actually, Trade Nations is pretty generous with magic beans these days, they made it harder to waste them and you usually get a free one at the beginning of the game from watching those videos.
I'm level 57 in Trade Nations, it started out a bit slow but you really don't need magic beans for anything (I never purchased any, I even wasted a few back before they added confirmation screens) and I got enough free beans to buy a windmill, a few premium items. With the frontier area now you get resources pretty quickly too.
The only time you really need magic beans is to buy the final fort upgrade in the Frontier area, since you really need one of the premium storehouses to hold all the resources required.
It's not the most interesting time management game out there but I guess the fact that I've been playing it since the ipad 2 launch is saying something.
While we're on the subject, WTF is wrong with the scale of the economy in Snoopy's Street Fair? Why the hell are children buying 5 million dollar nacho carts?