Cashflow 101 The E- Game Readme Table of Contents
1. MAIN MENU Learn to Play Mode Learn to Play mode is a tutorial in order to teach you the mechanics of the game and how to get information. We suggest that you go through the tutorial at least once before you play the regular game. Single Player We suggest you play on your own before you try playing with others in multiplayer mode. Hotseat Mode Click on the Hotseat button to play with your friends on the same computers. Robert's Video Tips This screen has a collection of all the videos of Robert in the game so that you can play them at any time. Game Options Volume Control - Adjusting this will turn on and off Music On/Off This turns on and off the background music UI Sounds On/Off This turns on and off the card sounds and transition sound effects. It does not turn off the talking or comments from Red E. Rat or Timid T. Turtle.
2. MULTIPLAYER In order to play in multiplayer you first need to register your copy of the game if you haven't already. Once you've registered at Rich Dad.com you can log in to play by entering the same login and password you use on the website. Automatic Patch Update In order to update your copy of Cashflow 101: The E-game to the newest version click on the Multiplayer menu button on the Main Menu. As soon as you enter the multiplayer screen the game will check to see if you have the newest version and will update itself as needed. This update will occur even if you aren't currently registered at Rich Dad.com. In order to register to play multiplayer go to the web address below http://gameregistration.richdad.com
3. GAME RULES The Rat Race The wheel of the Rat Race is where you'll spend most of your time in Cashflow 101. The wheel represents the life of most people who spend their time going around in circles and never getting ahead financially. In order to get out of the Rat Race in Cashflow 101 you need to get your Passive Income high enough that it's larger than your expenses. This represents you no longer having to work for someone else and allows you to move onto the Fast Track Getting out of the Rat Race To get out of the Rat Race you need to get your passive income (income coming from investments) to be larger than your expenses The Fast Track Once you've moved onto the Fast Track you're financially free and can buy just about anything you want. Here, you can win the game by doing one of two things. You can either purchase the dream you selected in the beginning of the game or you can reach your Cashflow Day Goal amount by purchasing investments worth $50,000 in Passive Income.
4. WINNING THE GAME You win cashflow if you are the first to buy your dream or if you're the first person on the Fast Track to accumulate $50,000 in Fast Track Cashflow.
5. THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT Your Financial Statement has two important parts associated with it. The first is the Income Statement that tracks all the money you make and all the money you spend on a monthly basis. This is the bottom-line on your current financial situation because it shows whether you're making or losing money on a monthly basis. Your Income Statement is shown on the left side of the screen. The second part of your Financial Statement is your Balance sheet. This sheet shows all the items you own and all the money that you owe to someone else. These items are displayed at the bottom of your screen.
Parts of your Income Statement Income The money that comes in to your pocket each month is your income. If this money comes in from Assets that you own then it's considered Passive Income. Expenses Things that you spend on each month are called expenses. These can include cost of Liabilities and can also be things such as clothing, groceries etc. Parts of your Balance Sheet Asset Something that puts money in your pocket with minimum labor from you. For Example; Rental Properties, Stock Dividends, Businesses that someone else runs. Liability Something that takes money out of your pocket on a monthly basis. Some liabilities are necessary expenses For Example; Cars (which aren't rented), Boats, your own home mortgage. Updating your Financial Statement Adding Items When it comes time to add items to your Financial Statement you'll be asked to drag each item over. To do this, click on the item and hold down your mouse button while dragging that item to you're the section in your Financial Statement in which it belongs. If you aren't sure where something belongs, click on the help button and it'll help you out. Removing Items In order to remove items from your Financial Statement you need to look at the list given to you and then find those items in your Financial Statement. Once you've found them, click on the item in your Financial Statement. This will cause a red line to cross out the items on the list. Sometimes, you'll find some items where it's listed twice such as Credit Cards. For these select the second item in the list. Also, if you have multiple items in the list that are the same, such as two 3br/2ba +500 Cash flow items, you can select either one in the list to continue. Autosum Buttons Anytime you add or remove an item that will affect your Income, Expenses or Cashflow you need to click on the autosum button to update finish updating your sheet. These are purple buttons which display to the left of the Income, Expense and Cashflow text on your statement. Auditor Don't worry about making mistakes on your Financial Statement. The computer will warn you if you've made and error and automatically reset any items that are incorrect.
