How the fuck do you keep up with the economy?

This games economy is more fucked up than the real worlds.
I got a job in the real world and want to enjoy playing games in my spare time, maybe I shouldn't play this game then. This is the first league where there's so much inflation, even at the end of the league.
What do i do to get the 1000s of chaos to buy exalts in order to get some good shit?
go out and take slaves who can play 24/7 just to give me stuff?
obviously i'm playing this game wrong.

There is no way to play PoE 'wrong', though there are less efficient and more efficient ways of doing things depending on what your goals are.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'inflation' - are you referring to the fact that exalts were 160c this league? Or perhaps that the prices of everything are in flux due to many factors (early league gearing vs. later league min-maxing, prices moving to match Standard pricing towards the end of league, etc.)?

I think many people would disagree with you about your first point. It's much easier to see how the prices of things change thanks to sites like poe.ninja, and it's relatively easy to see what something is worth using the trade site. You basically have perfect information thanks to these sources, plus sites like craftofexile.com. This is distinct from the real world. However, it does parallel the real world in some ways: if you have a finished product, it will sell for more than the sum of the most efficient constituent parts (i.e. crafting materials).

Because I like to craft, I craft items for my own build and sell the items that I make that aren't good enough for me. For example, I played a Wardloop character this league, which means I wanted armour pieces with high Ward and high Elemental Resistance. This also means that other people playing the same build would want similar items. I got some Ward bases, some Dense fossils and some Resonators, and crafted some number of items (let's say 6). One of these I used, the others I sold for a profit.

If you are aware of what builds other than yours want, you can do the same thing for those. For example, if I knew that a popular build (playing into supply vs. demand) such as Lightning Strike wanted some gloves with life, spell suppression, some res and +1 strikes, maybe I would alt spam or chaos spam or fossil spam (I don't know which is best, this is just an example) to get 2/3 of those mods, craft another mod and perhaps go for an eldritch implicit.

A good way to do this is the Affinities tab on craftofexile, which will show you the most popular mods on particular items for particular builds. For CoC FR, another popular build, this is how you would see the popular mods for their rings: https://www.craftofexile.com/?ob=both&v=d&a=e&l=a&lg=10&bp=y&as=1&hb=0&bld={}&im={}&ggt=|&ccp={}&aff=[[%2220%22],null,null,1,1,1,1,0,1,%22m%22,%222755%22,%22Ring%22,1,%220%22,%220%22,%220%22]&ct=affinities.

The more experience you get, the more efficiently you can farm currency. And of course, this also goes for actually killing monsters (this is an ARPG after all). The more monsters you kill, the more loot you get. There are many, many ways to get currency from doing content, and many are not mutually exclusive. Incursion Temple farming, Legion, Delirium orb farming, Betrayal, Simulacrum, Blight, Essence, Sentinel Glacier strats, Delve, Heist, Harvest, Invitation rotations (shaper/elder/sirus guardians), invitation rushing, Abyss - so many ways to increase the rewards you get from your maps.


In the end though, the more you play the more you get. This is why you should not compare yourself to the people that play constantly - streamers, youtubers, the people you see in global linking stacks of mirrors or with 40 challenges done. Compare your progress to yourself. Compare your progress to how you were doing last league. Is my build better or more fun to play? Have I accomplished more of my goals? Have I learnt more? This is what should be important.

And it's also important that you have fun. If you can't detach your expectations from other people's experiences, then perhaps you just won't have fun. Perhaps try SSF if you can't handle the pressures of trade league - many people prefer SSF for this and other reasons. PoE is a very deep game, with lots to explore. Hopefully this has helped you a bit.

Stay sane, exile.

Thanks for your answer, maybe next time i play i will play on the solo self found league, and try and craft my own equipment. I always say this but never do it. My experience with crafting is very low as everything i try to make turns out crap. Also everything i find is crap, i really don't think i have ever found a good item. So i just save up what i find and try and buy what i think i need.

You basically just don't find good items in PoE. You still can of course, and you might need to adapt your thinking a bit to play in SSF. But yes, majority of the time they're garbage.