About this episode

The episode discusses the parallels between financial decision-making and the game Settlers of Catan, focusing on tradeoffs in spending.

We love nerdy board games! And one of the things that makes them fun, besides getting to play them with friends and family, is the competition for scarce resources. For instance with the Settlers of Catan, it takes a few rounds of play to get the resources you need to build the settlements, cities, and development cards that help you rack up victory points in Catan. It’s a classic that still holds up, and like most games it's all about tradeoffs. Should you focus on building a road or upgrading to a city? You can’t do it all and you can’t get everything you want all at once. And it turns out that our financial lives are kind of like a game of Catan as we’re always making tradeoffs as well- in particular when it comes to our expenses. We’re torn between the decision of spending big money on an item that we know is going to last, versus an inferior item that will get the job done- at least for a little while, before inevitably breaking. Today we talk about the pros and cons of planned obsolescence, the culture of disposability, the buy it for life movement, as well as changing the way we think to ensure that we’re allocating our dollars to…

People in this episode

Host: How to Money

Topics covered

• smarter spending
• financial tradeoffs
• planned obsolescence
• disposability culture
• buy it for life movement

Keywords

• smarter spending
• financial decisions
• planned obsolescence
• disposability
• buy it for life

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Settlers of Catan

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