Monday, May 31, 2010

Cashflow 101 E-Game

As I continue my financial education, yesterday I first played the Cashflow 101 E-Game. I never played the actual cashflow game yet but thanks to a college friend who gave me a copy of the cashflow 101 e-game. I can definitely say that it’s one of the best games to play when you want to increase your financial literacy.
Basically, there are two tracks of the game: The Rat Race and The Fast Track. The rate race is simply for the average person while the fast track is for rich persons. You can play the game against a maximum of 4 other players.

Both of them are tracks of income and spend but for the fast track, you’ve got options for lavish lifestyles and big expenditures such as taking a vacation, funding a research, running for a mayor position, etc.

I think the dice perse in the game represents the uncertainty in the real world. In the rat race, there is an income statement and balance sheet column for which you need to place each transaction in the game and sum it up. This is also a good practice to know basic principles of accounting and auditing.
For every roll of the dice, you can land into one of the following:


Doodads. Doodads are simply the expensive wants that we can’t resist. In the game, you cannot resist it and definitely you are compelled to buy it which you can pay by either cash or credit cards. These are things such as a huge discount on items, a promotional discounted vacation, etc.

Opportunity. Opportunites serve as deals for you to grab. It is broken down into two: small deal and big deal. Small deals are deals that involves small money while big deals involve large sums of money. Deals can either be stocks, mutual fund, business, or real estate opportunities. Each opportunity represent an ROI or return on investments. You can borrow a loan from the bank to fund these deals if you don’t have enough cash provided you can also pay them or else you will go bankrupt.

Market. Markets serve as opportunities for holders of assets. When you land in this option, you are offered by a buyer. Say for example, you bought a land when you landed on the opportunity option, it is this time that a buyer will offer you to buy that land. Be sure though to implement the basics and that is to buy low during the opportunity and sell high during the market.

Baby. Baby depicts the real happening of raising a family. In the game, when you land in this option, there will be an additional cost that will be added to your expenses. And there will be a maximum of 3 babies in the entire game.

Paycheck. Paycheck depicts the real world of employment. At the start of the game, you will be notified of your profession or your job. And each time you land on this option, you will get your paycheck that will be added to your cash. The paycheck though, in this game, is not fixed. It would be based on your net monthly cashflow in your income statement.

Downsizing. Downsizing also depicts the real happening of being fired or unemployed. In this case, you will lose 2 turns and lose a portion of your cash to fund your needs.

Charity. Lastly, charity relies on the concept of the law of reciprocation. In other words, you should give but it would be an option on your part. If you chose to give, then the amount will be deducted to your cash. Kiyosaki says that if you want money, you should first give money.

So there you are the rat race track. The very idea of the game is to accumulate enough passive income by buying assets. As you increase your passive income, the green color also increases. And if you have enough passive income, you can now go to the fast track where you can now enjoy a lot of your dreams.

Once you are already in the fast track, it is very easy to win the game as your income will be multiplied by 100. You will have a definite passive income goal to win in the fast track and to win the entire game. It would then be a race towards that goal against other competitors. Beware though that there is such thing as divorce in the fast track where you will lose all your cash.

I initially played the cashflow 101 e-game thrice. The first time I won with 910 points against one competitor. The second one, I went to play against two other competitors but unfortunately, I ended up bankrupt because of a bad deal that I went into. And the third time, I finished the game as a second placer against two other. Good thing I bought a high cost business that has zero cashflow at first, but eventually improved in the course of the game raking in a passive income of $400, and I ended up selling it as there was a buyer that offered me good amount when I landed on a market. After I sold it, I used the cash to pay all my debts.

Overall, the cashflow 101 e-game is very educational. Each time you roll a dice, you have the option to watch the video of Kiyosaki teaching various lectures on financial education. I believe this is a very powerful tool in one’s financial education and in achieving financial freedom. I’m looking forward to play the actual cashflow game with humans as my competitors.

I will next play the cashflow 202 e-game and I will write a post about it once I played it.

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