6. SPACES ON THE RAT RACE Paycheck Square When you either land on or go past a Paycheck Square you get the amount of your current cashflow added to your cash on hand. Baby Square When you have a baby you add a monthly cost of that child your Financial Statement. You can only have a maximum of 3 children per game. Downsized Square As most are aware there's very little job security now and at one time or another almost everyone will be affected by the downsizing of companies when they're forced to layoff employees. If you're still relying on your paycheck every month it's important to protect yourself against this by keeping some money available for emergencies. It's also important to notice that even if you've been downsized you're not out of the game. You can still buy stocks and real estate. Charity Square Charity is the act of giving to others. Charity was very important to Rich Dad. One of the advantages of being generous is that it not only makes you feel great but also allows you to meet new people and experience new opportunities. Opportunity Square Part of learning how to invest involves learning where to find your opportunities. When you land on Opportunity Squares you need to choose between Big Deals and Small Deals. Small Deals are items that cost less than $5,000 while Big Deals cost more than
$6,000. A lot of people will try to purchase Big Deals even though they don't have enough money. Or they'll spend every last penny they do have in order to buy the Big Deal. Sometimes you're better off keeping to the investments you can afford rather than trying to show off to others with how much money you can invest. By spending your time looking at investments you can't afford you may overlook some very good ones that you can. Doodad Square Doodads are the unexpected items on which most people spend their money each much. Usually they're unnecessary things such as new cars or jewelry. In the game you don't have a choice on whether or not you buy doodads but you can put them on credit cards if you don't have enough cash available. Be careful, putting doodads on credits cards is how most people in the real world get into financial trouble. Market Square Market cards can be used as opportunities to sell real estate. Sometimes if the property value in an area has gone up it may make sense to sell the property. While you'll lose the cash flow it provides, you can use the profit to purchase additional investments. It's important to keep a close eye on the market in order to protect your investments and take advantage of changing market conditions.
7. TYPES OF OPPORTUNITIES Real Estate Real Estate offers growing opportunities for you to increase your passive income. By putting a small amount of money down on the property you can create an asset that adds consistent monthly income to your income statement. Rental real estate can be an asset only when the rent received is more than all of the expenses added together (such as mortgage payment, management cost, vacancy cost, repairs, taxes, etc.) This means that you receive passive income from the property. If the rent is not enough to cover the expenses, you must pay the amount not covered (negative cash flow) out of your pocket each month. Stocks A share of stock represents ownership in a corporation. The shareholders (those people owning stock in a company) are the actual owners of the company. By purchasing stock you gain the advantage of creating a profit by investing in other companies. Shares Split Sometimes stocks will either split or reverse split depending on how well, or poorly the company is doing. When stocks split the number of shares you own of that company doubles and the price per share is cut in half. When the reverse split occurs the number of shares that you have is cut in half. Trading Range The average high and low prices of an investment. Mutual Funds Mutual Funds are a variety of stocks, bonds, or securities, grouped together and managed by a professional investment firm. Owners of these shares possess no direct ownership value in the various Companies nor do they have any influence over how the investment firm invests the money. These are only giving you a more diverse investment for an investor to manage for you. The advantage of mutual funds is that they allow an inexperience investor to invest their money without any former knowledge. The disadvantage is that without any control over the investment is very difficult to tell what your returns will be.
Network Marketing Network marketing companies can be a great way to start a part time business. For a reasonable fee you may buy into an existing system and immediately start building your business vs. purchasing a franchise. By buying into Network Marketing new distributors can focus all their efforts in building their business through sharing an automated business opportunity instead of worrying bout the normal start-up headaches of a small business.
8. THE BANK Bank Loans You can borrow money from the Piggy Bank at any time by clicking on the icon just above your character at the top of the screen. When you borrow money it must be in $1,000 increments and for each $1,000 it'll cost you $100 per month. By clicking on the piggy bank you can also pay back loans as well as cash in CD's. Going Bankruptcy You go bankrupt when your cash flow is negative and you don't have enough cash on hand to cover the difference. If you have to declare bankruptcy you must: 1. Sell any number of assets you own for one half the down payment to the bank 2. Use those funds to pay off debts until your income is greater than your expenses.
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Note: If you can do this before you have to sell all your items be sure to click on the piggy bank to pay back those debts since the game will try to sell all your items first before paying back any loans. Lose 3 turns. If, after selling all your assets, your monthly Cash Flow is still negative then one half of your car loans, credit cards and retail debt are wiped out along with one half of their payments. Your Home Mortgage and School Loan remain the game.If your Monthly Cash Flow still remains negative then you are officially out of the game.
