029 Game-ify Making Money Part 1 : Look Around And Pick It Up
This is the first of a two-part series where I am teaching you my favorite ways to game-ify making money. The first money game is called “Look Around and Pick it Up!” This is not manifestation, although some folks will tell you it’s the exact same thing. This is a practical exercise and game to play every day of your life to discover how there is money everywhere and it’s available for you to pick up or ask for it. I share with you a couple of examples of how to play this game, but there’s an infinite number of ways to play. Listen and share with me how you are going to play!
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Hey everybody, I'm coming on to talk to you today. I've got a new episode and this is going to be a fun one and I wanted to share this with you because a lot of the times I think we all get kind of caught up in our money drama. We're always thinking about how can I make more money? Oh, my gosh, I don't have enough money in my account to do things that I want to do. Blah blah blah. My salary isn't what I want it. And instead of making things so dramatic all the time and focusing so much on the negative, I want to share with you how I gamify money and make it fun and interesting for my brain to participate in. I want to share this with you. I've already kind of talked about it a little bit on social media, but I thought it would be fun to do a podcast about it as well. So, if you're not already following me on my socials, those links are in the show notes. Go find me All Ease Accounting on Instagram and All Ease Accounting on Facebook. And I also have a TikTok account. I just converted my personal TikTok account into a business account. So the handle is RayRayHammer, but I think if you search for all ease accounting over there on TikTok I'm going to come up.
So anyways. Let's talk about how we're gamifying money making. I'm also recording this in a new location in my house today because my neighbors were mowing their stupid lawn or leaf blowing or whatever and like I said before, they always choose to do this whenever I am trying to record some audio. So I'm going to a different location if it sounds different and that bothers you, I'm so sorry, but I'm trying to make sure that the sound quality is better and that I'm not being drowned out by a leaf blower.
So let's talk about gamifying your money making. Why do we want to do this in the first place? Well, I like to have fun. I don’t know about y'all but I really enjoy having fun. I take pleasure in playing games. I play video games, I play mobile games. I like to play tabletop games, you know, board games, card games with friends. All of that good stuff. I love playing games. It's super fun for me to just, like, make things happen that are not so high stakes. I mean, I'm a very competitive person. So like if you are playing a game against me, like card game or board game or tabletop, I am gonna go hard in the paint and I'm gonna be competitive. Like, don't get me wrong, I want to win. But at the same time, it's also low stakes. I'm just having a good time; competitiveness is fun for me, is what I'm really trying to say. And when we're having fun, what we're not being is stressed or anxious or nervous or self-conscious. So when we're having fun, we're being the opposite of all those things. We're relaxed, we're laughing. Everything is fine. And it’s really having fun, focusing on ways to make things fun, focusing on how to gamify things really takes the drama out of stuff like this. It teaches you and your brain how to enjoy making money if you can find a way to gamify it.
I have seen people gamify making money in like so many different ways, and I just want to share with you the way that I like to do it so I'm going to teach you 2 money games over the course of two weeks. So this episode is going to be about the first money game, which is look around and pick it up. And then the next game I will release on next week's episode, and I won't tell you what that is just yet. You'll have to make sure that you subscribe and turn on notifications and come back next week to figure out, to find out what that game is and to play it with me.
So when we're making things fun, we're making things into a game we are not stressed. You know we're relaxed. We're having fun. Everything's good. We're not, and so, you know, shifting away from those negative emotions and coming back to playing a game. It's like for me, going back to my childhood and being like, playing games with my family, you know, and that wasn't something that I think we did, like, really on a regular basis. But the times that we did it, especially on holidays, when we were all purposefully gathered around and like playing together and having fun or watching movies together like it was just. I felt so good and happy and like [I belonged]. And so anytime I'm playing a game, I'm going back into that headspace of like, I'm surrounded by people that I love being around and I'm having fun and I'm not like in danger and shit. And so also I think gamifying making money or finding a way to make money as a game de-gases, when you don't get money. So like if you have a client that's like, or you're doing a consultation, or you're like trying to make a sale to a customer, and the result is that they don't end up paying you anything or they don't sign up for your services, they don't wanna buy the product. And so your brain's like ohh, I failed, you know. Oh, I'm not gonna get any money. I'm gonna go broke. I'm gonna lose everything. And I have to close my business like. The range is completely catastrophize, and goes to that end result of you not having any money, of you being a failure.
So, if we're turning it into a game, all of a sudden the stakes are much lower, right? Like we're just playing a game here, OK? You didn't win that round, So what? There is going to be another round, right? You can try again next time. You can try a new strategy. So I think it really takes the gas out of it, that you're a failure. You're never going to make any money. It’s that pattern that your brain wants to go to whenever. It's just a game like I'm just playing. I'm just here to have fun. I'm just here to figure out how I can make money and it's just going to be fun. Like it's just a game, so taking the gas out of that, making it into a humorous thing I think is really helpful. It helps me. And so I wanted to share with you. And it's a good way to focus on all the ways that money comes.
