Anyone who has a chance to take REST is encouraged to do so- it will open your eyes! And the results are so compelling that Les himself changed his real life investing strategies based on what he saw/learned when he played the game. Les Gee's partnering ideas are phenomenal. And the key is- once you feel like you know your parnter's playing style, "switch" roles, playing a game *their* way- to see if you really understand what they would do (hint: you won't, but playing as "them" will be a big learning experience). A better way is to play separately, and discuss your individual games afterwards to learn from each other.
Cashflow 202 investment portfolio cards how to#
Not for the feint of heart- a great way to learn how to work together as a couple, but NOT EASY! (if your marriage or relationship is a bit rocky when it comes to agreeing on finances, I don't recommend this approach, since you will wind up fighting in front of other players). Play as couples (two people making decisions as one player throughout the game). Play with your own income/debts- this is fun, but again, we often need to "cut" each of the items (income, expenses, etc) by 50% or more if we want to make our "real life" numbers fit with the SUPER LOW prices of RE in the game! (remember, we live in CA, and the game was developed before the last "bump up" in RE prices). This is not as good an idea as it sounds, since you would need to change all of the income/profession cards as well. So if the houses are more, you make them more. Change all cards (this is a lot of work) making them more fit your local market. It would be hard to make them look identical, though! We have never added cards, but this is a cool idea.
This way, you can't count on a specific deal coming up- you have to make the most of each and every card (just like in real life). When each game begins, 10 cards are removed from each deck, and set aside. Each deck is reshuffled after every turn. As was mentioned, anyone who buys stock *after* the $1 card is drawn has less to worry about. As mentioned earlier, do not remove the $1 stock card- make it equal ZERO, and anyone holding any shares loses all value (they write the stock out of their books, and no longer have stocks in this co.) So when a $5 or $40 card comes afterwards, the previous owners have NO SHARES to sell (since they became worthless when the $1 card was drawn). I guarantee you it will be an interesting game. Try it with the above additions (pulling 3 cards, making the $1 stock card a BK), and see what happens. If you can get out of the ratrace every time in less than 10 moves (total, not per person), then it's time to start making the rules harder (changing the market conditions, etc.). Total time to play the game: About 10 minutes. I once played a cashflow game at one of Les Gee's REST workshops where 3 of us got out of the ratrace in 5 TOTAL turns (not five for everyone- 5 moves only). The goal here is not to buy them out of the rat race, but to teach them the value of leverage and partnering. Since we can sometimes get rich fast using this method, we also decide to stay in the game longer, and become an angel investor for other players. RESULT: You can get out of the ratrace with ZERO moves (i.e., before it's your turn). So in a game with 6 players, if I go last, I can still bargain with other players, buy their deals (or partner in with them), and borrow money from the bank (as in real life). Allow partnering on deals (as in real life). That way, if you bought 100 million at $5 a share, and somebody pulls the $1 card after this, there goes all of your stock!ģ. Make all $1 Stock cards = ZERO (i.e., bankrupt). Doodads you can leave in (we so,metimes add a few more, just to make it interesting, but you can always tell since they look different).Ģ. At the beginning of the game, shuffle all of the cards, and remove 3 from each (big deal, small deal, and Market). If you know that certain cards are going to come up (and you're waiting for them), it makes the game too predictable (and not real life). So if you've already made 30 moves, that's the equivalent of 3-8 YEARS in real life.
Remember- each turn for a player in cashflow 101 is the equivalent of 1- 3 MONTHS in the real world. Apologies in advance- I considered making this a separate thread, but figured having all of this in one place makes more sense.