Emulator issues

I (silly frag Daniel (not to be confused with silly frag Dean or newly minted silly frag Dan)) have been playing through a GBA game called "Shining Soul" on my Android phone, where I have a GBA emulator installed called GameBoid. It's a lot of fun...very relaxing...not too much thinking. Exactly what I look for in games these days. Guess I'm getting old. Thing is, emulators have their own save systems apart from the game save systems. So, it's very easy to "cheat" your way through a game by saving within the emulator any time you make any progress and then, should you die, simply loading the last system save. In the game Shining Soul, your big penalty for dying is to lose your gold, but since I am playing the game in such a way as that "it" believes I have never actually died (I have died several times but loaded my save prior to dying), I have tons and tons of gold. Too much. I've been trying to figure out new ways to waste money in the game, but I can't. It's not possible. Therefore I never run out of potions...I'm never excited when I unlock a new weapon or armor...nothing is exciting. In fact, it's starting to feel a bit like work...make it through a level, save, level up, save, die, reload game data from before death, make it through another level, save. I've effectively removed all challenges and rewards from the play through making level completion the only goal. I think I'm going to come up with a new way to play through games...less saving? Only use the game's save system? God that was confusing.