When to splurge...

[phoebemittens]

Arrrrrrrrgh! It's true, there are good, sensible reasons for getting any of the three first...

I think I'm going to monitor Tyrannian brushes for maybe a month and hope they drop a little, then buy one.

THEN save like a bugger or possibly have enough left over for the Darigan brush.

THEN be dirt poor for a year or so, and hope they don't retire the Royal PB in the meantime. I don't think they will... it hasn't been around for that long yet, has it?

[dandelions]

Three years this week Time flies.

[Cranberry]

I'm not as conservative as Cranberry, but I also like to have a decent-sized NP cushon despite my theory that you're better off storing your NP as items than in pure.

I agree with this, somewhat... it's definitely a good idea to grab some of the really useful/popular hidden tower items and keep those, because they may retire someday and then the price will shoot WAY up (just look at Ghostkersword). And even if they don't retire, they have a fixed price, so you can sell them for only the tiniest loss -- and you can use them to battle in the meantime, too. I have a few things: Mask of Coltzan, Sword of Skardsen, Ghostkerbomb. But mostly I shy away from hoarding, because you never know when Tarla (or to a lesser extent, a competition like mystery pic or lenny c) will give out an item and deflate it, or (in the case of weapons) if a new alternative will come out and make the old one deflate.

I keep money in the stock market, buying 1k shares of something every day, and that's probably one of the easiest ways to make NP on the whole site. But I still like keeping my 5 mil (or more) bank cushion, too. Right now I'm making 1.5 mil per year in interest, which is not too shabby!

[Wingsrising]

Well, it's definitely true that you shouldn't put all your item-related investments in one basket. However, it's also true that (in the absense of some special event that deflates them) items increase in price at the same rate as inflation while NP don't increase in value at the same rate as inflation.

This is one reason I've got a ton of crap sitting around in my SDB.

Still, I like to have ready cash on hand. I'm bad at practicing what I preach.

[Jessi]

I seriously doubt Neopets is going to retire the royal paint brush any time soon - or Darigan, OR Baby. I wouldn't worry about it. I'd say get Tyrannian now - I'm trying to grab my next faerie brush ASAP for a similar reason. No way to monitor inflation for it x_x

[phoebemittens]

Well, thank you all for your advice - I managed to get a Tyranian PB for 400k, so Gwynella has finally been painted the colour I picked out for her about a year ago.

And I'm going to get a Darigan paintbrush in just 200k's time, and be flat broke afterwards. WHO KNOWS, it may be a pleasing novelty.