Are you spending too much time scrambling with a calculator and fretting over simple math, instead of learning the lessons of Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad Cashflow 101 game?
Would you like to exit the rat race in less than an hour every time you play?
Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad Cashflow 101 game is great fun and educational. However, after playing it a couple of times, I found updating the balance sheet became tedious work and distracted me from my overall game strategy and getting to know my fellow players.
This is a good example of how this wonderful game is a simulation of your behavior in real life!
If you are keeping track of all your finances by hand, (or worse yet, not at all) instead of using an automated solution like Microsoft Money, Intuit Quicken or a bookkeeper then you may be spending too much time on paperwork and missing out on the deals you could be making.
There is a simple solution!
When I play with my friends we keep track with a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet running on a laptop. The very first time a few of us tried this, all five of us made it to the Fast Track before the game was won. That was really exciting and we were hooked. Nothing like that had ever happened before on any games we had played.
We started by using Google to find free spreadsheets that were already made up.
These were a great start but there was quite a few things we didn't like about them. Essentially, the free spreadsheets were dumb electronic versions of the form.
Starting with a simple spreadsheet we kept improving it to include running totals of savings, automatic calculations wherever possible and meaningful formatting.
To get you started quickly in the game, you get 12 Excel workbooks already filled out with the information from the cards, named by occupation.
Specifically, you get
- Airline Pilot
- Business Manager
- Doctor (MD)
- Engineer
- Janitor
- Lawyer
- Mechanic
- Nurse
- Police Officer
- Secretary
- Teacher (K-12)
- Truck Driver
Every workbook is in Excel 97 format and will work with any version of Excel from 1997 onwards. Most other spreadsheet programs are able to read this format as well.
Simply double click on the workbook corresponding to the game card you picked, fill in your name and the auditor's name.
It's fun to be on the Fast Track and you get a separate sheet, "Fast Track" included in each of the 12 workbooks. It tells you how close you are to your cashflow day income goal and will automatically tell you when you reach it.
Top Ten Tips for Enhanced Game Play
Keep the learning process growing and deepening with our suggestions for modified game rules to enhance your experience.
10. Keep the rule book that comes with the game handy. It's surprising how often people will argue about proper game play when it is already clearly documented.
9. Once you know the rules, mutually agree to break them. Keep reading for fun ways to do this.
8. Have everyone play using the same occupation. This is particularly useful for new players as it levels the playing field somewhat and makes it easier for new people to understand.
7. Never use the paper money that came with the game. After all, who buys properties with cash in real life? Even if you don't use our spreadsheets, you can keep a running tally of your bank savings as the game proceeds. This is far quicker and simpler than having a banker mess around with making change.
6. How you do anything is how you do everything. Notice how you play the game and plan time for a post game wrap up discussion about what you learned. Did you miss pay checks because you forgot to ask for them? Did you pay off all your debt as quickly as you could. Did you take risks that you would not have in real life?
5. Practice offering joint ventures to your fellow players. Stock cards are explicitly for you alone, but when buying properties you can negotiate deals to raise the down payment, share the cash flow or the capital gains. Yes, you are breaking the rule on page 3 of the rule book.
4. If you have 4 or 6 players, try splitting into two teams. For example, each person on one team plays as "Truck Driver" and each member of the other team plays as "Business Manager". Kind of a union versus management simulation. People on each team then only make deals with other people on their own team.
3. To speed game play, after everyone has an asset of some sort, start pulling market cards on every person's turn. This creates more opportunity to sell your assets at a profit and put more cash into the game.
2. Use the tokens to keep track of how many turns you are missing when you are downsized or have donated to charity and can throw more than one die.
1. Have everyone throw in some equal amount of real money into the pot. The first person to win on the fast track then gets the total amount. This introduces a level of competitiveness and reality into your game strategy. Notice that your auditor will now be very diligent about their duties.
The best tip of all, have fun, it is a game. The more you play this game the wealthier you become.
Special Bonus
You get our exclusive tournament tracking spreadsheet to keep track of when you played, how many times you have played, what occupation you were, how long it took you to get out of the rat race and whether you won or not. There is also space provided where you can note what you learned from playing the game each time.
We find the desire to move up in rankings compared to your friends adds to the fun of the game. Over time you will have an interesting collection of statistics.
You Get Free Unlimited Support
We're here to help you with any questions you may have about using the workbooks with the game. If you have suggestions to improve the workbooks and we adopt them, we'll make the changes and send you send a free updated version of all the workbooks, along with our thanks.
Simply enter your question, name and e-mail address below, and you can expect to receive a response within 1 business day.
Important: I will never share your contact information with anyone.
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You Get To Try It All Risk Free
Go ahead and try our workbooks out for an entire 6 months. Play the game with them and learn the deep lessons that will enable you to improve your financial life.
We guarantee that if you are not completely satisfied with your purchase, we will cheerfully refund your money.
We'll even let you keep the spreadsheets as our gift to you for trying them out.
| Complete set of cash flow 101 workbooks | |
You get everything. The 12 rat race occupation spreadsheets The Fast Track spreadsheet for each user Bonus! Our exclusive tournament tracking spreadsheet Free unlimited support For just one payment of $19.87 Canadian |
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Sincerely,
Peter Whelan
P. S. It's worth the money. Creating and perfecting these workbooks could take you over 3 days of your time. Wouldn't you rather use your time to play the game?
