Ready to up your savings game this year? If you need a little motivation and a fun way to create a new saving habit, you should try a savings challenge.
Links:
- Download our free printable tracking sheets to keep track of your progress
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- Learn more about Triangle Credit Union
- Contact us at tcupodcast@trianglecu.org
Transcript:
Welcome to Money Tip Tuesday from the Making Money Personal podcast.
Saving money can be extremely difficult, especially if it’s not something you’ve really committed to before. There are many questions that come along with saving money like “how much do I need to save?” or “how do I make saving money more manageable?”
A new year is a great time to take a look at your financial situation and make appropriate changes if necessary.
If you’re ready to start the new year off on the right foot, we have 5 savings challenges (with trackers) that you should try in 2023!
$5 Savings Challenge
This challenge is probably the easiest challenge of all. There is no expected completion date, no required weekly or monthly contribution and essentially, minimal rules.
The purpose of this challenge is to save $500 dollars by breaking it up into more manageable $5 increments.
That doesn’t mean that you can only save $5 at a time. If you have an extra $15 that you want to put towards this goal, go for it! Did you sell something on Facebook Marketplace for $30 and you want to save that cash? This is the perfect place for it!
This can be a cash savings or a digital savings—that choice is up to you and whatever type of saving works better for your lifestyle–whichever you choose, make sure you’re tracking the deposits!
52 Week Savings Challenge
The 52 Week Savings Challenge gives you the opportunity to save $1,378 throughout the year by depositing a different amount every week!
The premise of this challenge is to deposit money every week for 52 weeks, upping the amount each time starting with depositing $1 and ending with depositing $52.
It should look something like this:
- Week 1- Deposit $1
- Week 2- Deposit $2
- Week 3- Deposit $3
By the end of the first month, you will have $10 saved up!
Doing small deposits at the beginning will help you build up your savings slowly while creating a good habit with repetition.
Some people who do this savings challenge choose to complete it in reverse. This means they start by saving $52, then $51, then $50 and so on and so forth which knocks out the bigger numbers first. By the end of the year, they only need to save the smaller, one-digit numbers.
365 Nickel Savings Challenge
The 365 Nickel Savings Challenge is a great savings challenge for beginners. Instead of worrying about big monetary values to set aside for this savings challenge, this challenge focuses on nickels.
The idea is to make small, daily deposits which is more manageable for many people. Similar to the 52 week savings challenge where you increase the amount deposited by $1 every week, the amount you deposit in this challenge increases by $0.05 each day.
Here’s how it works:
- Day 1- Deposit $0.05
- Day 2- Deposit $0.10
- Day 3- Deposit $0.15
Continuing that trend, halfway through the year you will be depositing $9.10. On the last day you will deposit $18.25. Those numbers seem so small in comparison to other savings challenges mentioned.
By the end of the challenge, you will have saved over $3,300 and it won’t even seem like you did anything at all!
If you download our tracker, you will need to print out 2 copies to fully complete this challenge.
100 Envelope Savings Challenge
The 100 Envelope Savings Challenge is a popular favorite! It’s fun to do and allows you to save different amounts each time you save.
Similar to the $5 savings challenge, there is no pre-determined end date for this challenge meaning you don’t need to save money every week or month in order to complete this challenge.
When you’re done, you’ll have $5,050 to either spend or put towards a bigger savings goal you have.
This savings challenge works best when done with cash so it’s perfect for cash budgeters!
Here’s how you get started:
- Head to your nearest Dollar Store and buy a pack of envelopes (enough to label them 1-100 individually)
- Take the envelopes out of the box and label each envelope with a number (start at 1 until you have labeled all 100 envelopes)
- Give the envelopes a shuffle and put them back in the box
- When you want to begin this challenge, take an envelope randomly from the box and fill with the appropriate amount (For example: If you pull the envelope labeled “42”, you will fill with $42)
- Put the completed envelope in the back of the box behind the empty envelopes
- Fill in the correct circle on the 100 Envelope Savings Tracker
That’s it!
This savings challenge is great because there is such a wide range of numbers you can choose from when you pick out your envelopes and the amount you pull is always changing.
Weather Wednesday
This savings challenge is not something you may not have heard of before but should consider trying out. The premise of this savings challenge is very simple—for every Wednesday in the year, you will save the equivalent of the high temperature for that day.
Here’s an example:
Say you look at your weather app into the coming week and you see the estimated high temperature of the day is 45 degrees Fahrenheit. That means you would deposit $45 dollars into your savings account for that week if that’s what the recorded high temperature is.
Typically, in the Northeast, January and February are two of the coldest months of the year so you can expect your weekly contributions to decrease as the weather gets colder and increase in the Spring when everything starts to thaw out again!
If you live in an area that generally has warmer weather, such as Arizona, you can use the estimated low temperature since the temperature surpasses 100 degrees Fahrenheit quite often in the summer and that can be too much for you to deposit if you are just getting started.
If you’re ready to try one or some of these challenges out, we’ve created printable trackers so you can watch your savings accounts grow while keeping track of each deposit!
Check the link in the show notes to view and download.
If there are any other tips or topics, you’d like us to cover, let us know at tcupodcast@trianglecu.org. Like and follow our Making Money Personal FB and IG page and look for our sponsor, Triangle Credit Union on social media to share your thoughts.
Thanks for listening to today’s Money Tip Tuesday and be sure to check out our other tips and episodes on the Making Money Personal podcast.
Have a great day!
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