Graymont Finances
Having over hauled Valdermar’s new estate i have decided to look at Valdermar’s old one. Abel has just taken control of this estate and as we already know he’s had to take out a whooping mortgage to pay for it.
The question is will he be able to pay it back, is it going to grow and just how much trouble is Abel in?
Well the simple answer is ALOT.
As you can see from the above picture my figures show Abel having an $8829 deficit each months…. ouch he’s in even more trouble than Valdermar was.
The disadvantage Abel has is that Gabriel has now pretty much blown his fortune paying waaay over the odd’s for Helena and her family and has already Sold Valdermar one of his male indentured, not that Abel has the money to buy one even if Gabriel could spare it.
This means i’m going to have to get really creative really quickly with Abel’s estate.
Short term the only income increase on the horizon is in 2 years when Neo ages to Adult but the $250 increase in tax’s is still far short of what Abel needs.
My next port of call is to see if anyone else has any menfolk Abel could potentially bargain for.
The first logical choice is Deonte Gawen as his mother and brother live in Graymont and its where Deonte grew up.
Deonte is a freeman so he wouldn’t need to bargain with Orrick for him, however Brittany’s two sons are indentured. Chances are Orrick would consider selling the boys after all he doesn’t know they are Christophers sons, unfortunately the chances of Orrick releasing them to Abel are slim to none he is a Hamdun after all.
The next port of call is the other “freeman” unfortunately most of the freeman have already got themselves a pretty cushy deal and Abel has no money to build/buy houses to offer them something better at present.
So currently things are going no-where fast!
Luckily for Abel however Gabriel is not only the Hamdun with money and Hadrien has plenty to spare. Having Hadrien loaning, Abel $100,000 will reduce Abels mortgage quite significantly and reduce his shortfall monthly quite nicely.
However this still does not fix Abel’s problem entirely and he still has a heavy shortfall, one that is unlikely to correct it’s self untill the current children start aging upto teen, so in essence am going to have an issue for what i foresee to be at least another 7-8 years.
This is not a good position for Abel to be in and i see it in Daniel’s interest to try and correct it as best he can. After all there is no benefit gained giving a nobleman an estate he can not possibly succeed with.
However the real question is “How?” do i create more family’s and perhaps introduce some more of the native inhabitance of Grimstead? Does Daniel re-claim a couple of indentured men from other nobles to give to Abel? Or does Daniel simply yet again lower the tax’s on Abel’s estate and wait for the 7 years till it becomes profitable?
I guess the question is how far to i want to bend things to make it work, i always feel like creating new family’s should be the last possible resort however we have to remeber that in about 4-5 years i am also going to need to re-build Griffinmoor for Adin and whatever i decide is more than likely the solution i will use for Adin’s estate who currently only has one family.
It’s certainly something to think about.
morgaine2005 said,
February 6, 2012 at 11:59 pm
I always find these posts so fascinating, even if I’m super lazy about commenting. (Case in point: right now.) I love reading how you make things work in your kingdom.
And maybe the reason why I love them so much is because frankly, I am not sure that any of my nobles’ estates actually support their tax needs. Most of my nobles are doing very well for themselves, cash-wise, but that may be more because all of them have at least one business that is pulling in a couple thousand simoleons daily, all of them have at least one person in the top spot of their job, some of them have that FT stock options reward, etc.
Also, I don’t know if I told you this before, but I do have a way to get a noble family out of money issues very quickly. I call it money minting. However, in order to do it, you have to have/be prepared to do at least three things:
1) A gold sales badge — trust me, it will make life much easier.
2) Enough spare cash to buy a tiny business. I’m talking 5-10K here. If the business costs more than that, you’re doing it wrong.
3) Be prepared to CHEAT or abuse the energizer like mad.
You can earn the gold badge as you go, but the other two are pretty much necessary from the get-go.
So, you build a tiny community lot business. I’m talking 2×2 or even 1×1 lot here. (Hint: It helps to put a pond in, for reasons that I’ll explain in a minute. It also helps to do this before your Sim buys the lot, because then the Sim doesn’t have to pay for the pond.) Put up four walls, a roof, some CHEAP stock, and a cash register, and other items that might come in handy (like a smoke alarm for outside or a phone). Have your Sim buy the lot.
Sell the stock. Sell as much of it as you can. I’d set it at Average pricing at the highest, because the stock isn’t what’s important here. Use the Dazzle interaction to gain as many stars as possible as quickly as possible. The pond can be helpful because customers will fish and gain stars, and you don’t have to do a darn thing. Abuse the heck out of maxmotives (to keep the business Sim and the customers in a good mood) or the energizer (if you don’t technically want to cheat). Gain all the levels you can, but stop at Level 5. Take ONLY the cash rewards. Then, go home and sell the business. Not counting potential profits from selling the stock, you’ve made 108,500 simoleons. If you need more cash, rinse and repeat with other members of the family (who haven’t gotten the Cash perks) as the business owner. This only works once per Sim, but you can always buy a lot and raise it to Level 5 for a quick 25K.
Now, I will grant you, I don’t know how you would manage to fit this into your story … but it does solve money problems in a hurry.