Interest Rates, ROI, The Bank, Trading Ranges and Reality
Our detailed analysis of the game has revealed the following information which you should find useful when making decisions throughout the game. To maintain the experience of learning important lessons for yourself, we don't tell you what you should do in a strategy guide.
Liability Interest Rates
In the game, liability interest rates are represented as a percentage of your monthly pay check. A percentage is a way of expressing a number as a fraction of 100. Therefore 10% is the exactly the same as 10/100. Wherever you see ??% you can substitute in ??/100
For example, a $1,000 bank loan at 10% per month costs you $100 per pay check. ($1,000 x 10/100=$100) What would that be as an APR? (Annual Percentage Rate) $100 x 12 payments = ($1,200 /$1,000) x 100 = 120% per year.
When you collect 12 monthly pay checks then a year has gone by in the game.
The monthly rate for all occupations are...
- Bank Loans 10%
- Retail Debt 5%
- Credit Cards 3%
- Car Loans 2%. For some reason the Janitor is an exception. Her car loan is 1.5%
- School Loans 0.5%
- Home Mortgages range by occupation from a low of 0.851% to a high of 1.052% The formulas in our spreadsheets reveal the actual details, but they really don't affect game play.
Return on Investment (ROI)
This is a very important factor both in the game and life. Many people are confused by it. The ROI is an annualized rate as opposed to the bank loans which are represented by a monthly rate.
For example, a house with a down payment of $3,000 and a cashflow of $100 per month has an annual ROI of 40%.
$3,000 x 40/100 = $1,200
$100 a month x 12 months = $1,200
$3,000 + 40% is the same as $3,000 + $1,200
The Bank
The bank is the amount of money that comes with the game. We prefer to keep track of our accounts with the spreadsheets. If you don't, it's possible to "break the bank" by running out of money supply. Don't worry, as long as we have printing presses this will never happen in real life.
Do you know the total amount of money that comes with the game?
Reality
Recall that this is a game designed to introduce you to concepts you may never have encountered, such as maintaining your own balance sheet, balancing your check book, buying and selling stocks, investment properties and businesses. Consistently getting out of the rat race in under an hour is an indication that you are learning the concepts well. There is a good deal more to understand before you can get consistent and reliable results from investing in real life. If the simulation inspires you to learn what you need to and get in the game life that is fantastic and I believe it's intended purpose.
You may want to make it a habit to read aloud the warning in small print at the bottom left hand corner of the beginning of every game. Always seek professional advice. Don't buy a $1 stock solely because it has dropped from it's previous trading range of $50 to $100.
Costs Range on Cards. Warning! Spoiler Alert!
This next section gives you all the various ranges that are possible in the game for the different cards. This is the most common question new players have and experienced players do have an edge over them in this area. If you'd rather not know then just skip to the next section.
Doodads range from a low of $10 to a high of $18,000 That stupid boat almost bankrupted me.
Small Deals will cost from $0 to $5,0000
Big Deals will cost from $6,000 to $200,000
Market cards modify the selling price of various assets, but not stocks, specifically..
- "pieces of eight" gold can sell for $5,000
- 1 ounce gold Kruggerands can sell for $600 each
- 10 acres of raw land can sell for $150,000
- 2/1 condo range from $45,000 to $65,000
- 20 acres of raw land can sell for $200,000
- 3/2 house range from foreclosure $0 to $135,000
- Apartment range from $25,000 to $45,000
- Bed and breakfast can sell for $250,000
- Car wash can sell for $250,000
- Limited partnership can double or triple your money
- Plex range from $25,000 to $40,000 per unit
- Shopping mall can sell for $100,000
- Small business monthly cash flow can increase by $250 or $400 per month
- Software company can sell for $100,000
- Widget companies can sell for $50,000
There aren't any boomerang companies in the Cashflow 101 game. This is unfortunate as boomerangs have an excellent rate of return.
10 More Tips For Getting The Most From Cashflow 101
The inner game of how you are reacting to what happens can be very educational and revealing.
10. Offer your bookkeeping services within the game. If you have our spreadsheets it is fairly easy to keep track of another player's balance sheet. Offer the service to the other players, "the market" at the beginning of the game and practice negotiating a "monthly" fee that the market will bear and that is worth your while. This is great practice negotiating for real life.
9. Once you are good at keeping your financial details to yourself and your auditor, try playing using the numbers that you are actually dealing with in your personal life. Use your actual salary and expenses. Notice how this makes you feel. Are you embarrassed? Are you proud? Could you be handling your personal finances better?
8. Agree that any stock offered at $1 or $5 be treated as $10.
7. Double or triple the face value of doodad cards that are under $1,000.
6. Once there is at least $5,000 of saving in the game, try pulling only big deal cards and borrow the money or make joint venture deals with your fellow players.
5. Once you are consistently exiting the rat race under one hour, change the condition for exiting to the fast track to have passive income that is twice your expense.
4. On the fast track do you buy dreams and read them out loud? It doesn't help you win the financial game but dreams can be like that. Are you passing by all your dreams in real life just to get to the end with the most money?
3. How do you feel when you land on the Baby or Downsized squares? Unlucky? Indifferent? Do you focus on hoping to avoid them or do you focus on the squares you hope to land on.
2. When other players land on Baby, give them a gift of $50 or whatever you think is appropriate.
1. When you pull your occupation card, notice how you feel. Do you feel better when your income is higher? Does it actually matter?
Other than being fans of the game, we are in no way associated with the Rich Dad, Poor Dad organization or Robert Kiyosaki. All trademarks are the property of their respective organizations.