Episode: 360 - Turn Your Finances Into a Game (And Actually Have Fun)
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Have you ever found yourself hooked on Wordle, your fitness tracker, or a game on your phone that rewards you for logging in daily or hitting the next level? There’s a reason those things are so addictive—they give you instant feedback and a feeling of progress, even when the reward is small.
Now imagine if managing your money felt like that.
Making Money Management Fun (Yes, Really)
I get it—budgeting, paying off debt, and saving money don’t exactly scream “fun.” But what if you could turn those things into a challenge, a competition, or a game you actually want to play?
That’s what gamification is all about—using tools like streaks, levels, and rewards to keep you engaged. And believe it or not, this mindset shift can totally transform how you handle your finances.
Why This Works
Here’s the deal: our brains love progress. We’re wired to crave that dopamine hit we get when we win—whether that’s a bingo game, a fitness badge, or yep, even coloring in a square on a debt tracker.
When you apply this idea to your money, things that used to feel boring or frustrating start to feel exciting. You’ll want to keep going, just to see how far you can get.
Real People, Real Wins
I’ve seen people in our Roots community do this with amazing results. They create savings or debt payoff trackers. They make challenges with their spouse or kids. They celebrate each milestone—even if it’s just sticking to the budget for one week. And guess what? It works. Because those small wins stack up.
Flip the Script
You know who’s already using gamification? Credit card companies. Those points and cash-back rewards are designed to keep you spending. But now you get to flip that strategy. Start creating your own “level up” system.
Try this: challenge yourself to save $100 using just creative hacks. Or find 3 ways to cut your grocery bill this week without sacrificing meals. Set a timer, make it a race—turn it into a mission.
Add Some Fun (and a Little Competition)
Want to really crank it up? Make it a game with someone else. See who can build their emergency fund faster. Who can find the most ridiculous way to save $10. Share wins. Swap hacks. Brag a little (you’ve earned it).
Don’t Forget to Celebrate
And just like any good game, you need rewards. Celebrate your progress. That could be a guilt-free night out, a little treat, or just soaking in the satisfaction of seeing that balance drop or that savings grow.
Final Thought
Look, getting your finances in order doesn’t have to be a slog. When you turn it into a game, you give yourself permission to enjoy the journey. That’s what makes it sustainable. That’s what keeps you moving forward. And before you know it, you're not just winning at the game—you’re changing your life.
So what’s your first challenge going to be?
Resources Mentioned
The Totally Awesome Debt Freedom Planner https://www.debtfreedad.com/planner
To learn how to take the stress out of your finances so you can breathe again, follow this link: https://www.debtfreedad.com/lwp-masterclass-opt-in-page-podcast
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Transcript
Brad Nelson:
So have you ever noticed how easy it is to stay hooked on games, whether it be Wordle fitness apps or those silly mobile games with levels and streaks? That's because they make progress feel exciting. You always know the next step and even small wins feel like a big deal. Now imagine if your finances worked the exact same way. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about how you can gamify your money, how to make saving, paying off debt and staying on track actually feel fun and motivating, and even, should I say, addicting at times. Because, let's face it, when money feels like a grind, it's easy to give up, but when it feels like a game you want to win, that's when things start to change.
Announcer:
You're listening to the Debt-Free Dad Podcast with Brad Nelson. Brad and his co-hosts experience the anxiety of living paycheck to paycheck before learning the fundamentals of financial success. They are now on a mission to empower regular people to pay off their debt for good and enjoy happier, less stressful lives. Keep listening for inspirational interviews, tips, tricks and practical advice to gain financial freedom.
Brad Nelson:
Hey guys, welcome to today's episode. My name is Brad Nelson, founder of Debt Free Dad. I paid off about $45,000 of debt. I've been debt free now for more than 12 years. I've also been fortunate to help thousands of other people save and pay off tens of millions of dollars with the work that we do here at Debt-Free Debt.
Amber Taylor:
And my name is Amber Taylor, and my husband and I paid off $54,000 in debt in just 20 months and we've been living debt-free outside of our mortgage since 2018.
Kati Hatfield:
And I'm Katie Hatfield, and I am still on my journey to debt freedom and in the last seven years, on a single income, I have paid off over $224,619 in debt and saved a whole lot more.
Chris Hawkins:
I love it. My name is Chris Hawkins and my wife started our journey back in 2005. And by 2008, we had paid off just under $100,000 worth of debt, and we've been debt-free except for our house ever since.
