Tycoons on Facebook

Lately I've been playing a game on Facebook called Tycoons. It's a simulation of the business world, where you buy businesses and harvest what it produces to be sold to the market or used as upkeep (resources used) of your other businesses. You can likewise upgrade businesses to produce more in a given amount of time, lessen its upkeep, or increase the maximum capacity it can hold (very useful when you can only be online a few times during the day). Production continues even when you are offline, much like in many browser-based games.

What I like about Tycoons is that the decisions you make in the game affects the entire system, as your production impacts on the demand and supply of resources in the market. That means your value changes over time and you have to be aware of what's going on in the market. It also forces you to look into the businesses you have and decide if they are worth keeping or you need to replace them.

Also, there are a number of choices and strategies on how to proceed in the game. You can choose to be self-sufficient, producing the resources you need to produce other products, or you can risk it and go to the market everytime you need something. This removes to a point the "linearity" of progression. With a considerable number of sectors and several businesses within each sector, you can have your own unique strategies and continuously adjust them.

Businesses also has enough capacity so that they can continue producing for a minimum of 12 hours (provided it has the needed resources) before it gets to full capacity and has to stop producing. I can set up the businesses in the morning, stocking up on needed resources and still have it running by the time I can get to check it again in the afternoon or early evening.

On the other hand, a number of features in the game reduces its dynamism. The most significant one is the creation of a single sector that can "produce" population. Since the game has a feature called Tax Revenue, where you earn a certain amount of tax continuously depending on the size of your population (which was placed by the way as a means for players to recover should they made wrong choices early on and squandered their resources), it becomes now a race to own population-producing businesses. At a certain point, the game becomes automated as you start to switch off your other businesses in favor of businesses that produces population. Granted that it takes time before you can sustain this type of business, nevertheless it allows those who already can afford those businesses to just simply accumulate cash and even play the market at the expense of everyone else.

Still, the game is fun, especially at the start, and it offers a change from the usual types of Facebook games. It can even teach a thing or two about business and economics, although you can't expect it to behave like how real economies would. The game is still in beta and hopefully, it will still improve in the future.

Check out the game and let us know what you think.

Caribbean Remittance Forum

Note: Due to recent events in Jamaica, this Forum is due for rescheduling.

I'm off to Kingston, Jamaica this Monday to participate in the Caribbean Remittance Forum hosted by the World Bank in cooperation with the Canadian Government and the University of West Indies. The regional forum aims at sharing knowledge and generating dialogue to enhance the efficiency and integrity of the migration and remittance transfer process in the Caribbean region through effective regulatory and supervisory processes.

The Philippines has been invited to participate in the forum to share experiences in the regulation of innovative remittance products. As a regulator, I will be discussing the overall Philippine scenario on remittance and the policies set in place to provide proactive guidance to different participants in the remittance system.

The Philippine approach to the regulation of mobile commerce, which includes remittance and money transfers, has been favorably recognized by publications such as The Economist. I wrote about it here. Yet, every opportunity for knowledge sharing such as this still holds lessons to be learned and applied to further improve and maximize the benefits to be derived from a well-functioning remittance and payment system.

I will be sharing more on this in future posts, and I hope you will join in the discussions.

Your Net Worth IQ

A while back I've written about the initial steps that you can take to get a hold of your finances. As the focus of that post was about you getting a grip of the more immediate matters, namely your disposable income and your cash balance, a discussion of one's net worth was not included. Now, we turn our attention to the larger aspect of your finances.

Simply put, net worth is what you have left with monetary value, after deducting any obligations you may have. Things with monetary value, called assets, include cash and other items that you can convert to cash. This can include "tangible" assets such as loans you gave and properties, as well as "intangible" assets such as trademarks, patents, or rights that is legally yours. Obligations, also called liabilities, are simply what you owe somebody, such as a bank loan.

You get your net worth by listing down and assigning an amount to your assets and subtracting from it the amount you assigned as your liabilities. Some items are pretty much straightforward: cash on hand and in bank is simply that. However, you may need to do some estimates to determine how much is the value of the car you own or the house and lot that you have. Liabilities are usually simple to find out as well, as it is usually billed on you.

Having a high net worth is of course a good thing, but what is a "high" amount is always relative to the lifestyle that you live. If your disposable income, as discussed earlier, is constantly on the negative (because you are spending more than what you are earning), then you can expect to see a decline in your net worth as you take on more liabilities or be forced to sell some of your assets. How fast the decline is a matter of how much larger your expenses are compared to your income.

One tool that can help out in knowing and understanding your networth is NetworthIQ. It's a site that provides you with a template or a sample of the items that you may own or owe, describe what these items or accounts mean, and provide some level of automation for you and a place to keep a record of your net worth month after month. NetworthIQ also goes further than simply being a site to record your assets and liabilities by providing features such as the chance to post financial questions you may have to the site's members, give and receive tips, and even record your financial journey. It will even allow you to compare your net worth against others once you decide to make it public, although I am not particularly sure what is the value of that. But making one's net worth public can be useful for some individuals such as financial planners and bloggers that may have a need to "prove" something.

I've signed up with the site, and although one can have some apprehension as to security, it doesn't seem much of a concern for me. The information they require at signup is quite limited. Utilizing the template does not require you to provide sensitive information, although you are pretty much limited as to the level of analysis you can make. Keeping your net worth private is the default for the site. What I find as potential value here is the community that can grow and assist you in your financial journey. You may want to try it out yourself. (Note: I am not related to nor gain income from NetworthIQ).