What 3,000 simulated lives say about saving early

When we change the rules of DECADES, a small program plays it before any person does: the balance simulation. It plays the first ten years of a life, from 18 to 28, a thousand times for each of three simple players, which we call bots.

Here is what they ended up with, and what that does and does not tell you.

The setup

Every bot starts the same way. RM 2,600 in the bank. A job that pays RM 3,000 a month. The game's normal living costs and bills.

Each life has a seed, a number that decides its luck: pay rises, layoffs, a bad month at the clinic. The three bots play the same thousand seeds, so most of the gap between them comes from what they did, not from the dice.

If a bot loses its job, it finds a new one after four months, at 90% of the old pay.

The bots never read a card. Each follows one fixed rule every month, which shows what a single habit does over ten years.

The three bots

The Saver spends nothing it does not have to. No trips, no gym, no insurance, no treats. Every spare ringgit stays in the bank.

The Baller buys everything in the game's shop it can afford: a nicer room, pets, a console, a used car, meal delivery, even insurance and a gym. Many of those come with a monthly cost that never stops. It takes a trip whenever it has more than RM 4,000. It keeps paying for spa days, concerts and massages whenever it has the cash, even when the cash is thin.

The Balanced bot buys medical cover first. It joins a gym once it has more than RM 5,000. When its stress climbs past 55 out of 100, it pays for therapy. Once a year, if it has more than RM 12,000, it takes a trip.

What happened

Here is the median net worth after ten years. The median is the middle life: half of the thousand did better, half did worse.

• The Saver: RM 156,072
• The Balanced bot: RM 146,592
• The Baller: minus RM 133,441

On money alone, the Saver comes first, about RM 9,500 ahead of the Balanced bot. The Baller ends deep in debt.

But DECADES does not grade a life on money alone. The score counts your net worth, counts your debt against you a second time, and adds or takes away points for how happy and how healthy the life was. On that score, the order changes:

• The Balanced bot: 1,600
• The Saver: 1,168
• The Baller: minus 4,419

One more number changes the story. Out of 1,000 lives, 311 of the Saver's ended before the ten years were up. The Balanced bot lost none. The Baller lost 3.

In DECADES, the body sends a warning before it gives out, when health or stress crosses a line. The Saver never pays for a gym, therapy or cover, so nothing ever answers the warning.

Two more bots, and a harder start

Two more bots start with high stress, 60 out of 100. The first three start at 12.

One works overtime every month: RM 500 extra, and 8 more points of stress, every month. The other pays for therapy and medical cover and works normal hours.

We ran 200 lives of each. All 200 of the overworked lives ended early. On average they lasted 23.8 months, just under two years. The paced lives lasted 119.3 months on average, out of a possible 120.

So the extra RM 500 a month bought, on average, less than two years of life.

What this means

It means the game works the way we meant it to. Saving hard pays in money. Spending everything costs you twice, once in the bank and once in the score. And running yourself into the ground is the most expensive habit of all.

This simulation is also a check. It runs whenever we change the rules for money, health or the score. If the Saver or the Baller ever beats the Balanced bot on score, or if the overworked bot stops dying younger than the paced one, the check fails, and the change does not go in until the game is fixed.

What it does not mean

This is a simulation of a game, not of Malaysia. The prices, the pay, the health rules and the odds are the game's own. They are invented, and they are tuned so that a life is worth playing. No real body runs on a rule with a number in it.

The bots are also far simpler than people. They never read a card, change jobs on purpose, study, invest, marry or move house.

And ten years is short. The bots stop at 28, so things like EPF at 55 never come up.

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

Try it yourself

Live one life as the Saver and one as the Baller, then put the two final ledgers side by side. Play DECADES in your browser, free and with no sign-up.

Teachers will find a 40-minute lesson for a whole class on the teachers page.