What 12,000 simulated lives say over sixty years

When we change the rules of DECADES, a small program plays the game before any person does. It plays with simple players that we call bots.

The last version of this post ran 12 bots for 20 years. This one runs a full life: 60 years, from 18 to 78, and 1,000 lives per bot. The study stops every life at 78. In the game itself a life can go on longer. That is 12,000 lives in all.

The setup

Every life has a seed, a number that decides its luck. All the bots use the same thousand seeds, so the difference between two bots mostly comes from what they did, not from the dice.

Most bots start with RM 2,600 in the bank and a job paying RM 3,000 a month. When a bot loses its job, it gets a new one after four months, at 90% of the old pay.

The bots do not read cards. Each one plays by a single rule, every month.

The twelve bots

• The Saver does not spend a ringgit it does not have to.
• The Baller buys everything in the shop it can afford, and if it has more than RM 4,000, it goes for a trip.
• The Balanced bot pays for medical cover, joins a gym once it has more than RM 5,000, pays for therapy when stress goes above 55 out of 100, and takes a trip once a year if it has more than RM 12,000.
• The Insured Saver is the Saver plus medical cover. That is the only change.
• The Investor is Balanced, and puts everything above RM 10,000 into shares, one of the game's five first companies each month, in turn.
• The Home Buyer is Balanced, and once it has RM 17,000 it buys the game's smallest house, a RM 120,000 terrace, with 10% down and a 25-year home loan.
• The Side Hustler is Balanced, and works one weekend tuition shift every month on top of the job.
• The Car on Loan bot is Balanced, and at RM 4,800 buys the game's RM 18,000 used car, 10% down and a five-year hire purchase loan for the rest.
• The Stall Owner is Balanced, waits until it has RM 15,000, then opens one food stall with RM 8,000 of it, and takes home whatever the stall earns above that.
• The Graduate takes a four-year degree on a PTPTN loan, then goes to the game's job board.
• The Diploma bot studies two years for a diploma on a study loan, then does the same.
• The Early Worker goes to the job board at 18.

The last three live like Balanced, and they always apply for the best-paying opening they are allowed to.

Net worth at 78

Below is the median net worth at the end of each life. The median is the middle life: half did better, half did worse. A life that ended early keeps whatever it had when it ended.

The Investor is first, with a median of RM 10.9 million. The Baller is last, with a median net worth of minus RM 960,910 and a median RM 1.1 million still owed.

Score and survival

Money is not the only measure of a life in DECADES. The score counts net worth, counts any debt against you a second time, and adds or takes away points for how happy and how healthy the life was. Here is the median score, and how many of the 1,000 lives ended before 78.

• Investor: 109,080, 148 ended before 78
• Home Buyer: 71,712, 152
• Side Hustler: 55,896, 189
• Stall Owner: 52,982, 146
• Balanced: 51,797, 149
• Car on Loan: 37,515, 354
• Graduate: 30,795, 189
• Diploma: 13,411, 255
• Insured Saver: 5,199, all 1,000
• Early Worker: 4,618, 512
• Saver: 1,375, all 1,000
• Baller: minus 31,791, 771

What stood out

The Saver never grows old. All 1,000 of its lives were cut short, the median one at 30. Every one of them paid a hospital bill in full, the typical life paid four, and not one ever joined a gym.

Cover alone does not buy old age either. The Insured Saver never paid a full hospital bill, and its median life got to 38 instead of 30. But none of its thousand lives reached 78.

Living like Balanced mostly gets you to 78. The median life of every bot built on the Balanced rule reached 78, the Early Worker 77. The Investor, the Home Buyer and the Stall Owner each lost about 15% of their lives before 78, and most of those went peacefully in old age: 142 of the Balanced bot's 149, for example. The others lost between 189 and 512.

Owning things that grow did the most for money and score. The Investor ended with a median RM 9.8 million in shares and RM 2.7 million in dividends, even though 732 of its 1,000 lives held a company that went bust along the way. 998 Home Buyers got their house, at a median age of 20.3, and the typical one had paid the loan off by the end.

The stall helped, but not by much. A typical Stall Owner took home RM 167,728 from the stall over the life. None of the 998 stalls was still open at 78; the game had closed every one of them by then. On score the Stall Owner finished only a little ahead of Balanced.

The side shift paid, and it wore the body down. The Side Hustler earned a median RM 184,346 from weekend shifts. Of its 189 early endings, 94 were "old age, worn", the most of any bot.

The car came before the gym, and so did the early job. Of the Car on Loan bot's 354 early endings, 217 never joined the gym, because the money went to the car first. The Early Worker lost 512 lives, and 332 of those never joined the gym either.

Study paid, on these rules. Median first pay was RM 3,930 for the Graduate, RM 2,713 for the Diploma bot and RM 2,244 for the Early Worker. At the end the Graduate earned a median RM 5,259 a month, the Diploma bot RM 3,414, the Early Worker RM 2,484.

60 years versus 20

Over 20 years the Home Buyer led on money and on score, and the Investor was third on money and fourth on score. Over 60 years the Investor leads both, with more than double the Balanced bot's score.

The Graduate was ahead of Balanced at 38. At 78 it is behind it, and behind the Car on Loan bot too. The Insured Saver sat right next to Balanced at 38, 4,525 points to 4,787. At 78 it is 5,199 to 51,797, because none of its lives got there.

On score, the Saver and the Baller stayed where they were: second to last, and last.

A warning about the big numbers

In the game, things like a house and shares grow about 5% a year. Over 60 years that growth builds on itself, so money put in early turns into a very big sum late in the life. The fortunes at 78 say as much about the game's growth rate as about the habits.

60 years also takes the longer lives past 55, when EPF opens, and into the years after work. The run reports EPF only for the three job board bots: a median at the end of RM 627,045 for the Graduate, RM 401,544 for the Diploma bot and RM 299,742 for the Early Worker. It reports nothing about retirement itself. These runs were made before 10 October 2026, when the game started paying a yearly 5.5% dividend on the EPF pot, so EPF figures in the game today come out higher than the ones above.

What this means for the game

The ten-year check still runs whenever we change the rules. If the Saver or the Baller ever beats the Balanced bot on score, the change does not go in.

The 60-year study is a wider look, not a pass or fail test. It shows two things. Assets late in a life look generous. And one habit on top of the Balanced rule adds a lot: shares alone take the median score from 51,797 to 109,080. We will keep an eye on both.

What it does not mean

This is a simulation of a game, not of Malaysia. The prices, the pay, the job board, the share market, the house prices and the health rules are the game's own. They are invented, and tuned so that a life is worth playing. No real body or bank runs on these rules.

The bots are also far simpler than people. They never read a card, change jobs on purpose, marry, have children or sell anything. Each one follows one rule and nothing else.

So please do not read any of this as advice about your own money. It is a look at how we test a game.

Try it yourself

Live one life that buys the house and one that buys the car first, then put the two final ledgers side by side. Play DECADES in your browser, free and with no sign-up.

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