Probably you want to save money but wondering where to begin? Do not worry; it’s not too late.

The 52-Week Savings Challenge

The 52-week is the most common savings challenge seen worldwide (Pinterest, personal finance blogs, among others) for the past few years. The mode involves setting a significant amount in many different flavors to reach a broader saving goal. You can start saving a substantial amount in jars, homemade drawers, envelopes, savings account, and others. The method is super easy. Applying it makes one save more money.

It’s advisable to set up an individual 52-week savings challenge account or an automatic deposits bank account for the challenge. However, as said earlier, avoid too broad resolutions that you may quit without notice. Consider starting with a small savings challenge. For example, save $1 on week one, $2 on week two, $3 on week three, and so on. After following the saving trend, you would have deposited $52 in one week and a total of $1,375 by the end of the year. Is that not interesting?

Besides weekly saving, there is a 52-week challenge. Remember, it’s not a must for this challenge to end up in 52-weeks. You can even save $100 weekly, depending on your plans. Note that you should keep an amount that is comfortable for you. For example, let’s double our first savings and save $2 on week one, $4 on week two, $6 on week three, and continue trending. As the year ends, you would have deposited $2,756. You will build more than a thousand dollars in your preferred savings account with the savings habit.

Automate Your Savings

It doesn’t matter whether you are a federal employee or self-employed. It’s essential to set up an automatic investing account for making automatic deposits. Ensure the money you deposit into the savings accounts is not spent. All you need is a lot of power and effort. Though this is quite painful, it will make your life a lot easier in the future. When one automates their finances, there’s a higher possibility of achieving specific goals and, mostly, long-term goals.

However, if you are ready to automate your savings, put your prioritized budget in place by writing down your financial goals to focus on. Once you have built your automation process, take a significant amount directly to your emergency fund or retirement savings. Keep the cash even if you have huge debts to pay off.

Besides automating your savings, focus on your bills such as mortgages, subscriptions, and memberships, among others. You need to automate them all or prefer to use an auto-pay method to avoid late payments. Also, with auto-pay, you should not worry about whether you paid for bills or not.

Public Transportation

Since this year resolves to save more, consider using public transportation instead of your car. Personal cars spend much! For example, using a bus to get you around is cheaper than buying your vehicle for the same. Public transportation reduces the daily wear and tear of your car, and they are less taxing. Also, public buses don’t park much compared to private ones when parking fees. Preferring the public buses enables you to have the extra saving compared to expenses that could have been used in personal cars.

Save One Month Salary

Apart from automating your bills and savings, you can also sacrifice your monthly salary to meet your set goals. Never be intimidated by your colleagues. Some even go to the extent of calling you “foolish.” Remember, saving can help you in emergencies, jobless, and in other unfortunate circumstances. As this is a savings challenge, start saving enough or ask your employer for a 401k upgrade to cover the months you may require considerable expenses.

You can also put away a significant percentage of your monthly income into your savings account, consequently for a year. When the year ends, you would have saved a good portion to buy a new home, household or use it for your next savings challenge.

Take Care of Yourself

Does this funny? It’s crucial for everyone to have a top priority in themselves. Start dealing with your problems before getting into those of others. Things you should do as part of your care include; eating healthy, doing something creative for a living, such as a gym, getting enough sleep, regular medical check-ups, and developing your vision and goals.

Besides, you should avoid smoking and follow the best standard precautions, such as cleaning your hands before eating and others. After following all these healthy tips and precautions, you will get in a position to save more. For instance, when you don’t go for medical check-ups, you may get sick to the extent of being admitted to the hospital. You will fail to save since the money got used in your medication.

No-spend Challenge

The no-spend challenge isn’t easy but worthwhile. It’s a chosen period where you avoid spending any amount or omit some of your unnecessary purchases. For instance, if you buy a pair of shoes every month, don’t purchase them when saving cash. Afterward, create a goal to focus on, and then see how far you can stretch yourself.

