That was insane! There were so many red apples that it was impossible to avoid them.
Most people end up losing a lot of Frugality Tokens in the Chamber of Forbidden Fruit, because it’s too hard to catch enough of the green apples to make up for the negative scores from all of the red apples.
No matter how many green apples you catch, you’ll still lose points if you catch more red ones. Similarly, no matter how much money you make, you’ll still wind up drowning in debt if you spend more than you make.
Let’s imagine that Frederick catches 15 green apples and 45 red ones. Then Francine catches only five green apples and four red ones. Who gains more Frugality Tokens? That’s right: Francine! If each apple is worth 25 tokens, Francine will earn 25 more tokens, but Frederick will have lost 750 tokens!
How much money you make is not as important to your financial health as always spending less than you make.
So why do we end up spending more and digging ourselves deeper in debt, when the solution is so simple? Sometimes the situation is out of our control, such as an emergency medical expense. On a month-to-month basis, however, we’re often caught in a spending trap because we buy things that we don’t need.
We’re constantly bombarded with messages enticing us to spend and consume. Advertising tells us that we’ll be happier if we buy a product. The news tells us about the latest and greatest gadgetry. And peer pressure can make us think we need new clothes, a nicer car or a night on the town. In reality, none of these things are necessary. They might be nice, but anything that leads to spending more than we earn is effectively enslaving us to debt.
In the next challenge, you’ll see how things change when you learn to ignore distractions. Go explore the Chamber of Scarabs now!
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