Budgeting

First and foremost, have an insurance policy. Let's talk about this before we get into budgeting at all. What is going to happen if you spend all of your neopoints on something you expect to go up in price only to see it drop to nothing on the shop wiz? (recent example being the white ona) Or what will you do if someone gets ahold of your password and takes everything out of your account? Or if you purchase that coveted hidden tower item just to have it stolen by the pant devil on your way to putting it in your safety deposit box or shop? These things do happen at some point in time to most of us. There are powers beyond our control known as random events and flukes in the neopian ecomony that we cannot expect. One thing we can do that is in our control is have an insurance policy for if/when one of these (or other disasters) occur.

Now you are probably wondering "How the heck do I have an insurance policy on neopets?????" Well if so I have a suggestion for you. My personal favourite and the one i currently have is the "Negg Insurance Policy". You simply decide based on your income level how many negg points and in what time frame you stash them away at the neggery. For example, I am what I classify as middle-class. A couple hundred grand in the bank all the times, another couple in items, not rich by any means but not too shabby. I put 2 negg tokens per day or 14 per week in the neggery. See the Negg Value page for details on how many points each kind of negg is worth.

There are other ideas for insurance policies but none nearly so good in my opinion. You could fill your neohome with a lot of furniture. You could equip a pet with expensive battledome items (one you don't battle with). Anything that will yield a decent return on a hidden investment can be insurance for you.

Now onto the budgeting aspect of this article. I have a list of 10 or so games that I try to play daily and beside them I have my average np income from each one. Taking the total income from just those games, I break it up into my expenses. The biggest things I currently spend np on are: books, gourmet food, training, and my insurance policy. I also put a big chunk in the bank and have some I use for restocking. Here is an example budget (not mine lol) with nice round numbers to make it easy. You can take this and apply it to yourself and make the necessary changes if you like.

Income
• meerca chase 1000 np
• destruct-o-match 1000 np
• dubloon disaster 1000 np
• ultimate bullseye 1000 np
• defender trainer 1000 np
• bilge dice 5000 np
  
• total income: 10,000 np

Expenses
• Insurance 1000 np
• Training 4500 np
• Books 1500 np
• Savings Account 3000 np
  
• total expenses: 10,000 np

The easiest way to keep track of restock np, if you restock, is to leave all sales np in the till until you are ready to restock. Then it all stays seperate from your other np and is easier to manage. If you want to upgrade you restocking "business" then just work it into your budget. Also if you want to claim some as income then work it in instead of some games but just be sure that everything goes where it is supposed to. With a bit of planning it is really easy to have a lot of np and to use them for what they are supposed to be used for!

Some notes: You can keep np for different things in your bank account with your savings, just be careful to keep accurate records of what is what. For instance, if you need two codestones to train your pet but only budget 2000 np a day for training, then put it in your account and just note that there is that much in there out of your training allowance.

Some notes on daily winnings and random events that give you money or items: You can basically do whatever you want to with these: incorpoate them into your budget with a percentage system (such as 50% of found np gets saved, and 50% goes toward training). Or you can just invest them all into your restock "business". Or just spend them friviously, it's really up to you isn't it?

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