Michelangelo once said that, “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.” Recently, I posted about my $50000 goal, which is my effort to save $50000 over the next 16 months. That will be very difficult for me to do. It’s an ambitious goal indeed. Of the $50000, $20000 will be saved from my salary. The remaining amount will come from my vacation rental. Despite that lofty goal, I want to take it a step further. I’ve decided to do a $200 Envelope Challenge. If successful, I would save $20,100 at the end of the challenge. Let’s dive in.

What Is The $200 Envelope Challenge?

The $200 envelope challenge suggests that you get $200 envelopes. Then, you number the envelops from 1 to 200. In each envelope, you put the corresponding amount in dollar bills. So, the #5 envelope would have $5 and the #200 envelop would have $200, and so on. If you did that, you would have a savings of $20,100.

The traditional envelope challenge suggests that you save an amount corresponding to an envelope every day. So, in 200 days the challenge would be complete. That of course is very aggressive and my income does not support that.

But, I can set the period however long I want. In my case, I’ve decided to work on this challenge over the course of the same 16 months as indicated above.

I could have done other challenges, such as the $100 envelope challenge. I chose to go big! I may soon regret that decision, but time will tell.

How Will I Fund the $200 Envelope Challenge?

That’s a great question! It won’t be from my salary that’s for sure. Of course, that makes sense. My salary is already devoted to completing my $50000 savings goal. There really isn’t room in the budget of my salary to take on a massive project such as this.

The answer lies in my ability to do rideshare over the course of the next 16 months. I’ve only started doing rideshare again recently. It’s going to take a herculean effort to even get close to where I want to be. But it doesn’t hurt to try.

In full disclosure, I was counting on my rideshare income to help me reach that $20000 threshold (as part of my $50000 savings goal). in fact, if you look carefully at my last post, you will see that of this $20000, my salary only accounts for $16,800. I am still short $3,200 which I was hoping to get from rideshare.

But now, I have this lofty goal of saving ANOTHER $20000 from rideshare. That’s a lot of driving and I don’t have all the time (or energy) in the world. Wish me luck!

How Will I Keep Track Of My Progress?

Typically, with the traditional $200 envelope challenge, the goal is to have 200 physical envelopes and go from there. I chose not to use physical envelopes, but rather a digital spreadsheet.

The following is the chart I made for this project:

So, the goal is that I make 200 transfers over the course of the next 16 months. I will fill in each cell once I make the corresponding payment. It won’t be in order. I am going to try to tackle the larger payments first (rows 19 and 20), but it’s really going to be tough.

Additionally I’ve determined that I won’t keep track of my progress on this blog on a regular basis. That’s in part because I don’t feel confident I’ll be able to complete the project. But, if I am sticking with it, I will indeed post about it from time-to-time.

Finally, I plan to use Qapital as a way to establish my savings bucket for this project. So, at least once a week (hopefully), I will transfer funds from my rideshare earnings to Qapital.

Conclusion

Working on this $200 envelope challenge is going to be very difficult. I may not complete the chart in 16 months, but my goal is to complete it eventually. Of course, my main focus will be the $50000 savings goal that I recently posted. But that doesn’t mean I can’t stretch myself a little bit more.

I haven’t been doing rideshare in the past few months, except recently. I think having a goal for those funds is helpful. I am mindful that I initiated my Driving For Dividends project earlier this year. In that project, the goal was to use the proceeds from driving for Uber and Lyft to buy dividend producing stocks.

But then life happened. I am determined to try to save for a down payment without liquidating my dividend portfolio again and hence that is my focus right now. Still, I am committed to raising my minimum contributions to my dividend portfolio at the start of the new year, but at a much smaller amount than previously anticipated.

If this $200 envelope challenge goes well, I could cut down my timeline for purchasing the beach condo by a year. We shall see.

In any case, I choose to end this post the same way I started, by referencing the Michelangelo quote: “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.”

Let me know what you think of this project.

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