I played cashflow 101 game for second time today. This time much better, not many mistakes made except a few times i over-leveraged a little in buying rental properties that caused increase in expenses in paying bank loan, but turned out okay since my net cashflow was still in positive zone although decreased a little.
All these while i have been focusing on building up passive income, and because of bank loan i took up to buy those rental properties, my expense also increased. So what i did next was to concentrate in paying back debts to reduce monthly expense.
Once monthly expense is reduced, it became much easier to accumulate cash because with reduced expense, my net cashflow increases significantly. Then not only i have income from job, i also have passive income. I just have to continue adding passive income and i would be promoted to the fast track.
There are the few lessons i learnt from cashflow 101 game:
1 – It is much easier to gain capital appreciation than getting positive cash flow from the asset. In real life, you just need to leave your house for as long as possible and very likely the house price will appreciate (Under ideal condition). But during this period, you might not get a positive cash flow from your property. Consider having your condominium rental income covering both monthly installment + maintenance fee + other miscellaneous cost is actually quite hard to achieve. There is a saying; profit is made when purchase instead of sales, while buying a rental property and hope that the rental price will go up is a gamble.
2 – If you haven’t found a good opportunity, simply don’t do anything. If you get hasty, you might run into trouble – something like what i did in previous game where i take on a huge loan and end up in negative cash flow and then bankrupted in the end. Recently the price of condominium become crazy and overprice (in my opinion), a pre-developed unit in Puchong area can actually sell for RM320K and above. To me, that won’t provide me a positive rental income because i simply don’t believe people are willing to pay that much for rental per month, talking about RM1800 per month (to cover installment and maintenance fee, and other miscellaneous cost). If you think it is not a good deal, simply don’t do anything. Probably some where there are hidden gem waiting for you. You just have to keep looking until you think that you are comfortable with the deal.
3 – Some might ask; how am i able to get so many loans given i have already own a property on mortgage? I have experience on this and i personally get the pre-approval from the banker before. As long as your existing rental property provide you positive rental income, they will consider your loan application and you are in business.
4 – Getting out of the rat race is actually not a race between you and others, but you and yourself. When i was playing the game, i keep looking at other people passive income and thought again and again; are they getting out soon? i must not lose out to them. Getting out of the rat race is a game you compete with yourself. Just do the right thing, be patience and look for good opportunities, accumulate wealth and passive income whenever you are able to. Sooner or later you will be able to escape from the rat race.
5 – It is so much easy to accumulate wealth for investment when you are free up from big expenses. Things like credit card, new plasma TV installment, gold and jewelry, etc. If you are not doing anything with your money, don’t let it sit there and depreciate. Pay back those debts. If you are not investing with return higher than credit card interest rate, your money will still fly away slowly.