Brad Nelson:
And again, after listening to this episode, if you are ready to take things to the next level, you want to break free from living paycheck to paycheck, you want to reduce financial stress, you want to build more savings, finally pay off some debt for good, but again, maybe you're not quite sure where to get started. We've created some incredible free resources here for you here at Deffery Dad, and we'll be sharing some details about some of those later on in today's episode. So, guys, today we're talking all about gamification, and I love this because a lot of people, I think they miss the power of doing this. They miss the power of tracking, gamifying their money. We've talked about it a lot on this podcast.
Brad Nelson:
It's something that we put inside our membership roots because it takes the boringness, or at least a lot of the boringness, out of your finances and it makes it fun, right, and I think it taps in, obviously, to the psychological side of our brains, which are wired for things like rewards, streaks, leveling up and progress. Like we mentioned, these games that you play on your phone or your tablet. I've got one. It's like a little block game, in fact. My daughter downloaded it. I don't really play it, but I've played it with her and all of a sudden I'm addicted to it. I'm like, oh yeah, I'm winning. It throws out confetti when I get to a new level and it makes a new noise and psychologically again, it makes you want to keep going and keep playing, and you can kind of do a lot of the same types of things with your finances as well.
Amber Taylor:
When we were getting out of debt. I was making Before Brad, you put out your planner and you put out the game board and stuff like that in Roots. But I was making my own trackers where we were coloring in when we would pay something off and we would celebrate that every time we did that. And then we even did it for savings, when we started saving for our house and it got addicting, where we were like, oh my gosh, I need to color the next box. How do I get there? How fast can I do it? What else can I do? How else can I get this money? And we were just like pushing through it and pushing through it so that we could just color in these boxes. And, as silly and simple as it sounds, it made a huge difference.
Brad Nelson:
Yeah, for sure. And the other thing I keep in mind too, is that this is why, like credit card companies, or even the credit score, so to speak, is so prevalent, while it's so popular you look at credit card points and rewards. These companies are using gamification. I guess you could say against you in a way, but to encourage you to play the game right. Play the rewards game, play the points game, the credit score. How do I get the best credit score? What are the ways it makes it a game? It makes it fun. That's why people focus on those types of things.
Kati Hatfield:
Yeah, I fell for that because my insurance company offered a banking credit card and they're like well, if you pay your insurance premium using this credit card, you'll get 3% back. But then it took me several years to figure out but I'm paying 19 plus interest. Percentage-wise, I'm not making anything back, I am just losing money left over right with interest. So I fell for that. But when I joined Roots, I was very excited about the snowball stickers and I'm like okay, how many balls can I be throwing this week?
Brad Nelson:
Yeah, and we tell people that all the time. When you get in Roots, we send you a. You know, if you join, we send you a membership kit and the membership kit comes with all these little cool trackers, stickers and all that stuff. And we don't send it because it's cute, we send it because it's a game. We want to make it a game. We want to make it fun, right, because in most cases, a lot of the stuff that we talk about on this podcast it isn't fun, it isn't sexy, it isn't exciting every day, but, like Katie said, it's something as simple as peeling off a sticker and sticking it on your tracker. It gives you a little boost, right, like we're accomplishing something, we're doing something. It's that emotional trigger, not necessarily always just about the dollars and the cents and the interest rates, but it's just getting that little bonus right and, again, making it a game.
Chris Hawkins:
The topic of today's episode is probably, I think, for me personally personally Now, my wife would probably disagree with this this was I've played sports since I was five years old, right, and you know football, baseball ended up playing. You know high school football and baseball wrestled, played college football. So everything was a competition. For me, everything was about gaining more points than the other team, right, everything was about gaining more points than the other team, right. If you get more points than the other team, you win. But then I started thinking about my debt. I'm like, good gracious, that's $100,000 worth of debt or just under it. That's a lot of money.
Chris Hawkins:
And I got to thinking about well, how can I gamify this? And this was long before there was a term that I'd ever heard called gamification. And for me it became okay. If I could find a way to get $1 and pay off $1 worth of debt, that's like a point. But then you go well, there's still $100,000 worth of points. I've got to come up with. It doesn't change the numbers, right?
Chris Hawkins:
So for me I started thinking all right, well, how can I come up with a hundred dollars? A hundred dollars seems much more manageable than a hundred thousand dollars. And if I could come up with a hundred dollars once, I could come up with a hundred dollars twice. And if I can do it twice, I can do it three times. And that became the game for me. And so I treated it as I needed a hundred thousand points, but I needed to get them.
