When you first start off playing Two Point Campus you might be surprised at how little finances seem to matter. Indeed the first level - Freshleigh Meadows, seemingly has an endless supply of cash and Kudosh from the get-go.
Don’t get lured into that though as things change rapidly as you change campuses. So how do you look after your money? How do you make more of the green stuff? And, perhaps most importantly, what do you do when you run out? Let’s find out.
Managing Finances¶
There are many aspects of student life you need to look after during a game of TPC. Keeping your students entertained and your staff satisfied are just but a couple but even seeming fulfilling even the most esoteric of needs are facilitated by the spending of hard cash.
As Madonna said (Google her if you are too young, heathens) ‘We are living in a material world and I (well her) am a Material Girl’ and this is very much the case in Two Pint Campus. Students of any gender are constantly on the take. Sure they give back with tuition fees and expensive snack purchases, but it takes a lot of bags of Cheesy Gubbins to be sold to pay for that two-player arcade machine they want in the Student Lounge. They never see the bigger picture.
You on the other hand have to. If you simply acquiesce to every request and try to buy the items available to you you are going to be flat broke before you know it. And then, you know that new teacher you need? Well, they ain’t coming. Your Campus rating spirals downwards and before you know it you are out on your ear.
So let’s not do that.
Things are looking healthy right now. Until you need to buy another 10 Love Benches for pesky students.
As long as you are sensible you can easily get by day-to-day. It is a good idea to not go mad in Year 1 and drain all your starting funds building the best of the best for your students from the off. There aren’t really any nasty surprises in store that will require a huge amount of instant cash to fix, but you are definitely going to need to expand your Campus with new plots and they don’t come cheap.
Watch your staff numbers¶
You should keep a regular eye on the numbers of staff you have employed as the costs soon rack up.
Another thing you need to carefully balance is staff members. Teachers are easy enough to keep control of, which is good as they are the most expensive, draining cost in the game, but with the game regularly telling you to hire more janitors it is easy to lose track of how many you have and keep throwing a new one in there every time a student drops drink can on the floor.
Large numbers of staff eat quickly into your monthly profit, even when you are operating well with a good number of paying students.
If you do get to a point where you have overcooked the staff numbers you can sack them from the Staff screen, but just don’t get to that point. As long as you have enough staff to operate, and don’t let it drop below a threshold where you can’t hold your classes and your rating if going down, keep your nerve. Certainly near the start.
When you are hiring staff they also come in at different salary costs. Is it worth going for the more expensive ones? Here it doesn’t matter so much as you get an educational boost from better teachers so we would always get the best ones as the cost of the best is not significantly greater than the cost of the worst.
The same is probably not true of assistants and janitors. Yes, more expensive ones are more efficient, but the extra pennies can come in handy elsewhere.
Loans¶
Loans are available depending on your campus level.
If the worst comes to the worst and you are running out of funds fast - and it can happen - or maybe you simply don’t have enough money to fund the course you want to run, or you need a new plot of land, you can head to the bank for a loan.
There are three loans from different lenders available at any one time (although some will only unlock once your Campus reaches a certain level) and you will pay a base level of interest on the size of the loan over the period you borrow for. The longest you can borrow for is three years and that will cost you getting on for $10k a month so you need to think here.
Yes, you might need the short-term cash, but if you weren’t generating enough in the first place, how will it sit with an extra 10k going out per month?
Sometimes though you just have to borrow and it can help you get a project off the ground that will dramatically increase your income. You can also pay the loan back without penalty at any time if you suddenly have a windfall, and it is always worth doing that if you can.
Income¶
Cash comes in from students completing their studies. You also get smaller amounts that still all add up from things such as vending machine sales.
You will also often be asked if you want to enter things such as competitions or have inspections, all of which generate cash, as does completing tasks such as getting your Campus an improved star rating.
Outgoings¶
Things to watch out for besides the obvious room costs/staff costs and the like. Maintenance fees are a good example of this, every time your janitors have to fix something there is a cost. And most things on campus need fixing from time to time.
The biggest drain on disposable income is the constant stream of requests for items from students to make their lives better. You have to balance here to make sure you are doing just enough to keep them happy, but not pandering to their every whim and thus putting yourself into financial peril.
In short, finances are a really important part of Two Point Campus, and if you find yourself in a mess, it’s generally entirely your own fault!
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