*Jozzua

I had it right when I decided to monitor my expenses. It’s scary when one fails to realize how small expense items eat up monthly cashflow. For example, I reserved a nice amount of money for a bit of a birthday celebration at home. Although I invited quite a number of people, I really didn’t expect them to come. Well, some of those I thought wouldn’t come did arrive. I had to buy some extra drinks. My party budget went a bit astray.

For entrepreneurs, this is an issue that needs to be constanly monitored. Monthly cashflow can be affected by small unplanned financial details. The early birds at my birthday party would understand this well.We played Kiyosaki’s CashFlow 101 Boardgame and encountered a number of Doodads while playing. It was a learning experience. We played while waiting for the party food/drinks to be served and spent around 2 hours at the game.

CashFlow 101 is a nice game that teaches people, especially entrepreneurs, how to read, manage and adjust personal monthly cashflow. It is just like monopoly. We played with Asian version rules. The goal is just to get out of the ‘rat race’ by getting passive income from investments. Passive Income should be greater than monthly expenses.

In the game, we used a typical Income Statement and Balance Sheet (in one paper). Salary is the initial source of income. There is a list of expenses. On the balance sheet there are assets and liabilities. Basically, players must acquire assets from opportunities (on opportunity cards). Assets are defined as anything that generate passive income. A general strategy is to get small deals and sell it for windfall income. It is recommended that players invest in real estate and stocks. Windfall income would then be used to for bigger investment deals.

I randomly picked the ‘Airline Pilot’ job. The financial statements showed a nice big salary with high corresponing monthly expenses. There was cashflow of around US$2000 which I saved up to buy an initial house investment. Unfortunately, someone picked the ‘inflation’ card. All properties were returned to the bank (ouch!). This meant no more passive income from real estate rentals. A few turns later I was ‘downsized.’ It was the equivalent of losing work for a couple of months.

As we played, my brother got stuck with a big monthly expense (a boat purchase). Everybody also encountered the “baby monthly expense” - which affected cashflow. As in real life, expenses of babies and children take up a lot of the monthly budget. We also had our doodads (unforseen/unplanned expenses). It’s just like real doodads for my birthday celebration.

We weren’t actually able to end the game, but the learning experience was great. You could do something similar in your next home gathering. Play an educational game like monopoly or cashflow 101. It’s fun.

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