Chris Hawkins:
You know, in football you get six points at a time. If you score a touchdown, if you get a field goal, you get three points, right. You know, if you get a basket in basketball, it's two points. So for me it was just a matter of how can I come up with 100 bucks? And that's sort of how I gamified things, because I looked at it like I've just got to find a thousand ways to come up with 100 bucks. You still think about it. That's a lot, but at but at least a hundred seems manageable, a thousand seems manageable. And that, to me, is how I gamified it. And so it became how can I come up with an extra 50 bucks or an extra a hundred bucks or an extra 20 bucks? Cause it was all about getting the next hundred, if that makes sense.
Announcer:
Yeah.
Chris Hawkins:
Okay, and that became the game within itself, and so my competition became myself right. I wasn't competing against my wife, I wasn't competing against the neighbor, I wasn't competing against my brother or anybody else, and it was a new kind of game for me and it was very interesting. It became a challenge for myself to beat myself. Yeah.
Chris Hawkins:
All right, how fast can I come up with the next $100? And I looked anywhere and everywhere. I became very creative no-transcript so that I knew that I would have money left over in my food budget or my food envelope at the end of the pay period All kinds of ways I mentioned on a podcast episode recently. I made my own laundry detergent for a while. That was part of the game.
Chris Hawkins:
Now people probably laugh at that and go, oh my gosh, I would never go to that level. I laughed at it. I mean I could tell you every stretch between work and home where there was a half a mile of downhill that I could put my car in neutral and let it roll down the hill so that I could save money on gas. I mean I never went out to do one thing. I never went out to do two things. I had to make sure that I was doing three or more things to make it worthwhile going to get, you know, to spend the money on the gas. Now I know that seems extreme, but that was the game that I was playing against myself and I don't think people have to go to that extreme per se.
Chris Hawkins:
But if you can break it down into, you've heard me say this before, brad. Maybe get a picture of some goal that you have in life and spend 20 bucks to have a puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle, made. There's custom jigsaw puzzle places online. Let them send you a thousand piece puzzle and assign a dollar value to each piece, and every time you pay off let's say it's 10 bucks you get to put another piece of the puzzle together and you get to visually see very much like a debt snowball, except for the opposite, the debt snowball. You're marking stuff off the list. Here you're seeing more of your vision become available. There's so many ways to gamify. I know that in your debt-free planner you've got some gamification tools there. I think as well. But it was the number one key for me because it made it challenging, it made it fun and it made it competitive. And now, for the first time in my life, I was competing against myself. I know that's long winded, but hopefully, that helps?
Brad Nelson:
No for sure, I think. The key thing there, I think is for a lot of people, is like when you sit back, like Katie, you could probably talk to this. I mean, you paid off what Over $220,000 now. But if you were to go back on day one and look at that as a whole, overwhelming, like how the heck am I ever going to pay all that off? But when you break it down into much smaller pieces and like Chris, you mentioned, breaking it down like just break it down to like $100 equals a point or whatever dollar value you want to count Looking at $100 versus $220,000 is much more manageable.
Brad Nelson:
It's achievable. I can pay off the next $100 or we can find a way to get another $100. So I think that in itself creates just a lot more momentum and motivation and hope, rather than looking at your entire situation. Or when you get that credit card bill and it's $8,000 balance I can remember one that I had. It was just like how the heck am I ever going to pay this all off? But again, if you break it down into smaller pieces, it becomes much more manageable.
Kati Hatfield:
Yeah, I definitely had to break it down because I think my biggest credit card at the time was around $8,000 or something. I'm like there is no way I'm ever going to get that paid off. But if I could do the smaller credit cards balances, because I was one of those oh, a 0% interest offer came up. I'm just going to transfer it to this card and I know I'll pay it off before the grace period and whatever. And yeah, that never happened. So I had all these credit cards and all these minimum payments due. So it was a lot.
Kati Hatfield:
So I did a lot of the minute things like Chris did, although I tried to do laundry in my bathtub and there was no amount of bringing out clothes that will ever get them dry like a dryer. My apartment at the time smelled like a laundromat and I had clothes just hanging everywhere. I don't I don't recommend that, um as far as it goes. But I used a lot of apps for coupons or, uh, money off if you turn in your receipts and the gas buddy app to make sure what's the least expensive gas in the area so I can drive straight to the one that's the lowest price right now and what's got a deal with 16 cents off a gallon versus the regular three to five cents. So yeah, every single one of those things adds up, especially in the beginning where you're like all right, I just saved like $1.68 on gas, I'll take it. And it really does get addicting because now I'm like all right, my paycheck is deposited in my account, let's pay the bills. And before I'd be like.
