You can’t spell challenge without change.

That time of year when the resolutions are made. The reality though is that most resolutions are so generic, that it’s hard to accomplish them or see the finish line with them. Take, for example, the resolution to Save Money. It’s better to define the resolution into something granular, using the SMART formula. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Appropriate, Relevant, and Time Bound. The good thing is that this is easy to do, especially when it comes to money.

• Get specific with why you want to save. What is it for? The more specific you get, the better because each decision you make about money will ultimately be about the why.

• Money is measurable don’t shy away from those simple calculations.

• Create Attainable goals. It will be hard to save $50,000 if you don’t make $50,000 Goals must be realistic and attainable given the current and future resources you have.

• Goals should be relevant. How will saving money affect your life? How will it impact your future self’s well-being?

• Adding a time component to your goal is also key as it forces you to make changes today to hit that deadline. Sometimes the days are long, but the years are short so keep that in mind if you struggle with a monthly challenge. It’s 30 days out of 365.

I love monthly challenges. For over a year, I documented them on Instagram. Instead of a challenge, I called them projects, but I wasn’t competing with anyone, just wanted to shift out of some old habits and try something new.

The challenges in this list aren’t your typical save $1 on Day 1 and $2 on Day 2, although, those can be pretty helpful. These challenges are to help you see that money is an integral part of your lives, but it’s not the primary goal. You’ll learn that after doing these challenges, money and time are both important, living frugally doesn’t have to mean deprivation, you don’t always have to spend money to have a good time, and that getting a community together can help with your money goals.

1) #MinsGame

This game was created and popularized by The Minimalists. The goal is to get rid of one thing on the first day of the month. Two things on the second. Three things on the third. So forth and so on. The first week is easy, but the weeks get harder and harder as you continue to find things that you no longer need at home. The goal of this challenge is to assess the items in your home that you no longer use or find value in. Majority of Americans live with an over abundance of possessions. Understand that each item in your home cost you money in the first place. Unused possessions means wasted money. At the end of the month, try to estimate how much money you will be discarding. This is not meant to shame you into your past purchasing decisions, but to have you reflect on the importance of conscious consumption. You can donate, sell or responsibly discard these items. There’s another challenge in this list that will ask you to earn money from your old possessions so it might be helpful to do this challenge together.

Read the rules of the 30-Day Minimalism Game.

If you do this game, let me know how it goes. Did clearing the clutter help you find clarity? Did discarding possessions help see what your spending triggers are?

2) Earn $100 and Sell Your Stuff Online

The goal of this challenge is to spend one month selling your unused stuff online. Places like eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Poshmark, etc. make it easy to do so. For this challenge, start with a goal. How much money do you want to earn? Find an achievable goal and state your goal in actual dollar amount. For example, this month, I want to sell $100 worth of stuff online. Next, figure out what’s worth selling. A quick look on the front page of eBay will tell you what’s trending. Then, look around you. Find items that you no longer use: old electronics, duplicate furnitures, clothes with tags still on them, new books, baby stuff, etc. If you couple this with the #MinsGame above, you can source the stuff you sell from this game.

Selling stuff online does take some time, but don’t let that be a barrier to reclaiming some money. With apps like Facebook, Let Go and Mercari, it’s easy to create accounts. To make the process easier, try to take photos of your items all at once. Measure everything and write good descriptions to reduce back and forth with buyers.

Also, try to see this process in a different light. If you can earn $100 with one hour’s work, that’s a pretty good return on your money. Do you earn $100 an hour at your current job? Try to not let items age too much because we all know that the planned obsolescence is real and items depreciate in value very quickly. Work to get rid of items that you are not using, otherwise, it’s technically money that is not working for you or providing you any returns. Remember all that clutter was once money. All that money was once time.

Some things that I’ve been able to sell successfully in the past few weeks.

• Two backpacking bags that we used for a few trips. With baby in the house, I just don’t see these bags being as efficient or useful for us.

• An extra pair of jeans that I bought post pregnancy. I ended up losing more weight than I thought so I put them up for sale. I had already missed the return window. Plus, who keeps big jeans?

• A rain jacket that looked great, but just never found a use for it. Yeah, it rains here, but this item wasn’t as useful as I imagined it would be.

3) No Spend Challenge for a Month

This challenge is very popular in the frugal, FIRE community. The goal of the challenge is to only spend on the necessities: food, utilities, water, car, gas, etc., everything else is skipped. So this might mean skipping your morning latte, but instead making it at home. This might mean skipping dinner with friends, but having meals at home. There’s multiple variations to this challenge and the key is that you define the parameters on what you can spend on. Once you establish your parameters, you MUST stick to them. These will be your own self-imposed spending rules. To help you identify what to spend on, review your credit or debit card statements or your cash spending. Identify what was a need vs. a want. This will provide you an idea of what you should stop spending money on for the month. This challenge can sometimes feel difficult, but it’s only a month and in the grand scheme of things, really short.

