Money in Career Mode

A career keeps two separate accounts. The personal account is what the player lives on: a job's income comes in and living costs go out every month, for every role. The political account belongs to the campaign committee: fundraising comes in, and the board's paid activities, staff and advertising go out. Both balances are shown on the board header, and the committee account always starts at zero.

The personal account

The personal account starts from the player's savings at the beginning of the career. Its income and outgoings for the month are shown on the hub, and it cannot go below zero. The first time it runs dry, the state news reports that the player's savings are gone, and from then on any month where the job pays less than living costs also costs the player action points. Living costs depend on the player's household, such as living alone, with a partner, with children, or caring for a parent, and rise with the player's wealth tier, which is itself set by how large the personal account has grown.

The political account

The committee account is filled by fundraising and by the player putting their own money in from the personal account, a transfer offered on the hub and always legal. If a month's spending would cost more than the committee holds, the most expensive activities for that month are dropped until the bill fits, and the state news reports that the month was trimmed. If the account cannot cover staff wages, the campaign's staff are let go.

Fundraising

Five fundraising activities pay out once and then need about a year before they can be used again: donor calls, cultivating bundlers, hosting a dinner, seeking invitations, and the charity gala circuit. What each one raises depends on how well known and how well liked the player is, and, for most of them, on the player's standing with the party as well. Three further activities, a book deal, paid speaking, and a former president's memoir, would pay the player personally rather than the campaign, since routing personal earnings into a campaign account would be illegal, but none of these three can currently be used in the game.

The era scale

Every figure in the job market, the cost of living and the board's price list is written for the present day and then scaled down for earlier decades, since incomes and prices were lower before the 2020s. The same scaling applies to what fundraising raises. Other costs on the board include:

• Staff, such as an assistant or a field organiser, paid monthly from the committee account
• Advertising, priced by how much ground it covers, from a single state to the whole country
• Moving to a new state, paid once from the personal account