Kati Hatfield:
I hope this doesn't clear before my paycheck hits the account Right. It was also the queen of overdraft fees back then. So, yeah, every little thing helps. Whatever it makes sense in your mind to have as a win, you just got to kind of go with all those little dopamine hits along the way.
Chris Hawkins:
Yeah so she said something that it triggered something that I did. I couldn't wait to get paid. Why? Because I knew it meant a chance to get some more points yeah right.
Chris Hawkins:
So the payday became a very different day of the month. It had a totally different meaning. It's like oh boy, now I get to pay off more debt. Yes, and you're looking at that debt snowball going. How close am I to that next one? And then you get within a couple hundred points. You're like all right, now it's serious, I got to get top of my game. What other unique ways can I come up with? Because I don't want that lingering around the next month. I want to find the money.
Amber Taylor:
People are probably listening to this and going uh that doesn't sound fun at all.
Chris Hawkins:
It is. I'm telling you it can be.
Amber Taylor:
At least it was for me but I could relate to you completely because I did the same thing when I was paying off my debt. It was like it was payday money was coming into the account. Like what am I paying now? Because this is getting fun?
Brad Nelson:
I can't say I ever did my laundry in my bathtub.
Kati Hatfield:
I had two people on either end of a pair of jeans, just like squeezing as hard as we could to get the water out.
Chris Hawkins:
You can laugh all you want, but how much less debt do you have now?
Kati Hatfield:
227,000, 24,000 plus.
Chris Hawkins:
At the end of the day, we can be laughing, but you're, you're, you're going to look at that, as that's what it took to get there.
Brad Nelson:
That's right. Well, and I think that's the thing I was going to bring up my next topic. You guys kind of took it right out of my mouth. It encourages you to challenge yourself and come up with ways to stretch it, make it better, right, and you guys have all said some great things putting it in neutral downhill. I've done that. I've done some crazy putting it in neutral down, but it is. It becomes addicting. You become addicted to the wins, you become addicted to getting that next point, and that's why it's so important. I think that, again, this is why I wanted to make this podcast episode, because there's so many people who just miss the power of tracking and gamifying, and it can provide so much motivation and to help you start tackling. It's amazing, but yeah, any other weird things though. So we got laundry in the bathtub putting a neutral going downhill. Amber, you got any.
Amber Taylor:
No, but what I want to share is actually a savings one that we had members doing in Roots, where him and his wife would each have like this savings goal.
Amber Taylor:
Oh yeah, and laurie, I remember you know, like you have 40 this week, I have 40 this week and it was just for their. If we want to stop at the store and buy something, just the fun money right, and they would literally compete until the end of the week and they would come back and go how much money do you have left? And it was just a friendly fun. But whoever had the most won for bragging rights, and what they did with that money after was just they put it into savings because we didn't spend it. So let's reward ourselves and add it to our savings, and I thought that that was really cool and a great way to just gamify what they were trying to achieve.
Chris Hawkins:
Yeah, Listen, I started cutting my own hair for a while. I mean, I do it. I do it again now because I have so little of it, right. But at the time when I did get my hair cut, it was probably once every three or four months, because you know, less often to the barbershop, the less money you spend. But eventually it's like I can buy this $20 pair of clippers over here and just do it myself. It's not the greatest hairdo in the world. Now, again, I have very little hair, so I'm back to doing it, but for a totally different reason. I could probably think of a thousand things some little, some small that I did just to save a few bucks here and there.
Brad Nelson:
But it worked, yeah, and sometimes, like for me, I pick the obvious one. I just worked more, I put in as many hours as I could and tried to earn the bonuses that the current you know the employer that I was working with. I just tried to do everything I could just to make extra money. And again, like you guys said, once it's payday, it's like it just meant that I got to pay off that much more debt and so I can't think of anything crazy, crazy. That you, I think you guys mentioned is so fun. I love it, but it does it. It challenges you. It gets you to open your mind up a little bit more and saying what else could we do? What else could we do to push the pedal down just a little bit more and again to challenge yourself.