So when you have these patterns of like I'm not successful, I can't close the sale. Nobody's signing up for my services. Nobody wants to buy my products etc. Your brain is like looking for all of the evidence that that's true. All the time. We already have a cognitive bias towards the things that we already believe. So even though there's evidence out there that may not exactly mean, objectively, that we're shit and that we're not going to be successful, we take it as evidence, like anything that happens. We're like, Yep, there's more evidence for that. So, making it into a game, let your brain focus on the ways that money is coming to you. And this is just like priming the pump, this is just like building up that muscle from repetition of looking for ways that you already have money lying around and you just need to pick it up.
So let's talk about this money game that I'm teaching you about this week. It's called look around and pick it up. I think that's like a super simple, easy thing to remember. Look around and pick it up. Look around and pick it up if you can just repeat that to yourself a couple times a day like you're just going to be like, OK. You might literally stand up and turn in a circle, like look literally looking in your environment for money, which is yes, one way to do it.
Let's talk about the rules of this game. OK, the rules are all made-up, so you get to decide on what rules you wanna play by, but here's the rules that I play by. There is no minimum to how much money you find when you look around and pick it up, that's the rule. There is no rule, there's no minimum. You can look around and find a penny on the ground and literally pick it up and you won the game. You win. You win that round. It could be 1 penny. It could be $5000. It could be $50,000. Any amount of money that you find when you look around and pick it up means you've won the game. That's the rule. So there's no minimum. So you are not allowed, if you're playing by my rules, you are not allowed to look around and find a dollar bill at the bottom of your purse and be like, well, that doesn't really count. Yes, it does. It's my rules. It's my game. If you're playing by my rules, then you win. If you look at the bottom of your purse and find a dollar bill.
OK, so there's no minimum, and here's how you play. You look around. Let's talk about the different ways that you can look around. These are just suggestions. This is not like an end all be all exhaustive list of ways that you need to look around. You can do whatever you want. Here are some suggestions of ways that I've used this game and played by these rules and I won the game.
You look around and you [find] a checking account that has bonuses. So you've probably gotten these things in the mail or have you gotten ads online for different banks that want you to open a checking account with them. And what they tell you is that you open up a bank account and you spend $1500 in the first three months of having the account. And they're going to give you $300.00. That's all. That's the criteria. So, you could open a bank account and then pay your rent out of there for two months, or pay your mortgage out of there for two months and you've already won and you get the $300. That's just free money. So, open a checking account that has a special bonus like that. That's one way to look around.
Open up your credit cards if you have credit cards. Everybody's credit card now has cash back incentives or miles or whatever, but most of them have cash back and they pay you probably like 1% or 3%, whatever for each dollar that you spend on their credit card. So make sure you look in your credit cards every month. So looking around means literally opening your credit card account and seeing if you have cash back that you've already earned. That's just sitting there. Make sure that you get signed up for those. It is the case that there may be special purchases that they're telling you like, for this month if you go to a restaurant and use our credit card, we're going to give you more cash back. So make sure that all of those things are activated and that you're actively using them the way that you can get the most incentives out of that.
Here's another way to look around. Open up your Venmo, Cash app, and PayPal accounts. These are all accounts that these companies allow you to pay people, you know, instantaneously. The way that these companies make money is by holding your cash in their account, and they make interest off of the cash sitting in that account. It's technically your money, but we all know that it takes a couple business days for that money to be transferred into like your bank’s checking account from your Venmo or your cash app, or even PayPal. If you don't want to pay a fee, it's going to take a couple of days for that money to come into your account. But while that money is sitting in Venmo, sitting in cash app, sitting in PayPal, those companies are making interest off of the money that's sitting in that account for you. You don't get that interest. Open up your Venmo, Cash app, and PayPal and look in there. Is there money sitting in those accounts? Maybe move it into your checking account if you want. If you want to leave it in there, that's fine too. But we're playing the look around and pick it up game.
So there's also if you left a job that had a retirement account, make sure that you go look and that you've rolled over all of the retirement accounts from your previous employers. So that's another way to look around and find money: oftentimes we leave a job and then that money is still sitting in a retirement account at that job. That's your money. Go get it. Go look around. See if it's there.
