In these places, I found that I had to start from ground zero in term of cash. There is absolutely 0 cash in either place. Next thing, I found that there is absolutely no use for Influence Points. The consolation was that, by default, each of these two places started with a small business which generated some income every 3 hours.

Mafia Wars Cuba was much worse off. The starting job, requiring 11 Energy, only provided C$227 minus the bribe. And the next job, Secure A Safehouse, required us to purchase items totaling C$5,000. This job cost 33 Energy only provided C$682. Proportionally, there was not much difference doing either job. The business was generate only C$200 every 3 hours. It cost C$12,000 to buy the next business.

In short, the main challenge in Mafia Wars Cuba was low income but expensive items.

Despite of that, I realized that, it was not that difficult to gain ground in this challenging Mafia Wars Cuba. I simply applied what I learned from a book I recently read – Rich Dad’s Increase Your Financial IQ: Get Smarter with Your Money.

Making Money

This was the most fundamental – make money. One challenge in Mafia Wars Cuba was that each job generated very little income. But little income was better than none. So instead of doing any more jobs in Mafia Wars New York, I spent all the Energy doing jobs in Mafia Wars Cuba getting the little income. And after realizing the portion in the income vs Energy, I put gaining mastery aside. I just focused on doing the same job over and over again. Step-by-step, little-by-little, we can create the required amount to help us to gain sufficient grounds in Mafia Wars Cuba.

Protect the Money

The bank in Mafia Wars Cuba was expensive. They charged 10% for each deposit. But I realized that, not depositing the money in bank was even more expensive. At one time, I managed to gain slightly more than C$7,000 through the job and business. When I logged again several hours later, I was taken back to see the balance was now less than C$5,000. During these hours, there were other players challenged me for fights. And when I lost, I lost a portion of the money to the other player. As a result, I lost C$2,000. This was 30% lost, more expensive than the bank charge. So now, I put the money in the bank to get it protected. This protection ensured that the money gained would not be lost to other players in Fights.

Leveraging Money

This was especially in the game Mafia Wars Cuba and most other Facebook games. The mode of doing so in Mafia Wars Cuba was to purchase and upgrade business. After days of doing jobs and ripping from the C$200 per 3 hours business, I managed to buy the next tier business – Tobacco Plantation. It gave addition C$400 every 3 hours. Although it did not look much, I practically stop doing job in Mafia Wars Cuba from that point onwards. I focused my Energy back to Mafia Wars New York jobs to gain Mastery. I used the income from these 2 businesses to buy upgrades in the business. Soon, the income grew from C$600 to over C$1,000 every 3 hours. And it was still growing.

Mafia Wars Cuba’s condition of low income but expensive items may pose a challenge when we first entered this arena. But by applying what these knowledge, we can easily gain ground.

Those who wanted to find out strategies particularly to gain superior ground in Mafia Wars fast can checked out the guides in the market place listed in the other post.

Rich Dad’s Increase Your Financial IQ: Get Smarter with Your Money was about gaining financial education in our real life, and not on playing Facebook games. I simply use the Facebook games as a platform to apply what I learned from the book and have a better understanding. I strongly recommend anyone who wish to get educated on financial IQ to read Rich Dad’s Increase Your Financial IQ: Get Smarter with Your Money.

In 26 June 2009 Dilbert Comic Strip, there is this employee (Ted, the generic guy I think) who said “I can’t afford my mortgage because of my pay cut. The bank will take my house.”

Asok the intern replied: “I saved a bundle by being a renter. I should buy your house for next to nothing.”

Click here to view the comic strip from Dilbert’s Official Website

This comic strip highlighted some import lessons from Robert Kiyosaki’s books.

Robert Kiyosaki had been repeatedly highlighted that, the house we are living in is NOT an asset but a liability. The bigger the house, the bigger the liability it is. The reason is that, instead of putting money in our pocket, the house we are living in is taking money FROM our pocket. One day, when we have difficulty paying the mortgage, the bank will take it away.

This is what happened to Ted. When he suffered a pay cut, he could not afford the mortgage and ended the bank taking the house away.

Robert Kiyosaki also repeatedly advised that we should go for positive cash flow, earning passive income. No matter what happen to the economy out there, the positive passive income cash flow will continue to give us the financial income we need. When the economy turned bad, we can use the income to buy more assets which generate more positive passive income cash flow.

Asok, the intern, despite of his low salary, was not affected by the pay cut. This is because he has been getting positive passive income cash flow as a renter. Now, he can buy the house from Ted to get more rental positive income.

In 27 June 2009 Dilbert Comic Strip, Catbert the evil Director of Human Resource said, “You shouldn’t come to work just for money. You should come to work to avoid not having money.”
Click here to view the comic strip from Dilbert’s Official Website

This statement further highlighted the message from Robert Kiyosaki’s books, especially the latest one, Conspiracy of the Rich. In his book, he mentioned that the education system is designed to produce employees and specialists. These groups of people are trained to go for job security. There is this fear among the employees that, if they lost their jobs, they will lose their income.

Catbert the Evil Director of Human Resource was voicing out the fear in the employees, the fear of loss of income. And this was the fear that kept people working for money, for job security.