Brad Nelson:
I think the other thing too, amber, you mentioned with Daniel and Lori and their story is just the power of just having competition too, and not in a bad way competition, not looking at someone like I wanna be better than them. But I think this is one of the cool parts that comes from being in a community like we've built in Roots is that you're seeing other people get these great wins and you wanna get those great wins. It encourages you to think outside the box and do things. That's one of the reasons why we talk about people's wins on this podcast. We're a big proponent of talking about the wins inside Roots because it's great to celebrate them, but it also gives other people ideas of things that they could do, things that they could improve on, question themselves, challenge themselves based on what other people are doing. So some of that friendly competition can go a long way.
Chris Hawkins:
I'd like to put this out there, brad, I suspect that Katie and I are not the only two to do some very, very weird things.
Brad Nelson:
No question. The other part about this whole gamification is also the importance of rewarding yourself too. Now, did you guys ever have, or give yourself little rewards? For me, it was always like a treat of going out to eat, and because that was I love doing that, I had to cut it out like a lot. Almost when I love doing that, I had to cut it out like a lot. Almost. When I first started I had to cut it out completely because I was just didn't have any money. But for me, once I started getting those wins, once I started paying off debt, once I started being able to save money, going out to eat, going back and going to the places that I love to go was just what. You appreciated it more, you loved it more and it just felt so much better. It was a reward. I've earned it.
Chris Hawkins:
I personally was not very much of a reward myself until the game was finished. But again, I'm a little more hardcore. I get that, and that's the danger perhaps for some of you out there. If you find yourself doing too much and it means that you're going to stop doing what you're doing, then back off a little bit. You've got to play your game and you've got to play it with your rules and the way that you want to do it. But for me, the end goal was to get out of debt and that became the only reward that I could focus on. But again, I'm probably ultra competitive, so I'm probably not a good person to ask.
Amber Taylor:
We rewarded ourselves with activities If it was a trip or just going out to eat, kind of like you, Brad. But I was at a point where I was like we're going to pay off this debt in 13 months and eventually we got burned out a little bit and I was like, nah, we can't do that, Forget this. So we rewarded ourselves, Like once we hit certain milestone, we paid for a trip and that kind of thing.
Kati Hatfield:
So we just spanned it out a little bit more, but that helped us a lot and I don't go out to eat unless I can walk there and pick it up myself. So I don't ever do delivery fees or DoorDash or any of those kind of where you're already paying more for the food plus the tip, plus the delivery, plus everything else. So I'm like if I'm going out to eat I have to be able to walk there and the closest place is a mile and a half round trip. So I'm burning the calories but also rewarding myself with the dining out, just making a little more of a stretch for myself.
Brad Nelson:
Yeah, all right guys, if you are ready to break free from living paycheck to paycheck, you want to reduce financial stress, build a savings and finally pay off your debt for good. But again, maybe you're not sure where to get started. Don't worry, we've got you covered. Simplify my Money is sent to you each and every Sunday to your email. It is your step-by-step roadmap to better financial control, and you're also going to learn some easy to follow strategies to manage your money effectively Stress-free money decisions that are going to help you simplify your financial life with proven tips that actually work for normal people, and you're going to gain the tools and confidence to tackle your financial goals head on you can sign up for.
Chris Hawkins:
Simplify my Money. The good things, all the bad things that may be. Let's talk about debt. Let's talk about debt Tune into Debt Free Debt.
Amber Taylor:
Tune into Debt, free Debt, and that's how it means it's time for the celebrations of the show. First, we have Andrea. I have an emergency fund of $1,000. I've never had anything like this before. Yeah, we have Andrea. I have an emergency fund of $1,000. I've never had anything like this before.
Brad Nelson:
Yeah, that is awesome. Such a great feeling. Great, great win, andrea, and then Stacy. We have a cooked dinner at home all week. This is huge for us, awesome job.
Chris Hawkins:
And Brenda says I have paid off a small credit card. I have started going to yard sales to see if there are any crafts for sale, trying to get a few together for Christmas, and I have about $300 saved already for Christmas.
Kati Hatfield:
Which is awesome because we're recording this in June. So she is on her game. Way to go.
Brad Nelson:
Brenda.
Kati Hatfield:
Awesome. And Holly has been cleaning houses as a side job for extra money, so again earning those points to gamify towards her debt.
Brad Nelson:
Yeah, absolutely hey, guys. As always, congratulations to all of you who are taking a stand for your financial life and you are wanting better. Hey, we get that. Getting out of debt isn't easy, but with our help and with your consistency and discipline, we promise you, guys, this will be some of the best work you do in your entire life. Thanks for joining us on today's show and we will see you, guys on the next episode.
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