Cashflow 101: Board Game Review

Why is a finance site reviewing a board game? Well, we’ve all played Monopoly and tried to build a financial empire, but if you’re looking for a game that will teach you how to be wealthy in real life, Cashflow is the board game you need to consider. I am not a big board game player, but I say from personal experience that this game and the book have been a very important part of my personal journey to financial freedom.

This board game is a companion to the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, which I covered in another article, and is a great way to put in practice what Kiyosaki teaches in the book. You don’t read many financial blogs talking about board games, but I have personally found this game to be very useful, so I felt that it is worth sharing my thoughts here.

Games are always a great way to teach many lessons, and this game does that well for kids and for adults too. It is the perfect way to teach yourself and your children the value of money by teaching 3 most important skills: how to make money, how to manage money, and how to invest money. Most importantly, it will help you get in a frame of mind to become rich even when coming from a poor background.

With its easy-to-understand rules, the game is simple and effective, and perfect for children of all ages. The game also helps improve their understanding of cash flow and mental maths. I played this game with my friends, my spouse, and my retired parents. We all loved it!

How do you play Cashflow?

The board game is structured in two main sections: The Rat Race and The Fast Track. All players are assigned a profession (Nurse, Engineer, Mechanic, etc.) with their corresponding income levels and balance sheet. All players start in the daily grind of the rat race with some cash in the bank, dealing with the various opportunities and challenges that life throws up.

As you proceed through the game, you receive your salary and have to take care of your necessary expenses (Payday tile), may incur some unnecessary spending (Doodad card), and then figure out what to do with the rest of your money. Be careful, landing on Downsized, means your lose your job, but your expenses do not go away!

When you land on Opportunity, you can draw a Deal card to get a chance at buying in to an investment opportunity. Deals come in two sizes – Small Deals (cost of $5,000) or Big Deals (starting at $6,000). Each deal comes with its set of cashflows. Very exciting!

The Market cards are where you will find buyers for your investments. In the game, it means that you can sell your investment to the Bank. Alternatively, this also includes market-moving events that impact your holdings and may lead to losses.

The only “boring” part of the game is that you are required to maintain your financial statements. Not only that, you have to audit your co-player, so you get the joyous experience of doing the accounting and auditing! All jokes aside, it is actually an interesting exercise once you get the hang of it and is vital to help you keep track of your progress through the game.

The objective of the game is to break out of the rat race by securing enough passive income that all your life expenses are taken care of. Once you have done that, you’re off to the fast track!

The fast track is really just the fun portion of the game (and in life) where players get to make investments and compound their wealth over time. As long as you keep your expenses below your passive income level, you get to stay in the fast track and keep getting richer! The ultimate goal is to chase your “cheese”, the Dream tile on the Fast Track which you identify at the start. This is much like chasing your own dream in real life – perhaps you want to be a millionaire and enjoy living in a mansion on the beach or owning a nice car!

The game lets you get creative and buy and sell investments from your co-players. You are even able to go in on deals together. Although it might complicate the accounting a little bit, it makes it easier for the players with a lower cash level to still get access to bigger deals.

Debt and Bankruptcy

The game also nicely covers the concept of borrowing money and what the negative implications of that could be. You can borrow money from the bank with a fixed monthly interest rate of 10%. It’s not cheap! You have to be very careful when you borrow the money and what you are borrowing it for. If you are borrowing it to invest, then you better be earning more than what you pay, or you’re going to be bankrupt pretty fast. And if you are borrowing to pay for Doodads, then you might as well declare bankruptcy right away!

There is no concept of amortizing the loans in the game, which is useful to keep things simple. You can just pay off the debt in full whenever you have the requisite cash.

In the game, like in real life, when your cashflow turns negative and you do not have any cash savings to rely upon, you are effectively bankrupt. You can sell your assets at a low price to the bank (a fire sale in action) to free up some funds. If that does not generate enough cash, you are fully bankrupt and lose the game.

How long does it take to play Cashflow?

Depending on the total number players, the quality of decision making (from a financial perspective), and the speed of the player, the game can take anywhere from one to two hours to finish. The accounting and book keeping aspect is the most time consuming, but once you get a hang of it, it becomes quicker and easier.

How to Maximize Your Learnings

Playing the game and winning is fun, but where you really maximize learning is by playing this game over and over multiple times. Try picking different professions, trying out different spending levels, investing in the various opportunities, and dealing with the challenges.

One of the biggest learnings for me here was that higher income does not necessarily result in higher wealth. Your savings level and how you invest that savings are your two biggest drivers for breaking out of the rat race. It all seems rather obvious as a concept, but when you see it in action, it really hits you.

The game lets you compress the learnings of several lifespans in to a few sessions, so it is incredibly valuable. Hopefully by making the financial mistakes here (try making some bad decisions in the game intentionally), rather than in your real life, you can avoid learning painful mistakes with you hard earned cash.

It is also important to not get hung up on the fact that the game is heavily levered towards real estate. The takeaway should be find to investment opportunities and assets that are going to generate income for you over the long run, no matter what form they take.

Is it worth buying Cashflow Board Game?

Although it may be pricey at first glance, Cashflow is actually amazing value for those who want to learn about basic investing principles. I too had my doubts about this game at first glance, but after playing it for hours on end I can safely say that it is amazing value.

Here’s a tip – a couple of friends can chip in and buy the game using shared funds. This is what I did. Once you have learnt all that you can from the game, you can try and resell it on eBay or elsewhere! It is safe to say that I have earned back more than 1000x of what I paid for this game. It has delivered a fantastic return on investment.

FAQs