I totally called it 10 years ago!
I’m in the middle of a process that I call the most depressing thing in the world. I’m buying a house. I’d be happy to just pay for the house, but that’s not how a mortgage works. In the end I will have paid enough money for two and a half houses. (That’s more than 2 million Ramen Noodles!) The word “mortgage” begins with the first four letters of the word “mortuary” for a reason. You’ll be paying it off until you’re dead. I’ve signed a paper that says I’ll be dumping my income into a black hole for the next 30 years. Other fees include my firstborn son, my soul, a bucket of pretty pennies, two arms and a leg, and any other expression you can think of that means a lot of money.
Every country needs to have their own currency, and while I don’t quite have my own country (yet) that doesn’t mean I can’t have my own currency. Not owning a country never stopped Monopoly or Chuck E Cheese from creating a money system. My aim is to put a new meaning to the term “currency conversion.” I know people might not be too quick to give up their dollars and euros, but I hope that the masses will see the logic in my system and slowly convert to Ramens.
While coming just short of broke while paying the rent on my apartment, I inevitably learned the value of Ramen noodles. When faced with the choice between a bag of chips or a month’s worth of noodles, I quickly determined that eating to live is much more economical than living to eat. I also discovered that Ramen is one of the only diets where you can pretty much live off of the nickels you find on the ground. So I started using Ramens to gauge how much things are worth. For example, a pack of gum could be worth roughly 4 Ramens. Two scoops of ice cream at Culver’s is worth about 25 Ramens. When we move on to more expensive items like, say, a car, the numbers start getting bigger. A typical small car can cost upwards of 100,000 Ramens. So I created a larger unit of Ramens equal to a year’s worth of noodles. Using Ramen Years, that same car would cost about 760 Ramen Years.
If everyone converted to my currency, it would be so much simpler for everyone. And unlike paper bills, the money would actually be worth something. Maybe if I save up enough Ramens I could finally buy myself that country I’ve been wanting.
Update 8/23/2016: It’s happening!