Cash Flow uses a standard 52-card deck and a supply of money (points). Each player receives 30 points. The deck is shuffled and one card is turned up to start a row.
On a turn a player can choose to buy any number of cards from the row, including none. The card farthest from the deck costs ten, the next nine, and so on, with a minimum cost of one. Regardless of whether or not any cards were purchased a new card is drawn and placed at the end of the row.
The cards are used to form sets of the same suit or same rank. However, a suit set can only contain cards from 2-9 or J-A - the high and low cards cannot be mixed. A table of set values is provided. Before buying cards a player may sell any number of sets from their hand.
The game continues until the deck runs out and no players want to sell any sets or buy any cards.