The Power of Levers - Why You Should Not Spend Your Cash

I am maintaining this blog primarily for me. I have not told people about it and I don't think anyone has stumbled upon it. However, I am sure if it were read by others, this would be a controversial post. 

I use the term "pulling a lever" to mean something you can do to get resources when you find yourself in sudden need of them. 

I used to spend cash as soon as possible, so it would not be heisted. Now, I estimate as much as 25% of my cash is heisted and I do much better than previously. It is fine if 25% of your cash is heisted, so long as 75% is spent well. If you get below 10% heisted, but the other 90% is spent in such a way that it yields few returns, then overall your cash was not that valuable, but at least you got to keep the cash you rendered useless.

What good is cash? I will list my opinion in order of importance

• It provides the ability to get resources when you need them.
  
• Once spent, it increases your net worth. However, whether or not an increase in net worth is valuable is a whole subject unto itself. I will assume it has some value here, though, for the sake of the discussion. 

The main use of cash is to support getting resources when you need them. You can only do this if you have not spent it until a good opportunity arises. When it it good to spend cash?

• When you need resources. For example, a sticker season is about to end and you need 200 stars to open your vault and close your album. You have one day to get them. You are probably screwed if you don't have cash. If you have cash, you can build. After building your second map, hotels will start coming off your board and they will be converted to Wheel Spins. The wheel spins give you tons of stickers. I saw someone actually do this. It seemed impossible for her to get the stickers she needed on the last day of the sticker season. She did it with ease. She knew how to use cash. 
• When you can get tons of dice or stickers. This happens when combinations of the following happen at the same time
• Landmark Rush (generally gives you 50 extra dice for each map you finish).
• Board Rush (generally gives you 30 extra dice for each map you finish). 
• Sticker Boom - Gives you 1/3 more stickers for each sticker pack opened. 
• Wheel Boost (gives you 2x Wheel spins for each hotel set you clear on your monopoly board. 
  

I either wait until I need dice or stickers to spend cash or I wait for an opportunity where two or more of the above situations are in play at a time. 

Having Cash on Hand has saved me over and over again. It has allowed me to keep third place in tournaments and get the purple pack, helped with partner challenges and gave me dice when I deemed that to be important. If you spend cash as you get it, so it will not get heisted, it is basically near useless. 

Additional Notes

Closing sticker sets is similar, but not the same exactly. You should not close sticker sets that will close just to get them closed. It is better to have lots of sets that could be closed, and then close them when you need resources, such as the scenarios I discussed above. If you close them all immediately and spend all your cash, then when something comes up, you have no levers to pull. 

I do not use cash to try to win tournaments. You almost always lose dice when you try to win a tournament. If you don't lose dice, the best case scenario is usually breaking even and the worst case scenario is running of dice. I don't play monopoly to break even. Therefore, I rarely care about first or second place in a tournament. I do sometimes care about third place, because you sometimes get purple packs for that.