030 Game-ify Making Money Part 2 : When I Spend, It Comes Back
This is the second episode of a two-part series where I am teaching you my favorite ways to game-ify making money. This game is called "When I Spend, It Comes Back". This is how we prove to ourselves that any time we are spending money, we get it back in value. This is a practical exercise and game to play every day of your life to teach you how to look for the ways that value and money come back to you every time you spend 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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Welcome to money through ease. I'm your host, Regan Bashara. I'm so happy to have you on today listening to Part 2 of how to gamify making money or gamify money in general. So if you're listening to this podcast for the first time, make sure you go back and check out part one of this series. Which was released last week on June 2nd, 2023. And that's part one of how to gamify your money. And I teach you a fun money game that I love to play. And this week I'm sharing with you what the next money game is, because this is a two-part series.
So if you're new, or if you've been here for a while and you haven't done this yet, I want you to rate and leave me a review of this podcast. I want you to share this podcast with someone who is doing money mindset work. So this episode is all about the second money game that I like to play, and it's called when I spend, it comes back. So last week's episode was part one. Make sure you go listen to that and that episode. That game was called, look around and pick it up.
So here's the overview of the game for this week. Let's talk about why we play money games in general. Why do we give a shit about gamifying money? So I want to make money in a fun way. I don't know about you, but things are better in my life whenever I'm having fun. I want to have a better relationship with how I spend and make money. And I want to share it with you all because the podcast is money through ease. We're talking about money here. We're talking about our money mindset. We talk about how we make money. We talk about how we spend money. This is why we're playing this game is to kind of improve our relationship with money. Last week was about how we make money. And turning that into a game and this week is about how we spend money and turning that into a game, there will be no toxic positivity mindset here. Your relationship to money is morally neutral and I truly believe that. Because money is just a tool or a resource, and we'll talk a little bit about that later.
So since we get to decide how we relate to money, we might as well choose to relate to it in a fun way, right? We play games to make it lighthearted. We lower the emotional stakes when we're playing a game and we loosen up when we “don’t win” a round of the game.
So let's talk about how to play this money game. Last week was to look around and pick it up, which is very self-explanatory. Like it's in the name of the game how you play. This week is a little more nuanced. It's not in the name of the game. The name is, when I spend it comes back. And this is less of an instruction of what to do than a rule of life.
So just like last week where we decided what the rules were and that there was no minimum amount of money to pick up and win the game, we're deciding this week on the rules for when I spend it comes back. The rule here is that every time you spend money, something of value is coming back to you.
So let's talk about money. Money is a currency. It is something that we constructed and agreed upon as a society to exchange money for other things. So pretty much everybody agrees on this rule. There are a few people that maybe want to live off the grid and would say that money doesn't have value to them. But for the most part, as a society, we've agreed that money is currency and we can exchange it for other things that have value. We've all kind of agreed on what the value of a certain amount of money is. So, if I'm holding money and you're holding a sandwich, and we both agree that we're willing and consent to trading one for the other, that's currency; that is commerce. So anytime you spend money, it actually comes back to you because money is just a placeholder for things. When you do work for someone else, you're trading your labor or access to your knowledge or your skills for money. When you sell a product, you're letting people know that they can have that product for a certain amount of money. If they don't have that amount of money, you probably aren't going to agree to trade with them.
Anytime we're spending money, or even if we give it away, it is a transaction that returns value to us in some way. That value is inherent and access to a resource ownership of a tangible good, or a service being done for us. But it's a value that both parties have agreed and consented to.
Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and talk about how we play this money game.
This is how you play this money game. Anytime you transact with actual dollars, this could be physically exchanging money, but it can also be electronically sending money to someone else, you win the game if you receive something in return that you think is valuable. Your thought about this is huge and it's the most important part. If someone were to offer you a bag of dead leaves and you had no interest in acquiring any extra dead leaves because you have enough in your yard right now, you would think that's not valuable to me and then you would not exchange money with that person. But someone who gardens and makes their own compost would probably be thrilled to acquire more dead leaf material for their compost bin, and they might even pay money for it. Most people give away dead leaves for free on their curbs every fall, but some folks buy mulch and dirt and other decomposed materials for their garden. So they do inherently have value.
It's your thoughts about the value of what you're trading that matter most. Your thoughts are actually the only thing that matter about the value of whatever you're willing to give up money for. To win the game, you just have to receive something of value when you spend money. And because money is value and value is money, when you spend money and receive something of value, your money has essentially come back to you.
Remember that money is just a placeholder for the things that you want or need, and its value is agreed upon already by the rest of us. By spending money and receiving something of value in return, your money has come back to you when you spend it.
Here's an example that I used in last week's episode that I can use again for this week's money game. So the example that I gave last week for look around and pick it up was that a former client of mine we had somehow managed to mess it up that I was paying for his QuickBooks Online subscription out of my account. And so this client paid me back for the subscription that had accidentally been paid from my account for several months. This is the most literal way to play this game. I spent money and then it came back to me. Of course, I had to ask that client and say, hey, I've actually been paying for your subscription. Can you reimburse me? But I still won the game because that money was spent from my account. And it came back to me. We could argue that I shouldn't have been paying that money in the 1st place, and that it was a mistake. But regardless, that money was spent from my account, and then it came back.
A simple example of how to win this game is to notice the next time you're hungry and you go out to pay for something to eat. You experience a want or a need that is physically manifested in your body: hunger pangs. You go out and give someone money in exchange for a sandwich. Craving: satisfied. Money was spent and you got something back that other people would agree is valuable: food. Unfortunately, we can't eat money, which is why I shared with you the idea that money is just a placeholder. Someone gave you that money at some point because you provided value to them: by working or giving them something that they wanted. You hold that money until it's time for you to trade it for something valuable that you want or need.
Here's the benefits of playing this game. We've already talked about how we don't need to have a super positive money mindset. That line of thinking can lead to toxic positivity, which is the idea that we should all be positive all of the time and there is no room for bad or negative feelings and emotions in our lives. Of course, that is not true. Sadness, anger, frustration, and other feelings that we would all agree are “negative” actually do play a role during certain times of life, and it's OK to feel that way. In the same way, we don't always need to feel super positive and amazing about money and our relationship to it. You don't need to light candles and rub crystals on your chakras to heal your negative thoughts. Instead, I'm proposing this solution to gamify your money in the ways that I've taught you the past two weeks.
We remove the pressure of never feeling bad about money and instead lower the stakes. You can find money if you need it right now. Just play the first game I taught you last week. Look around and pick it up. You can get money and value added back to your life by focusing on how money comes back to you when you spend it. And that's the point of this game that I'm teaching you today.
So, to wrap up, I hope this two-part series was helpful to you. If you're trying to have a better relationship with your money. That was the goal and I want to know if you're playing these games with your money.
Make sure you come follow me on my social media accounts and leave me a message to let me know what you thought about this episode. Next week, I will be sharing an interview I had with my sales coach. So, make sure you are subscribed and turn on notifications for new episodes when they drop. I hope you have a great rest of your week and we'll talk soon.