By Alan Semonian
Wow! Finally a game has been invented to teach people something they never learn in school: how to get out of the rat race.
A couple weeks ago, my partner and I were invited over to the home of our friends Theresa Pigott and Cindy Norlin to play a game called CashFlow 101. If it sounds like a class, that's because it is, but even my non-accountant hair stylist partner enjoyed this game!
Based on the principles taught by the increasingly popular Robert Kiyosaki in his best-selling books "Rich Dad Poor Dad" and the "Cash Flow Quadrant," the game teaches you how to literally get out of the rat race and onto the fast track.
So here's the way the game works. Each player has a token on the board represented by a different color rat. You get to put your "cheese" token on the spot that's your lifelong dream. At the beginning of the game, you select a Profession card to determine what career you are going to have during the game (and therefore how much cash flow you get every payday). You roll the dice to move around the board landing on different spots such as Deals, Markets, or Doodahs.
If you land on a deal, you can pick a card from either the Small Deals or Big Deals deck, and you decide whether you would like to buy the deal (if you have enough money). If you land on Markets, you can pick a card from the Markets deck, and have the opportunity to sell a deal. If you land on Doodahs, you have to pay for whatever Doodah (a.k.a. waste of money) you select. In addition, every time you pass a Payday spot on the board, you get to collect your paycheck (but you have to ask for it!). Oh, and the really dangerous spot on the board is when you land on the Baby spot. That eats up an extra $480 out of every paycheck for you. (Did a gay guy invent this game?)
So what's the point of this Monopoly-like game on steroids? Well, your goal is to make your passive income exceed your monthly expenses. You do that through buying stocks, owning businesses, investing in real estate, and producing passive income. Once your passive income is greater than your monthly expenses, you get to get out of the rat race and onto the fast track. The lesson: to learn how to stop having to work for money, and have money work for you.
For those who have been playing this game for some time, it has developed an almost cult-like following, saying that what they have learned from this game has totally changed their relationship with money.
You can find out more about this game at Kiyosaki's website, http://www.richdad.com.
