Somebody asked me today what the term 'Financial Freedom' really means. The trouble is that it's a bit difficult to define, because we are all different and want different things.
In a nutshell, I believe that you have truly achieved financial freedom when you can live off your passive income without having to hold down a 'job' (where you are paid a salary for the time you have worked).
Dependent on your lifestyle, i.e. the way you live, this can be quite difficult to achieve or it can be quite easy if you 'downsize' enough.
In the Cashflow 202 Game, if you draw a Capital Gain Deal card that
states that MYT4U is at $40 which is at the top of its range, you can
then short sell it.
If you want to understand the concept of shorting stocks, read this:
Shorting Stocks and Shares in the Cashflow 202 Game
The procedure is that cash amounting to $40
times the number of shares that you sell is placed in the MYT4U
envelope. This is the cash that has been placed on margin as it is not
yours until you buy back the stock at a later date.
If you or
somebody else picks up a Capital Gain Deal card allowing you to sell
MYT4U at $20, then you collect half the cash in the envelope. This is
because the price of the stock has also halved. However, if MYT4U goes
bankrupt, then the share price drops to zero and you collect ALL the
cash in the envelope.
Remember that the rule in Cashflow 202 is that you must buy the stock at the next available time whether you want to or not! So, there may be the case where the price of MYT4U
goes up to $50 (outside it's normal trading range). If this happens, you
get none of the money in the envelope and have to pay the bank an
additional amount to cover your loss.
Remember that the amount of
cash you get from the envelope is equal to the difference between the
selling price and the price at which you bought the stock back, times the
number of shares.
A while back, a friend and I designed and built this fruit machine as a project for others to construct. It was featured in 'Everyday with Practical Electronics ' magazine.
What I didn't realise was that it has been providing me with little bits of passive income every week for years.
I leave it on my desk at home and friends come and play with 5p pieces in the hope of winning up to a £1 jackpot. It's just left there with it's lights flashing to encourage people to have a go!
Although it will not make me wealthy, the passive income concept is still sound. It 'earns' me money without having to work for it. OK we had to design and build it first, but there is little maintenance and it provides a tiny income!
The idea of scalability is an important one. We should not put all our eggs in one basket and spend all our time getting our one source of passive income to be the biggest.
Lots of little passive income streams can be made by providing useful information for those hungry for it. Don't just concentrate on one idea or area. When you have set up your main website, do another one on a completely different subject and preferably one you know something about.
Wouldn't we all love to have lots of passive income coming our way? The Holy Grail is to have lots of little income streams from various sources, all flowing in to make your 'river' of income.
If you can make these both online and offline, then all the better. The more the merrier.
Don't ignore little bits of income you might get from one of your websites through say Google AdSense. It's the little bits of income that add up over time to be a lot!
Buying businesses in Cashflow really gets you racing! They begin to produce high cashflow or passive income and quickly enable you to get out of thr 'Rat Race' and on to the 'Fast Track'.
Cashflow Game Part 5 - Businesses
The cashflow figures are bigger than the small deal cards and they really begin to stack up, as you feel you are becoming more and more successful!
If only a few of us could learn this great way to get on in the world, we may all be in a better place. It is a shame that this isn't taught in schools. This was one of the main points 'Rich Dad' said over and over again.
The whole point of the Cashflow Game is to generate cashflow or passive income by buying properties and renting them out. At a later stage, you can raise cash by selling them.
Cashflow Game Part 4 - Property
Selling your property reduces your cashflow, but you can use the money generated to buy higher value properties by 'trading up' and therefore effectively increasing your cashflow.
It takes a while to get used to what is a good deal or not, but I would say that it is always beneficial to buy property if you can, as it is an opportunity that may not come along again for a few more turns in the game.
Playing Cashflow 202 is like the conventional game 101 but much more 'viscious' or realistic as inventor Robert Kiyosaki might say.
You can lose your property in the draw of a single card, or lose all your shares at a stroke. On the up side there are many other opportunities though!
Picking up a 'Market' card on every turn when landing on small or big deal is a bit unwieldly and it seems to make each turn last forever.
The good bits are that you can short stocks and buy and sell options, which for me is the ultimate finance game. On the fast track, you can now franchise your businesses.
It's actually very easy to buy and sell shares in 'Cashflow' - and in the 101 game, you cannot lose!
By picking up a particular 'Small Deals' card, this allows a company's shares to be bought and sold. You can then buy any number of these shares and everybody else may also sell any amount of them that they already own as well, at the same time.
You really should buy even a small amount of shares everytime you can, as they are ultimately a way of increasing your cash, so you can then buy bigger deals and go on to win the game.
Cashflow Game Part 3 - Shares
If there are only two or three people playing, the likelihood of you being able to sell your shares diminishes, as the number of 'Small Deals' cards that are picked up also reduces.
If your opponents are all cash wealthy and going for 'Big Deal' cards, then you will be the only person picking up 'Small Deals' cards. It will then just be a matter of time before you pick up the right card!
Make lots of informative videos, put them on YouTube and 'monetise' them. You'll need to open up a Google AdSense account first though.
The word 'monetise' is a bit contrived, but it's important. It's easy to do when you have uploaded your video on YouTube, by clicking on one checkbox. You will now get paid a small cash sum when people watch or click on an advert that is shown during your video being played.
It appears that SEO is dead and all that people want is good information (or entertainment), when they do a Google search. Wow - How quickly things change!
We all know what the Rat Race is. Although it will be defined differently by many people. I see it as the regular routine of daily drudgery connected with your job and lifestyle.
We get up half asleep, in the morning after being woken up with an alarm. Have breakfast and prepare to go out to work. The daily commute is the visual representation of the Rat Race with queues of traffic and the stress and anguish that goes with it. We suffer it over and over again!
Cashflow Game Part 2 - The Rat Race
In the game 'Cashflow' The Rat Race is represented by going round a circular section in the centre of the board whilst picking up cards which provide either opportunities to get you out of the Rat Race, or liabilities that just drain your money away.
The game teaches you to take opportunities when they are presented to you. One of my winning strategies is to take as many opportunities as you possibly can, provided you can afford it!
Passive income is quite simply regular money you get from something without having to work for it.
A lot of passive income money comes from something that you have created once and are selling many times over.
The ideal example is a book that you have written. You are now selling the book and don't have any further work to do to earn money from it.
Another example is renting out property. This might not be seen as truly passive as you have money invested in the project and there is also the fact that the property will need routine maintenance, so more 'work' is involved.
There are many examples of passive income. Some may only make you a small amount every day, but if they are regular, they can add to an ever growing stream of income that will eventually set you free from work.
Passive income is the ultimate dream of 'earning' more money in a new and exciting way. It's great for people tied to a job, or those wishing to get out of the 'Rat Race' - More on this in other posts!
What I'm hoping to do in this blog is to tell you what passive income is, how you can get your own and use Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki's 'Cashflow' game to illustrate some of the key concepts.
Somebody asked me today what the term 'Financial Freedom' really means. The trouble is that it's a bit difficult to define, because we are all different and want different things.