Before you start on this challenge, also think about how you want to spend the money you save after you are done. Having a goal of your money is very important. Will it be used to pay off debt? Perhaps, it will be used to build a savings account. Knowing where your saved dollars will go will keep you accountable each time you have to make a decision whether you spend money or not.

4) Cash Only Month

I’ve talked about the power of cash in an earlier post and it basically boils down to the “pain of paying.” It’s related to the concept in behavioral economics that we humans are loss averse. We hate the feeling of loss more than the feeling of gain. This is the same reason why we have a hard time letting go of stuff or letting go of people who don’t add value to our lives. With this challenge, the goal is to use cash only for the entire month. You can continue to automatically charge utilities and other bills online, but for other expenses like food, groceries or last minute buys, the goal is to only use cash. To determine what you need for the month, take a look at your past expenses for the last 3 months. Find an average of how much you normally spend on your top categories and take out money. It can be helpful to place these in an envelope clearly marked for what the money is assigned for. Add the amount at the top and each time you take out money, write it on the envelope so you can tally how much you have left. Doing this also means you get more mindful about your money because you literally have to stop to take out money and write down the amount. If it helps, go fancy and use those leftover envelopes. Treat your money well.

The challenge with this challenge is many people are actually spending money they don’t have. So some may find it difficult to take out the money needed for the month, but I think all the more reason to try out this exercise. If it makes it easier, do this on a weekly basis. Analyze your spending on a week by week basis and take out money for that week. Leave your credit cards at home. Remove your linked cards on your phone. Ask to get separate checks when out with friends so that you don’t use the crutch of Venmo. Get mindful about taking out money from that envelope and feel the money leaving your hands.

5) Save $5 a Day for a Month

A few years, author David Bach coined the term “the latte factor". It was about how seemingly small purchases added up could result in missed savings and investment opportunities. This is really the key. Not the current dollar mount, but the future value of that $5 once it is invested after a few years. Well, there was an uproar of course about it. Why doesn’t he want us to drink coffee? How dare he tell me not to have my latte, but many people missed the point on it. It wasn’t really about the latte per se, but about all of the small things we spend money on without a thought. Fancy coffee at that time was on the rise so it became an easy target.

For this challenge, the goal is to save $5 a day. In order to do so, one will have to give up these small purchases. These can include coffee, cigarettes, bottled water, vending machine runs, etc. If you do this consistently, it can really add up over time.

$5 can seem small, but here’s another way to look at it. Say you start saving $5 a day the day your son or daughter is born and you do this consistently until they are 18 years old, you would have a significant chunk of change to help them pay for college or other costs.

6) Spare Change Challenge

I realize cash isn’t as popular these days, but if you take up the Cash Only Month Challenge, then I recommend getting a piggy bank or a jar to put all of your coins in. Believe it or not, I still have an old piggy bank I bought when I was in high school to keep all of our loose change. I love looking at it. Stick with the plastic now so it lasts longer and you can pass it on to your children one day. It always makes me smile and brings a child-like joy in me when I put coins in it or take out quarters from it’s snout.

If you want to get into the new decade, then check out using a tool like Acorns which rounds up all of your purchases and invests the difference. You’d be very surprised how quickly small change adds up over time. With this tool, you don’t even have to think about it. I opened an account just to take a look at the process and it’s very easy (though some banks need to be updated as I was not able to link 2 of my checking accounts). It will ask you a few questions, after which, will offer an investment strategy. Happy to learn that it invests mostly in Vanguard funds including VOO which covers the S&P 500 and has a very low expense ratio. Note that the investment distribution will depend on how you answer the questions including your risk tolerance and withdrawal period.

7) Clean Out the Fridge and Cupboard Challenge

Have you ever made the conscious decision to eat out knowing full well there was food at home? I certainly have. Most times we ate out because it was just convenient. Truth be told, cooking at home can be tedious, but have you ever calculated how much money you could save by making all of your food at home and ensuring no food goes to waste. This challenge requires that you get creative with what’s in your refrigerator and cupboard to eat up all you have. You would be surprised at the kind of meals you can make and how delicious they all can be be. You might end up finding your go-to meal for all time. Try this challenge out with a friend and it will help keep you motivated. Set up a meal exchange once a week to try each other’s meals. Knowing someone is relying on you to provide them meals can be a huge accountability boost. This challenge is also great if you have roommates or dormmates. I remember we all had a section of the pantry while in college and at the end of the semester, there would still be a lot of items in there and none of us wanted to lug any of them back home so consider throwing a meal together with these random finds to save money, reduce food waste and build community. Trust me, it’ll beat a Seamless or UberEats order any day!

