Every other Tuesday night, Mike Jacka and at least a dozen others can be found in a Minneapolis hotel meeting room, buying and selling real estate, evaluating stock investments and leveraging their assets in the hopes of getting out of the rat race. In just hours, millions are made and lost.
Lucky for the losers, it's only a game -- called Cashflow 101. The object: To save your colorful plastic rat from too much work for too little pay and transport it onto the "fast track" to wealth. The winner escapes the rat race by making wise investments that increase passive income until it exceeds expenses.
Cashflow 101 was created by Robert Kiyosaki, best known for his "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" personal finance books. A new, similar game, the Millionaire Maker Game, was launched last year by Loral Langemeier, an author and former Cashflow 101 distributor.
Langemeier claims it takes three to five years to become a real-life millionaire if you read her "Millionaire Maker" books and play her game. She says most people have a hobby or perform tasks such as dog-walking or tutoring that could be turned into a business. "But we're not taught to do that," she says. Her game opens people's minds to the possibility that they can "create an unlimited amount of cash."
Langemeier and Kiyosaki are trying to tap into the growing market for personal finance help. The market has moved beyond financial self-help books to include an ever-expanding array of seminars, websites, games and televisions shows, all aiming to teach people about the tools to financial freedom.
Langemeier and Kiyosaki, based in California and Arizona, respectively, claim that their games help lay the foundations for becoming successful real estate investors, business owners and, ultimately, millionaires.
But some are skeptical of their advice, which often goes against the suggestions of financial planners and conventional wisdom. In a video that Jacka showed to the group at one meeting, Kiyosaki says boldly that investing in a 401(k) is "a suicide mission," and that savers are "losers."
"I don't want to save for retirement," he says. "I want somebody else to pay that for me."