In an ideal world reaching our savings goals would be simple. We know what we want to achieve, so it should be easy to get there, right? For most people, the hard part is staying motivated to make the right choices every day. That’s where savings challenges can help. By concentrating on the process of completing your “challenge,” rather than on a distant goal, you can retrain your brain to stay engaged with saving on an ongoing basis. In fact, focusing on the goal alone can reduce the likelihood of success by 50%, according to a Bank of America Proprietary Market Landscape Study.

Money-saving challenges are fun techniques to motivate you to set aside money. They turn saving into a game. They can also help you resist peer pressure to spend and reset some of the default money habits you may have learned as a child.

Challenges work by shifting the focus from goals to process. While savings goals — a new car, vacation, house down payment — are important, they can seem distant and overwhelming. Progress may be slow, and it’s easy to become discouraged. By contrast, the structured, achievable activities in money-saving challenges provide feel-good successes and motivation to continue. The ongoing nature of the challenges helps reshape your savings mindset.

Social media, online forums and financial websites are full of money-saving challenges. Many can be adapted to your situation or time frame. You could start with a shorter challenge to see how it works for you, or consider one of the more popular challenges.

Shorter challenges tend to be more fun than lucrative. Even so, they have the benefit of directing your attention to saving, rather than spending.

Monthly challenges require more planning and commitment, but should lead to more savings. They’ll help you evaluate your routine spending — what’s essential and what’s not — an important step in creating a budget

Stop all spending on nonessential items for a month. Add up what you didn’t spend on lattes, trendy clothes or eating out and put that money in your savings account. The time period for this challenge is flexible. If a month seems too long, try it for a week at first and then expand it to a month or longer.

For a calendar month, do all your shopping in person at brick-and-mortar stores. This means no online shopping at all. By shifting your shopping to physical stores you’re adding inconvenience, which could help you make fewer impulse buys, do without things you don’t need immediately, and generally spend less.

Estimate how much money you need to cover expenses you typically pay for with your phone or card — groceries, gasoline and lunch, for example. (Do not include monthly fixed expenses, like rent and utilities.) Then go to the bank, withdraw enough cash to cover that spending and put your card away. You’ll only be paying for things via cash for the month. Track your spending and look for ways to save so you end the month with cash left over.

Create a list of a dozen things you routinely spend money on each month, then think of a cheaper alternative. Structure your list as “do this instead of that.” For example: “Use reusable cloths instead of buying paper towels” or “Host a streaming movie night instead of going to a theater.” Include the estimated cost of each alternative and save the difference.

Challenges that last a year or more are good for bigger goals. They also help develop lasting changes in your mindset so that saving can become automatic.

It’s OK to try a few money-saving challenges until you find one that works — or just to keep things interesting. The most popular challenge on social media or one that a friend loves may not be a good fit for you. Feel free to modify challenges. You can even make up your own. The point is to make saving fun. Make sure you celebrate your successes. And as your savings grow, you may realize that you’re thinking about money differently.