but the effort you put into earning the gold for your savings goal should be used for that savings gola and nothing else.

It’s a very simple problem: if you have it, you’ll find a way to spend it. Fortunately, this problem has a very simple solution: the best thing to do, whether in game or in reality, is to make sure you can’t easily access the funds you are saving.

In World Of Warcraft, any gold your character earns is always kept on their person: it can be used anywhere and you always have your total amount with you. This gets very very tempting when you see an expensive new tome (coughcoughPolymorph: Turtlecoughcough) and are carrying 3500 gold you’re trying to save for your mount. Smart players have found a way to avoid this temptation: they make sure they cannot touch it by sending it to another player they control (what I’ll be referring to as an “alt”).

This is CrazyInsane. She’s a level 41 Undead Warrior (hence, she has no brain), and she is holding all of Chainface’s hard earned gold, so that Chainface isn’t tempted to spend it.

Sending most of your money to an alt makes it easy to avoid the temptation of spending it: you won’t have it, the alt will. You will have to physically log out and log in as that different character, find a mailbox, mail it back to yourself, log out, then log back in as your original character just to have access to your savings. It’s not as difficult as I’m making it sound, but the advantage is that it should give you enough time to question whether or not you really want to blow your savings.

You can do the same thing in real life by setting up a specific account for your savings goal, one which is seperate form your main bank account. You may want to consider some of the online banks for this: they often offer higher interest rates, little or no fees to use the account, and it can sometimes be difficult to transfer money from the account (it can take days with some banks). These online banks make it very easy to transfer money from your main account, and most will even offer to make this automatic for you. You won’t even have to think about saving!

I like ING, but there are many competitiors out there who I’m sure do just as good a job. You can read my article about how to set up ING sub accounts for specific savings goals here. Remember, always do your research before making a descision, this includes shopping around for a bank account that suits you!

Conclusion:

So after some 4-6 weeks of grinding, mining, and cooking, one day I logged into CrazyInsane, and found the following in her backpack:

Woo Hoo! 5200 gold! Now I can get that sweet epic mount! But first I have to send it to Chainface. Remember I had CrazyInsane hold Chainface’s gold so that she couldn’t spend it.

One quick letter from crazy to chainface later and…Ah that’s better!

Chainface now has access to all the funds she had been saving.

And after a quick flight to Shadowmoon Village, and a quick chat with Olrokk, the riding trainer:

I proudly present to you:

Chainface with the fruits of her labour and diligent saving: her epic flying mount! Man, I love personal finance!

Part 1 - Don’t Neglect Your Professions - Part 2 - One Crunchy Serpent At A Time -

Part 3 - Don’t Touch Your Money!