Another way that you can look around and find money is by looking into opening a money market account or some other high interest yield account. So, if you're banking with you know, chase or Bank of America or whatever and you just have a checking account, usually you don't make any interest off of money sitting in that account. Usually it's just, you know, free or you actually pay a fee to them every month unless you meet a minimum balance. So, here's what you're going to do. You're going to research money market accounts or other high interest, high yield savings accounts. You want to get an account that has over 1% interest on the balance that you keep in that account and you're gonna want to open an account like that. The next thing you're gonna do is check the minimum balance needed for just your regular checking account where you do like all your transactions and stuff. This could be personal. This could be a business checking account, as long as that is an account that you operate out of and that doesn’t pay you any interest for the money sitting in your account. We're going to look at what the minimum balance needs to be before you get charged a fee. So, let's say that Chase Bank has a business checking account and you need to keep $500 in that account, otherwise they charge you like a $10 monthly fee. And this is just a service fee, right? This is just you paying them to hold on to your money if you [don’t] keep more than $500 in that account, they don't charge you the monthly fee. If your balance goes below that amount and whatever their terms are, they may charge you the $10 fee. So what you're going to do is once once a month, you're going to open your checking account and move any excess money that you've got in there over that minimum balance. So if you've got $1000 sitting in there and your minimum balance needs to be 500, otherwise you get charged that monthly fee, you're going to move $500 out of there so that you maintain that minimum balance, but put that $500 in your money market. Put it in that high yield interest savings account, where it's actually gonna make money for you and you still don't have to pay the fee to chase because you've maintained that minimum $500 balance.
So that's another way to look around for money. Money market, high yield interest accounts are a great way to just let your money sit there and earn interest and earn a higher interest rate than just your typical savings accounts. Typical savings accounts at your bank are going to be less than 1%. And so, you're getting pennies, you know, maybe on the dollar of whatever is sitting in your savings account, not even a penny. It's less than 1% usually. Move that money out of there, put it in a higher interest savings account or a money market where you're getting more than 1% that you earn back from your money, it’s just sitting there. If it's sitting there anyways, it might as well be making money for you. This is one way to look around. Research what your options are, research what kind of accounts you qualify for, and then pick up your money and put it in there. Pick up the money every month. Whenever they deposit those interest dividends into your account.
Here's another way to look around and find money. Open up your purse and wallet, count the coins and the dollars that are in there. One thing about me is that I've always got a stray dollar hanging around at the bottom of my purse. I'm a Zumba instructor by night. Accounting and bookkeeping [are] my day job. I do teach Zumba classes at night. People pay me cash when they come to my classes. I always have random dollar bills shoved into my purse because I don't take the time to sit there and put it in my wallet. This is one way for me to easily look around and find money. It's just by opening up my purse, opening up my wallet, looking in the car console, the center console of your car and see you've got change just jangling around in there. Do you have a swear jar for yourself or your kid? If you've got change just chilling in there, look at it. Look around, look around and find the money. So before we move on to the pick it up part of all this, I'm going to go on a quick break.
OK, so now that we've looked around and found all this money lying around literally just waiting for us to pick it up. The second part of the game is to pick it up. So, like we talked about, go open that checking account that gives you the cash bonus and then set up your rent to come out of it. Set up your mortgage to come out of it for the first couple of months. Make sure that you make a plan to meet those qualifications so that you get that cash back bonus. So we're not just looking around and seeing all the ways that money could come to us. We actually do have to take the action. That's why it's called look around and pick it up. You actually do need to take the action. And so for a checking account, that gives you a cash bonus, make sure that you know exactly what qualifications you need to meet before you go open that account. Make a plan to meet the qualifications, so if it's a certain amount of spending in the first months, set up a recurring bill to come out of that account so that you meet the qualifications or set up multiple bills. Change them over to that checking account so the next couple of times the bills come out, they come out of there and you meet your qualifications. This is different for every bank so you really need to make sure that you're reading the fine print. Like literally read any exclusions, make sure that you understand the terms. And then go get your money. Go pick it up.
Make sure on your credit cards that you are activating those bonus cash back incentives. So for instance, both of my personal like just regular spending credit cards have like a quarterly cash back bonus incentive program that they do. So usually, I just get like 1% basically. One point for every dollar I spend on purchases on those cards, and that's just for everything, right? So, I have like bills that I scheduled to come out on those cards and then I have cash back bonuses that happen every quarter. So for one quarter it might be like grocery stores? OK, great. Well, I actually have to go in and activate that cash back bonus. It's not just automatically applied, so you do need to log in and make sure that it's activated, and then OK grocery store. Now I know every time I go to the grocery store during that quarter, I am putting that charge on that credit card. I want that 5% cash back bonus for spending at grocery stores.
