Cashflow opportunity or not?

There are a couple of cards in the 'Small Deals' pack of Cashflow that offer sale of property with negative cashflow.

Your initial reaction is see the negative cashflow figure and move on.

In actuality, you (or someone else) will soon pick up a 'Market' card, allowing you to sell property at a rate that is always worth considering, for quick cash profit.

I suppose the overriding message here is to consider all opportunities you come across, even if they initially appear disadvantageous - in Cashflow, and in real life...

Another eBook?

I'm deciding whether to write another eBook - Yawn!

When you say that you are about to write another eBook, most of your friends and contemporaries may ignore you and change the subject quickly to 'X Factor', or the latest football match.

The word 'eBook' sounds like a cheap version of the real thing, so you tend to switch off (a bit).

It also conjures up (for those who have bought them) a low cost, thin 'book', which, when translated to pages on your Kindle screen, amounts to an hour or so of reading stuff you already know.

This may be the case for a lot of the eBooks out there, but there are also the minority of good ones, which tend to be information rich and enable you to absorb and learn stuff easily and quickly.

These days, people want to be able to be informed quickly and the eBook is the answer.

The pleasure from seeing your eBook sell is well worth the effort and this adds to your aim of increasing your passive income remember?

Doodads

Don't really know where 'Doodad' comes from but the definition is that it is an unamed gadget or thing.

In Cashflow, this refers to anything that you spend money on without thinking about it too much. A cup of coffee or lunch with friends.

The pretty much guaranteed process of picking up a 'Doodad' card means that you will part with some of your money and never see any return on it at all. In Cashflow this is bad, as you want to make your money work for you as much as possible.

More pricier Doodads may be spending money on a new Hi-Fi system, or taking the kids out for the day.

In the 101 game, the Doodad to avoid is the 'Boat' Card, whch is not only expensive ($1000 down and $17,000 on time) because it adds $340 to your expenses, to pay for the $17,000 loan for the boat.

So in most cases, picking up the Doodad card is a 'necessary' drain on your money, or even a money pit if you happen to do it often.

In the 202 game, the Doodad's are more 'involved' and that usually includes adding a regular bill to your monthly expenses (see the illustration above!)

There is no strategy with Doodads, as they are entirely due to the roll of the dice, so you cannot avoid them.

Just be aware that you will pick up a Doodad card a few times during any game and that you'll need some cash to pay for it, so have some set aside would be a good policy.

Videos on YouTube increase that passive income stream

A friend of mine is making lots of 'review' videos and piling them onto YouTube at the moment.

He has learnt that even if you only make a few pence a day from 5 videos, then 10 can only make you more!

There is also the bonus of striking it lucky and making a video on a niche subject that a lot of people want to watch. I suppose it's a bit like Premium Bonds in that you can get small prizes quite regularly (if you have the maximum holding of £30,000), but still have that opportunity of winning that big one.

Videos are so easy to make with a smartphone or ipod touch and there is usually the facility to upload your video to YouTube from your device in an instant at the touch of a button!

When your video is up on YouTube, you then have an online editor to add captions, music and merge several videos into one! This is the sort of thing that you would only dream of a few years ago...

Anyway, the constant creation of good content, reviewing something with a video is one sure way of increasing your passive income.

Land and Gold Opportunities require patience in Cashflow

I suppose this is an important lesson in building up your investment portfolio and increasing your passive income. Be patient, the opportunity will eventually come up!

In the Cashflow Game, there are many opportunities to make money that a lot of players miss. The idea is that you pick up a Small or Big deal card that allows you to buy land, gold coins or a limited partnership.

You or somebody else can then pick up a Market card to sell these at a profit. The thing is that there are only a few of these cards in the pack and the opportunity doesn't come up that often to buy or sell them.

As you should know, you must always use every opportunity you can in Cashflow, no matter how small, to boost you income, so investing in gold, land or limited partnerships is a longer term play for your returns, which may only double your money invested.

Don't just discard the opportunity, give it a go!

Win Cashflow Easily ...and quickly!

I really wonder how far you can 'use' the $1 card (There are two of them) in the game of Cashflow.

I managed to pick up the card in my last game and promptly got a bank loan for $10,000 to pay for 10,000 shares. Doesn't everybody do this sort of thing? (I can also see that this is not a sound thing to do with real life investing!).

I just wondered how far you could go. With any number of people playing, provided that they are still in the 'Rat Race', it is quite likely that another MYT4U card will come up soon, and it will almost certainly have a greater 'Today's Price' than $1.

You will then sell your MYT4U shares and profit greatly, ensuring that when you next land on 'Small' or 'Big Deals', you can always go for 'Big Deals' and greatly improve your cashflow rather quickly as nothing will be too expensive for you to buy as you will have lots of Dollars.

I would probably risk using up all my monthly cashflow buying these shares, just for the small risk of waiting a few goes, until another MYT4U card comes up.

Can the game be really this simple to win?

What is Financial Freedom?

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.

I've tried to sum it up in this article:

Financial Freedom or not?

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.

Shorting Stock in the Cashflow 202 Game

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

or watch my YouTube Video:

 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.

Passive Income from my Mini Fruit Machine!

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!

Here is my video:  Mini Fruit Machine

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!

Scalable Passive 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.

Scalable Passive Income Generation

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.

Having Lots of Passive Income Streams

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.

Multiple Passive Income Streams

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 and Selling Businesses in the Cashflow Game

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!

The Cashflow Quadrant

This sequel to Robert Kiyosaki's book 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' shows us how we tend to earn income in one of four ways.

Two of them are linear (a fixed amount of money per hour) and are what most of us do. The right hand two quadrants are for the real wealthy types.

Cashflow Quadrant Details

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.

Buying and Selling Property in the Cashflow Game

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.

Assets and Liabilities

Is your home really an asset... and what is an asset anyway?

Now is the time to think about your lifestyle and understanding the basic differences between an asset and a liability is a great start.

Read my short article here: Assets and Liabilities

Robert Kiyosaki goes on about this a lot in his book 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' and it is one of the basic fundamental lessons to managing your finances.