I love Subnautica. It’s amazing. I lose hours and hours to it without realizing that they’re passing by. Really the only downside is if my wife tries to get my attention, she invariably makes me jump out of my chair because the atmosphere can make me so anxious. Stupid Reapers. Anyways, the reason I say all of that is there are some important planning lessons you can take from Subnautica and apply to your above sea level life. Let’s dive into it.
This will have some spoilers.
Survival first then fancy stuff
Your first task in Subnautica is to get your baseline survival and survival gear in order. You need to figure out how to get food, water, basic materials, and the tools that let you slowly advance. As pretty and safe as the shallows are you need to progress.
You also need to learn what can hurt you. Some things, like peepers, bladderfish, etc, are harmless or even helpful. Others, like gasopods stalkers, can harm you but ultimately aren’t a huge impediment. Finally, things like reapers and warpers can ruin your day even as a quick encounter.
The same is true in financial planning. You need to make sure you’re ok with your basics, like cash flow and debt, before you start worrying about things like investing, homebuying, or complicated tax maneuvers. Once you’re in the clear on your spending and you’ve paid down high interest debt you can turn your sights to those other optimizations.
You also need to learn what can hurt you, financially. There are the things that hurt everyone in the US, like high interest debt, not paying off credit cards, healthcare costs, and a lack of planning/attention on your finances. However, each of us also has our individual things that we go overboard with. Personally, I tend to spend a bit much in social situations. It’s either things like hosting and providing all the food for a gathering or buying drinks for others. So now I’m a little more cautious when hosting or out with friends and make sure that I’m prepared to ask myself if I’m staying within budget.
Foundations matter
This is true of both where you place your base and the literal foundation that you place for your base. Taking the time to make sure you’re not near any fauna that might destroy your base, you have easy access to necessary resources, and you have room to grow all help you create a sustainable and low maintenance base. Plus, for structural integrity you should take the time to actually build a foundation.
If you start off with a bad foundation, you’ll have to constantly go back to fix things just to get to where you were before. That effort could have been spent expanding and improving your base but instead is spent maintaining. Don’t do that to yourself.
For your financial life, your foundation should be knowledge (your own or outsourced) and cash flow. I’ll keep harping on this, if your cash flow isn’t where it needs to be then you shouldn’t focus on anything else. What’s coming in and what’s going out? Similarly, there are a multitude of free resources to help you with your financial knowledge. Knowledge can help you efficiently answer questions and save time and money. If that’s not where you want to spend your time, then spend your other resources to hire someone to substitute in their knowledge.
Good planning saves time and effort
First, reference what I said above with base planning.
Second, my greatest decision in the game for quality of life was to create a locker named “current project”. I’d then put all the materials, as I gathered them, into that locker. That meant when I finally had all that I needed I didn’t have to find it scattered across random storage or check my blueprints again. I could just grab and go.
Additionally, planning the materials I’d bring on expeditions helped a ton. By ensuring that I had some power cells, basic materials to make a base, power supply, and fabricator I made sure I wouldn’t need to double back to my base for supplies. This was especially true once I had the Cyclops and could grow food, have a ton more storage, and build a mobile base. By making sure that I was well stocked for every trip I almost never needed to head back to a fixed location. Oh, and I added a current projects locker to my Cyclops.
You can do the same thing with your finances. If you take the time to plan in advance, set yourself up so you can do routine savings, and work on one focused project at a time you get a ton more done than if you wing it. Help yourself out, do a bit of planning, and then go about your financial life.
Carry a backup
Again, see my point on expeditions. I can’t tell you how much time I saved by having backup power or a bit of titanium on hand. That doesn’t even count the times I literally survived because I was carrying a spare oxygen tank. It sucked sometimes because I couldn’t carry more resources but the amount that it saved me when necessary made it worth it.
Financially, your backup should be your emergency fund. Don’t neglect it.
Fixing something is better than starting from scratch
While this is even more pronounced in Subnautica since the repair tool works on everything and only takes battery power, fixing something is generally waaaay better than starting from scratch and rebuilding.
How does this apply to your financial life?
There may be some situations where declaring bankruptcy is your best route but that’s a last resort and not something you should latch on as a quick way out. Don’t be Michael Scott. It can be daunting to look at a big credit card balance or a ton of student loans. However, taking the steps to pay debts off prudently will help you feel more in control and ultimately lead to better outcomes. It’s ok to make mistakes. We all do. It’s how you fix them, instead of ignoring them, that makes the biggest difference in your finances.
Things that were once scary can become routine
I still hate the sound Reapers make and I still hate diving deep where it’s super dark, but over time I got more and more comfortable with them. I knew they indicated danger, but it was danger I was somewhat familiar with and knew how to deal with. However, the first time I realized I couldn’t see anything around me in the water and heard a Reaper I noped up to the surface as quickly as I could. Ultimately, I realized that if I wanted to continue on my journey I had to brave those depths to get the resources I’d need to ultimately triumph.
The same is true in your financial life. Investing for the first time can be scary. Analyzing an employee benefits package can be scary. Choosing health insurance can be scary. Starting a business can be scary. Most things that feel impactful can be scary the first time you do them. However, it doesn’t get better until you do a bit of research and then start. I’m not advocating jumping in blind but I’m also not advocating avoidance… even if that feels easiest. As you practice these different skills and experience these different experiences they’ll change from scary to routine.
And if they don’t? Outsource it. You don’t need that stress on you.
There’s always more planning to do
Even once you’ve found yourself fully establish and are humming along with your progress, and perhaps finished the story, there’s always more you can do. You can build an escape rocket or not, build a badass base or several new ones, or just focus on KILLING EVERY REAPER YOU CAN FIND! Or, more mundanely, you can make sure that your current bases and supplies are kept up and don’t fall into disrepair.
It’s not bad that there’s more to do. It’s also important to remember that once you achieve what you were aiming for you still need to work to maintain it. There’s not a one and done solution. Much like fitness, if you hit your goal and then slack you’re likely going to backslide. Hitting your savings goal one year doesn’t guarantee you’ll hit it the next. Doing a great job picking insurance is an annual affair. Analyzing your financial risks requires consistent focus. Even if not much has changed you should re-evaluate your planning from last year to make sure you are in the clear. It’s ok to take some time off and it’s for sure important to celebrate hitting goals but you also don’t shouldn’t just abandon everything afterwards.
Conclusion
I’ve talked about it before, but there are a ton of great business lessons you can take from gaming. Subnautica, since it’s a survival game, has a lot of parallels to your life… at least at the basic level. Take the time to reflect on how you can apply lessons from the game to your IRL actions! You’ll be much happier, and perhaps more successful, if you do.
You don’t have to figure this out alone. This is what we do- help streamers make great money and business decisions. If that’s something that sounds interesting to you reach out me or schedule some time for a free consult. You can check out what I do here.