So, there is some planning that has to happen in this, but if you are someone who can follow a plan, organize to understand the terms you know, set reminders for yourself, set up an automatic bill to come out of a specific card or a specific bank account. If that's something that you're capable of doing, Because I know sometimes, like if we've got ADHD, we get distracted, you may not remember. Find a way to systematize this, play the game, get that cash back. And I'm not telling you to put everything on a credit card because that would be bad advice. You obviously don't need to be putting things on a card if you can't manage, at least making the minimum payment on that card. I'm not going to tell you to not use your credit cards unless you can pay it off every month. I poo poo on all of that. That's that financial guru online crap that I extremely dislike. Credit cards are meant to be used because you've established that you're capable of managing that credit.
So, at the very least, you do need to be making the minimum payment on your credit cards, so if you can do that, you know, get those charges on there. Get that extra incentive cash back activated and then actually go in and log in every month and make sure that you pick up. Pick it up, look around as logging in to see if you've got your cash back. And then picking it up would be getting the cash back, moving it into a savings account just like I talked about before, that high yield savings account. So, setting up recurring bills and credit cards, you need to be able to pay off at least those charges and the monthly payment on your credit card. So that you don't end up paying interest on that.
But I'm not here to tell you how to manage the credit. OK, this is really all of this is just suggestions about how you can look around and pick up money that is already waiting for you. So if you've activated what you need to do for cash back on credit cards, cash back from checking account bonuses, as long as you've done what you needed to do, all you need to do is look around and pick that money up, move it into your account. So, we're making sure that we're going in every statement period and getting cash back. I put the cash back in directly into my savings and that's where I earn money on it.
So that is the game. And it's simply to look around and pick it up. It's a fun money game. Every time I find money in places, my brain's like, oh, that's right, that's the rule for that game. I just won the game.
And I want to tell you a story about how this worked for me with a client last week. Well, they’re a former client. I was mistakenly paying for a subscription for somebody for their QuickBooks Online, but I kept seeing this charge come into my account every month. And I thought it was for something else. Well, I was already paying for that something else on another bill. So, I didn't know what this charge was for and I didn't get a receipt for anything. I didn't get an invoice for it, so I was really confused about why I was being charged this every month. So I'm looking, I'm doing the look around part right? I'm looking at this and I'm getting charged this money. I don't know what this is for. I finally decided to get on the phone with the vendor and I'm like, can you please look up what this charge is for? And after about 30 minutes on the phone, we finally figured out that I was paying for a subscription for one of my former clients. I was never even supposed to be paying for that subscription in the 1st place. Ended up mistakenly getting transferred to come out of my account for the billing. Weird, but OK, so the pick it up part of this game for me was to call the client, which I did. And ask them to change the billing over so that it was coming out of their account, which they said yes of course. And then I also asked them to reimburse me for the months that I had been charged for their subscription when I wasn't supposed to be, and I had not agreed to pay for their subscription. They said yes, absolutely. I sent them an invoice and they paid it the next day.
So, this was just looking around finding ways that I can make money come back to me and picking it up, asking for it, just saying, hey, can you send me that money? It's as simple as that. But it could be as simple as looking at the bottom of your purse and finding a dollar bill. It could be as simple as asking for a reimbursement for something that you've paid for that technically you should be reimbursed for. It could simply be asking somebody if they want to hire you for your services, asking them if they would like to purchase your product, letting them know that your product exists. Letting them know that you are providing a service. And asking them, looking around and saying hey, like, do you want to pay me money? For this thing. That's as simple as the game gets.
So, Part 2 is going to be a very similar game to this. Look around and pick it up, but you won't find out about it until that episode comes out next week. It's going to be a similar game, but it is a little bit different than this one, I think it's just as fun. I love playing it just as much, so make sure that you're following this podcast and that you turn on notifications for new episodes. I don't want you to miss the second money making game.
Let's gamify our money. Let's make things fun. I want to hear from you what you thought about this episode. You can come on my social media and leave me a comment, letting me know if you're playing the game now.
Just a reminder, playing the game is simply every day repeating to yourself, maybe two or three times during the day. Just saying out loud, look around and pick it up. Look around and pick it up, practicing that mantra. Is going to get your brain into game mode. It's going to be like, alright, I know the rules. I just got to look around and pick it up and you will be shocked like how easy it is to find money and just pick it up y'all. Like, I am not really one into like manifestation and stuff. I call myself a numbers witch, I think I am a witchy person, but I'm not super into like casting spells and manifesting and doing rituals. No, we're literally just playing games over here. That's the numbers witch in me, like we're playing a game, we look around and we pick up money. We look around, we find money and we pick it up. It's super fun.
I want you to leave me a rating and a review for this podcast, and please share it with your network if you found it fun. And if you're going to be playing this game, come share that with me on social media, leave me a comment, let me know your thoughts about this episode. I really appreciate y'all listening and I hope you have a wonderful week. Talk to you later. Come back next week for Part 2. The next money game.