Personal Finance Challenge - August - Play a Mins Game
Welcome to the Living That Debt Free Life 2019 Personal Finance Challenge!
If you are new to budgeting, paying off debt, and managing your finances, you’ve come to the right place! I’ve compiled 12 monthly challenges to get your 2019 financially on track.
Each monthly challenge contains one of the many steps I’ve taken to help me pay off debt faster.
If you’ve been paying off debt for a while, the information in these challenges is probably nothing new to you.
But, if you’re one of the hundreds who ask me each month how I’ve managed to pay off so much debt, then this is going to be so helpful to you!
The challenge is completely free to join! Each month, we’ll complete the challenge together and chat about it here on the blog in the comments down below and on Instagram.
I’ll announce each monthly challenge here on the blog and on my Instagram Page.
If you are participating, please feel free to leave a comment down below and let me know how it’s going! And, be sure to tag your challenge-related IG photos with #TDFL2019Challenge, so I can find you and cheer you on!!
For all the monthly challenges, click HERE.
Prior Monthly Challenges
If you have done the rest of these monthly challenges, then you have tracked your expenses, made a zero-based budget, and eliminated one recurring expense from your budget. You’ve also tried using cash envelopes to keep yourself in budget going 15 days out of the month without spending and reducing your eating out budget.
If you haven’t done the previous month’s challenges, that’s ok. You can complete these challenges at any time. If you want to, complete the January, February, March, April, May June or July challenges first.
Ready to get started? Here’s this month’s challenge!
August 2019 - Play a Mins Game and List 5 Things for Sale
This month’s challenge is to Play a Mins Game and list at least 5 things for sale.
What’s a Mins Game?
What’s a mins game, you ask? Good question! I didn’t know either, until I started getting serious about my financial journey and debt pay off.
A mins game (short for minimalism) is a declutter challenge where you get rid of the clutter in your home. The game lasts a month and the rules are simple: On day 1, you get rid of 1 thing. On day 2, you get rid of 2 things. On day 3, you get rid of 3 things. You keep going each day until you reach the end of the month.
You can donate the items, sell them, trash them, whatever you want to do, you just have to get them out of your home.
Since August has 31 days, by the end of the month, you’ll get rid of 496 things! Why not add in an extra 4 items and challenge yourself to get rid of 500 items from your house this month?
As an additional part of this challenge, I am challenging you to list 5 of the things you are getting rid of for sale. Just 5. You can do that!
How Hard is This? 500 Sounds Like a Lot
This really is a lot easier than you think. Every single thing you can find to purge from your home counts—unused paperclips, magazines or junk mail, old nail polish, outgrown clothes. According to the LA Times, the average American home has 300,000 items in it. Yikes. We are literally drowning in stuff, you guys.
My husband and I started playing Mins Games last year and we did one every month for 3-4 months and have still never run out of things to get rid of. Of course you may not be as pack-ratty as my husband is (semi hoarder that he is), and you may not have a family member that insists on giving you tons of “stuff” every time she sees you, but I promise you can find 500 things to get rid of—especially if you’ve never done this before.
What Does Playing a Mins Game Have to Do With My Finances?
Another good question. I often joke that if you aren’t led to minimalism by your debt free journey, you’re not doing it right. :) One of the ways we’ve been able to find extra money to send to debt is by selling the clutter from our home. When I want to throw more at the debt, I challenge myself to see what else I can find to sell.
But more importantly, when you scour your home for things to potentially sell, you begin to question your whole buying mentality. You start to ask yourself “why did I even buy this in the first place?!” You start to realize that all that stuff around you used to be money. And then you begin to examine what you’re willing to spend your money on in the future. The process of becoming minimalist or going through a minimalism game forces you to really start thinking about the way you’re spending money. And once you start getting intentional about the way you’re spending money, your whole behavior about spending and saving begins to change.
But, I Don’t Have Time For This…
One of the ways I make playing mins games fit with my schedule is by doing all my decluterring on the weekends. If you have time to declutter every day, go for it. If not, you can do what I do: add up the number of items you should declutter for the week and then do your decluttering on Saturdays. For August, the schedule looks like this:
Now, if you’re new to decluterring, this weekly schedule may be a little overwhelming. So, if this is your first mins game, you may want to stick to the daily decluterring to make things easier. Just remember to carve out time to make it happen every single day.
Where Do I List My Things for Sale?
My favorite place to list things for sale online is through Facebook Marketplace. Other options include: Poshmark, Mercari, Craigslist, and eBay.
Final Words
Don’t forget to tag your social media photos with #TDFL2019Challenge!! I want to encourage you and cheer you on this month! I want to see all that stuff you’re getting rid of and how much money you’re making by selling your unused clutter!
Then meet me back here next month for September’s challenge! Good luck, everyone!! You’ve got this!! Can’t wait to see what goals you set for yourself!!
Oh! And, as always for bonus points, complete January’s Challenge and February’s Challenge, again this month, in connection with August’s challenge. That’s what I’m going to do!
