All throughout my childhood, that lesson was reinforced frequently. I didn’t understand the concept of inflation at the time, but I loved seeing my money grow.Īs you can see, I grew up in a family that taught me to save from an early age. I also remember that interest on bank deposits was around 10%. When I was 11 or 12, I remember my mom taking me and my sister to the local bank branch and opening up savings accounts in our names. We work on saving, but spending is something that just happens to us.
How to manifest riches.īut how many of them teach us how to spend our money? I personally feel like this is the right way to go there should be more regulation concerning the purchasing of microtransactions from the game’s developers, especially when a significant portion of the player base are children and young adults who might be at risk of developing addictive tendencies.There are a lot of articles and publications dedicated to saving money, paying down debt. Issues surrounding microtransactions have continued to gain media coverage in recent years.īelgium and The Netherlands have banned FIFA points, with France attempting to follow suit by suing EA for not labelling the Ultimate Team game mode as gambling. It became frustrating and a chore to play, even if I was winning.ĭuring this time, I lost the sense of why I played games in the first place to feel a sense of achievement, to escape into another world, but most importantly to have fun with friends.
I needed to be better than I was, and I never felt I reached the level of my spending. There was an added pressure as such I felt that I had to be good because of it.
It was very easy to lose track of exactly how much I was spending.Įven if I wasn’t directly spending money, I began to feel awful just playing the game, knowing I’d invested a lot financially. I hoped that it would make me feel better for wasting money. It would have been smart to stop there, but it subsequently led me to buy more – to cover my losses – in a weird way. ‘I lost track of exactly how much I was spending’ (Picture: Chesnot/Getty Images) On one particular occasion, I bought several in one day. It is possible to purchase FIFA points – the ‘in-game’ currency used to open packs – in bundles worth up to £80. FIFA can be quite repetitive, especially on your own, so opening packs added some excitement, for a while, and the cost of excitement wasn’t cheap. I predominantly spent money when I was alone and bored.
Yes, it was a lot of money to pay out on a video game, especially considering I don’t have anything to show for it it is an annual game and anything earned or bought cannot be transferred into the next installment.īut why was I almost compulsively doing this? Upon reflection, the biggest issue for me was not necessarily the amount of money I spent. I must clarify that I never spent beyond my means I was still paying my bills and saving for a rainy day, but a significant chunk of my disposable income went towards FIFA. Over the course of two years, I spent in excess of £1,000. However, I soon became accustomed to spending money on packs, and started to spend more money and more frequently. It started small and sporadic £15 here or there, which is easily justified towards a game I have enjoyed playing since 1998. It wasn’t until I got my first job and a regular paycheck that my repeat spending began. The game mode does not require any additional money, but money does significantly speed up the process and help gain an advantage over the competition.