Time = Money: Specific mechanic

I have been considering the ideas I posted back in April about the cash value of your time... and I have come up with what I think may be a good way to represent it.

Each round you will get your income, a static number of Action chips (A), and some number of Money chips ($) based on your current $ income (which will change over the course of the game).

Then, different actions in the game will cost some total number of chips. Each will require 1 A and 1 $, and the balance of chips can be any combination of A and $ that you want. So at the beginning you might be spending AAA$ because you are low on cash, while for the same action later you might spend AA$$ because you have more cash and want to do other things with those action chips. In the endgame you may well spend A$$$ for that action because you can afford it and that extra Action chip will become more valuable.

In fact, looking at the cash value of your Action chips, you'd have to compare them to the number of $ chips you also get each turn. If you make a lot of money, then your A chips (actions) will be much more valuable than if you make very little.

I think this mechanic is a good representation of the idea, and one of these days I'll be writing up some rules and finding a theme for this game idea. I've sort of got one cooking, which has to do with building a mansion for a wealthy client, or perhaps more like building houses on a larger scale. We'll see where this goes...