8) Fun & Free

Yeah, money can help you do a lot of things, but there are also many things you can do that doesn’t have to cost you a penny. Challenge yourself to find fun and free stuff to do one month. Check out your local library for events. Find things on meetup.com or eventbrite.com or Facebook. Seek out things you normally wouldn’t do so that you are exposed to new topics, people and ways of doing things. It might be helpful to get your circle participating with you too. Before the month begins, send out an casual email to the people you normally hang out, including friends, family and close co-workers. Let them know what your plans are and to send any interesting events they find your way. You’d be surprised at how supportive your friends are and the kind of events they invite you to. Here’s a sample email.

Dear Beautiful Friends & Family:

Happy New Year! One of my goals this year is to be more mindful of how I spend my time and my money. With that, for the month of February, I’m challenging myself to find activities that are Fun & Free. So far, I’ll be attending X Event on February 3 and Y Event on February 19. If you come across something interesting, please forward it my way. If you would like to join me on these excursions, please let me know. For now I’ll be declining invites that don’t meet my criteria for this month’s challenge. Thanks for your support and see you soon!

9) Sell Your Skills

Most of the money challenges above are all about cutting back, well this challenge will ask you to earn more income. The goal is to sell your skills. What are you good at that other people will be willing to pay for? Remember you don’t need a whole lot of customers at first to try this out. In fact, it’s probably better to start with your circle of family, friends and co-workers and test out what skills could be lucrative for you. Good at organizing? Sell your service for a fee. Stick to an hourly rate to keep it simple. Good at making graphics? Head to fiverr.com to sell your services. Have an eBook ready for an audience? See if anyone in your circle is interested. Good at making handmade items, Etsy may be the place for you. Know how to change the oil in a car or fix a road bike? Find a few people who can use your expertise. It doesn’t take much to start your side hustle.

Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. Don’t have a business name or a logo? Don’t sweat it. Just market it under your name. Once you know you have a market for your skills or goods, then you can build around it, but until then, find your customers first.

We created an exercise in The Money Journal that asks you to assess your skills so that eventually you can consider starting a side hustle.

10) Increase your Rates or Salary

Before the year begins, have a plan to increase your rates. This goes for a service your provide, a product you sell or for your own salary. Don’t let the year pass by without increasing your income. Get a plan in place so that you don’t forget to do this.

Sometimes, we take for granted yearly reviews at work as something that automatically happens, but it’s important to plan for this. One of the things I used to do and recommend to anyone is to save emails where you receive kudos on successful projects. This makes it easier to document what you’ve done the past year. Keep these handy so that you can summarize it for your manager later on. Remember that your boss may manage so many other people that they’ll have a hard time remembering all of the good things you’ve done in the past 12 months. We are also prone to “recency bias” where we only focus on what’s happened very recently and everything prior gets forgotten. Don’t let that happen to you.

If you provide a service, increase your rates. After a year, you’ve probably learned something new or have become more efficient at what you do, making your time even more valuable. Be reasonnable with your increases, but be direct about it.

11) Waste Not

Get your waste audit on! What does that mean? Try this exercise. Take a stroll around your home and look to see what’s in your garbage bins. Do you see money in there? At first, probably not, but look closely. Are you throwing out half eaten food, spoiled food, clothing that have a very short lifespan, unused items, etc.? How about your trash can at work? Is it full of food wrappers and plastic packaging? We don’t realize it sometimes, but we waste a lot of money on convenience items. This leads to a thinner wallet, but also a more wasteful existence.

There’s a growing movement out there of people reducing their waste and carbon footprint and saving money at the same time. Check out #savemoneysavetheplanet or #zerowaste for ideas. Learn more about the zero waste lifestyle and see if you can implement a few key strategies for 2020.

12) Start a Savings Club with Friends

This isn’t a new idea, but the concept is that two or more people agree to contribute a specified amount of money into a fund for one particular purpose. The idea is to build accountability with people close to you and get the money conversation started among your fiends and peers. This is a good idea for a travel fund or if you and a group of friends have a bachelorette weekend coming up. By getting everyone to agree to save, you can skip incurring consumer debt for a shared experience. There’s nothing like ensuring the people around you aren’t ensnared in debt.

A few years ago for a friend’s bachelorette in Miami, we did something similar. We estimated how much our weekend would cost and started splitting up the cost over time so that by a certain time, there was a certain amount of money saved up. A responsible party, namely the bride’s sister and best friend, who were both maid of honors, opened a separate bank account with our pooled savings and kept us updated on the progress and when the next amount would be due. We started this in January and enjoyed Labor Day in Miami so we had over 8 months to plan, save and actually set aside money for it. When the weekend came, the two maid of honors paid for our budgeted expenses from a debit card. There are no arguments over money. Everyone had a good time and anything leftover was spent on the bride, though the money could have been divvied up and given back, but knowing that this was already a planned expense for us made it easier to spend the rest of the money on the weekend.

Wrap Up

Have you done any of these challenges before? Would you do one of these challenges? Let me know!!

Remember that these are meant to be short, monthly challenges so don’t be too hard on yourself, but do try to get out of your comfort zone and try it out.