Blog of Kim Loon

My Cashflow 101 the E-game came with Cashflow 202 the E-game. Cashflow 202 is much tougher than Cashflow 101, and more difficult to win. One of the reasons is the Doodads is much higher than those in Cashflow 101 and may require monthly maintenance fee. But at the same time, in Cashflow 202, each player usually starts with some stocks or passive income from Real Estate.

Statistically, I get out of the Rat Race one out of 4 games in Cashflow 202. In the most recent game, I won in the manner I least expected.

I started the game with a real estate. At the first few turns, I landed on the Doodads and babies. When I did land on the opportunity squares, the cost was too high for me to purchase, even with bank loan. Before I knew it, I had a monthly cashflow of -$150. I thought that I would be out of the game within 10 paydays.

Lucky for me, one player landed on the Market square. I took this opportunity to sell my starting real estate property and to receive $180,000 cash. This gave me a lot of breathing space to look for a breakthrough; even I landed on more Doodads and resulted a $1,500 monthly outflow.

In the following few turns, I purchased a real estate option. Upon exercising this option, I had a $3,000 passive income. This was the turning point of the game. Now, my financial statement had turned from red to blue.

I continued to purchase more and more cashflow opportunities, paying back loans. And soon, I was out of the Rat Race and started on the fast track.

Starting badly with a very high monthly maintenance fee has taught me a few lessons. Firstly, things may not be what they seen to be. It could be a blessing in disguise. I thought it would be another losing game, but little I expected that I turned out to be a winner.

Secondly, it taught me on selling an asset. I sold my starting property to get cash for the breathing space and breakthrough. This was the only property I sold throughout this game. The reason was that, I bought the later properties for cashflow. If I sold these properties for a huge profit, I would lose my cashflow and went back to the red monthly. I understood the meaning why Robert Kiyosaki meant by not doing the flip-flop.

Lastly, I also learnt that to create a surplus, we can either reduce the expenses or increase the income, preferable the latter one. In the start, I could not reduce my expenses any further. The only way to get out of the mess, I had to increase my income. And through this process, I got to see more opportunities.

This was one amazing game that I played. Little I expected to learn so much from this game. I believe, the more I play the Cashflow game, the more I learnt to increase my financial intelligence.