9. HOW TO GET MORE INFORMATION If you're not sure what to do next or would like to know what Rich Dad would have to say about an opportunity there are lots of ways to get information in the game. Most of these items are displayed on the cards that come up during the game. TV & Lesson Icons Anytime you see one of these two icon's in the game it means that Robert Kiyosaki has extra information available on the subject. By clicking on the TV icon you'll see a video of Robert talking about subject. Try clicking on both icons to see what Robert has to say! Help Text When you click on these buttons they'll tell you about the card and what decisions you have to make there. If you're not sure where something goes or what all the buttons mean this is the place to go. At the top left of the screen there's also another help button that has help on all the game rules and subjects.
10. DEFINITIONS Automated Business A Business that runs primarily by technology, versus people. Capital Cash or something of an agreed-upon value. Capital Gain or Loss The difference between what you bought an investment for and what you sold it for, less improvements. Cash Flow Cash coming in (as income) and cash going out (as expenses). It is the direction of the cash flow that determines whether something is income, expense, asset or liability. Cash flow tells the story. Certificate of Deposit A loan to government & businesses, issued through banks, with specified maturity dates andd interest rates. Dividend A distribution of profits of a company to the shareholders. Down Payment A percentage of the purchase price an investor pays for an investment. The remainder of the price is then financed through other means. Foreclosure A bank or individual takes your property for non-payment of the mortgage. Government Savings Bond A loan an individual makes to the government in exchange for payment of interest on that loan. Inflation An economic situation where consumer prices rise. IPO Initial Public Offering. The first time a company offers shares of stock to the general public. Limited Partnership A legal entity set up to hold assets. Allows limited liability for limited partners. Mortgage If you are financing your real estate, the property you are financing is used as collateral against the amount of money you are financing, or borrowing. The mortgage is the security instrument. Passive Income Income generated from your investments such as interest, dividends and real estate rentals, with minimum work.
ROI Return on Investment. Return on capital, as a percentage, from an investment. Example: An apartment building costs $500,000. You pay $100,000 as a down payment. You have a monthly cash flow of $2,000. Your ROI is $2,000 x12, divided by $100,000 or 24%. 1031 Tax Deferred Exchange A method of buying and selling real estate that allows you to defer payment of taxes on your capital gains profit. (1031 refers to the U.S.A. Tax Code).
11. HOTKEYS & TROUBLESHOOTING The return key will do a number of useful things for you. For one it'll close any card or screen that comes up. If the card requires a decision such as a stock purchase card it'll always pass on the deal except in the cases listed below. • Doodads - Pays for the doodad with cash if possible. • Network Marketing Cards - Buys these • Charity - Pays for charity • Fast Track - Buys all opportunities it can afford and passes on all dreams (including your dream) While the return key is extremely useful for not having to hunt for buttons be careful to hit it too fast. You wouldn't want to pass up on that great stock deal! My Robert Video's don't play In order to see the Robert Videos you need to have Quicktime version 5 or later installed. If you are on a PC and you chose not to install Quicktime during installation, the Quicktime 6 for windows installer is located on the Data CD in the Windows Files\QuickTimeInstaller folder. For Mac users the correct Quicktime version for your version of the OS can be downloaded at the quicktime website: http://www.quicktime.com The Video's in game are choppy In order to keep the installation size smaller we don't install all of the videos.To improve this performance you can try using a medium or full install on the PC. For the Mac, or those users who have already installed and would prefer not to reinstall, you can drag the files GA1.dat and/or the Video folder located on the Play Disk directly into the CASHFLOW folder you installed on your hard drive. I'm running Mac OS 8.6 and I get a sprockets error You need to install the GameSprockets files from apple. These are freely available on the Apple website but weren't included in version 8.6. To install these go to the below webs address and search for GameSprockets http://www.info.apple.com/support/downloads.html
12. CUSTOMER SERVICE CASHFLOW® Technoloiges, Inc 4330 N. Civic Center Plaza Suite 101 Scottsdale, AZ 85251 For technical support Technical Support: 877-250-PLAY E-mail:
[email protected] For ordering information see our website at www.richdad.com
13. LEGAL INFO This product is protected under one or more of U.S. Patent Nos. 5,826,878, 6,032,957 and 6,106,300 to Kiyosaki et al, (and corresponding patents in other jurisdictions), as well as the Copyright laws. Applications for additional patents in the United States and other countries are also pending. CTI hereby expressly disclaims any licenses under its patents and copyrights that might be implied from the purchase of a copy of the product; the product may be used ONLY in accordance with the terms and conditions of an express license. Among other things, the license limits use of the product to a single computer, and precludes copying, reverse engineering, decompilation, and/or modifications. If, after reviewing the complete terms of the agreement (on the CD), you do not agree to such terms, return the product within
30 days of the transaction and CTI will refund the monies paid for the product.