Based on these two comic strips, I can’t help but to link the relationship between Scott Adam’s Dilbert Comic Strip and Robert Kiyosaki’s books.

“Chapter 11 Just Posted – An Unfair Advantage!
It’s true. The rich have an unfair advantage – a great financial education. Learn how the rich view the world through the lens of business and investing, and how you can too, in Chapter 11 of Conspiracy of the Rich.”

The mail also mentioned that there will be an additional bonus chapter to be posted on 7th July 2009. In this bonus chapter, Robert Kiyosaki will be sharing his vision for a solid financial curriculum in the school system. As such, the free reading period will be extended to 14th July 2009.

This is a great news for us. We have more time to read and re-read the chapters. After that, we can only read the hardcopy book purchased from bookstores.

Click on this link to read the book for free before it is too late – http://www.conspiracyoftherich.com

One part of the game is the “Small Deals” cards. And this simple pack of “Small Deals” card provides us with powerful lessons to go financially free. “Small Deals” card is something like the “Chances” card in Monopoly game. This provides opportunities to make money.

Any players at Cashflow 101 need “Small Deals” to get started. The reasons are simple:
1. Most occupations do not have much cash at the start of the game.
2. Most “Small Deals” are relatively inexpensive and require little cash to get involved

In general, I classified the Small Deals in the following two categories:

1. Capital Gain Deals

The small deals include stocks, mutual funds, startup businesses, some real estates and collectables.

The objective of group is to raise enough capitals to go for the “Big Deals”.

The key characteristic of this group of deals is that there is no cash flow. The rule of this group is the topical “buy low, sell high”. The only time the play can make money is to sell the investment at a higher price. In another words, the player buy these investments for capital gain.

Because of this characteristic, the player has to hold the investment for unknown period of time. The player has to wait for the “right” time when the favorable card is drawn.

There is a higher chance of making money from the Stocks and Mutual Fund, because of the price is determined in the Small Deal pack and there are more landing chances for Opportunity.

The other capital gain small deals would depend on the “Market” cards. There are less landing spaces to draw these cards and the “right” cards have to be drawn from the pack of so many cards.

When we apply this to real life, we can make money through capital gain investments. The risks are, we do not know how long we need to hold on to the investments. Some investments are riskier because we have no or little knowledge on the outcome.

Some, like stocks, are less risky because, we can find out the trading range and we can equip ourselves with the knowledge to make money out of these investments.

2. Cash Flow Deals

The small deals include mostly real estate, certificate of deposit and Preferred Stock.

The objective of this group is to provide a stable income come in addition of the salaries.

The key characteristic is that it provides passive income and increase the monthly cash flow into the pockets. There are also opportunities to make big bucks from capital gain when the “right” Market card is drawn.

The advantage of this group of “Small Deal” is that very little action is required. The money just flows in, like “making money while you sleep”.

In real life, we can buy real estates to earn rentals or preferred stocks to earn dividends.

In this simple pack of cards, I have learnt powerful lessons on how we can invest to build capital for the big deals or build passive income. There are many more lessons from this financial game Cashflow 101. The more we play, the more lessons we learn and better we can be financially freed.

The last time I checked, there are only 2 left in stock for Rich Dad Cashflow 101 game. As this is a very popular game, I believe this will be sold out soon. Click here and order yours now.

This means, we have less than one month to read this amazing book online or else we have to get the hard copy. The time is running out is read this book online for free or else have to wait for another 2 months before it is available in the bookstore.

Robert Kiyosaki just posted Chapter 9 and there are another 2 chapters to go. And I have reached Chapter 4 and still have another 7 chapters within less than 1 month.

I feel that, this book is the continuation of the last book I read many years ago, Rich Dad’s Prophecy: Why The Biggest Stock Market Crash in History is Still Coming…and How You Can Prepare Yourself and Profit From It! By Robert Kiyosaki (Prophecy. In that book, Robert made a few daring prediction of the future and all these predictions were based on facts and evident. If I remember correctly, one of the predictions was the depression in USA would start at around 2007 to 2009. And it did. It was announced late 2008 sometimes that the depression had begun in 2007.

In that book, Robert emphasized the importance and urgency of financial education. We had little time to prepare for the depression.

Now the depression has begun. In the Conspiracy of the Rich, Robert made even more daring prediction of the future. This depression would be much worse than the previous one and a perfect storm is about to take place. But, this would be the biggest opportunity of the lifetime, provided we get educated enough to make use of this opportunity. The issue is, time is not in favor with anyone who is not financial educated. The eye of the storm is getting closer and closer.

Time is running out to read the free online version of Conspiracy of the Rich. If we missed it, we still get buy the book and read it. But once depression storm hit us, do we have the time to get the financial education required to benefit from the storm. Or we will just be washed away by the storm.

Get your copy of Rich Dad’s Prophecy: Why The Biggest Stock Market Crash in History is Still Coming…and How You Can Prepare Yourself and Profit From It! to find out the other predictions which Robert Kiyosaki made has realized.

Rich Dad’s Prophecy: Why The Biggest Stock Market Crash in History is Still Coming…and How You Can Prepare Yourself and Profit From It! is available at Amazon.com