The time frame for a no-spend challenge can include weekends, weekly, monthly, depending on your rules. With no spending, you will be able to get back on track from an emergency or any spending slip-up. You can kick start your savings or repay your debts such as mortgages and student loans with no-spend. Surprisingly, you can put the chunk of money you save from the challenge into a separate savings account so that at the end of the set time, you will apply it towards your goal. After this, you may find yourself entering into another challenge for a better target.

Walk When Possible

Instead of carrying a bus fare every time you want to travel, consider walking sometimes. You can even ride a bike to save extra cash. That extra dollar you save while footing, it’s essential in your daily living. For instance, you can choose to walk from your workplace every weekend instead of paying $50 for bus transport. You can imagine how much you will have saved by the end of the 52-week savings challenge. Quite a lot!

The Envelope Challenge

Maybe you are wondering how the envelope can get into savings challenges. What matters most is the dollar you save every time. There are no repercussions if you miss saving, but remember that you may need super classic clothing, a mortgage, or even a car at the end of it. Where will you get the cash to meet your desires? You need to create a savings challenge envelope towards your savings diligently.

Before applying the envelope method, it’s crucial to determine your discretionary income and the remaining amount after clearing the monthly expenditures. Secondly, decide on a budget, create your envelopes, and stuff them with cash. Remember to categorize them by giving names corresponding to the money you save. For instance, you can have envelope one as your daily saving, envelope two your weekly savings, and the third as your monthly savings. With this, you’ll differentiate where to save, which amount, and at which time. The money you save can either help pay off debt, be an emergency fund, or keep it for future use. This challenge works!

$5 Savings Challenge

You can start on the right foot today with only a $5 saving challenge. The challenge involves saving $5 weekly, and by the end of the journey, you qualify for a long-term decision. Start depositing that dollar ($5) each week. By increasing your savings amount each week, by the end of the year, you may reach almost $7,000. Progress to save by raising the excellent plan rate; you can increase the percentage from $5 to $50 per week.

You can also prefer physical notes and coins from the various form of the $5 saving challenge. For every $5 you come across, it’s vital to keep it in your homemade account, such as jars, wooden boxes, envelopes, among others. Make saving a habit! By the end of your chosen period, you can deposit the total amount (from your homemade) into your savings account.

Weather Savings Challenge

No one can predict tomorrow’s weather. Even meteorologists sometimes fail in their predictions. It’s so disappointing to plan for a vacation on a summer day, only to find the weather looking terrible. With the weather savings challenge, you should not worry about how the weather will look since you’ll be in a position to cater to all the weather challenges.

This budget blogger also introduced a savings challenge, “Weather Wednesday,” as she calls. Every week on Wednesday, she used to look at the highest temperature in her state and record them. With this, she started depositing that equivalent dollar (concerning the temperature degrees) in her savings each week. Following the trend can end up in a lot of savings.

Weatherproof Your Home

Weatherproofing is another simple savings challenge used to lower your utility bills while saving the planet. It’s very indispensable to properly seal your house all the time to avoid being affected by the weather conditions. Remember, when your home gets ruined, you have to use the extra cash for repairing or replacements. Some of the inexpensive ways you need to observe and plan in your property are:

• To fix leaks around doors and windows.
• Installing storm windows in the right way and repairing old ones.
• Use door-draft stoppers along your outside doors to keep away cold.
• Weather-strip the house to cover the sealing gaps around windows and doors.
• Get a water-heater insulating blanket to reduce heat loss.

Round-up Savings

Round-up savings apps such as Digit, Qoins, Qapital, and others enable one to have the best savings in their account. These apps automatically save one’s money by withdrawing a significant amount from your checking account and depositing them to the savings challenge account. For example, round it up to the nearest dollar for every card purchase you make, and the extra amount gets shifted from your checking account to your savings account. Remember, you can determine the amount to round up on your checking account purchases. With the round-up savings, you can reduce or avoid overspending.

Stick to Your Budget List

It’s imperative to budget yourself to avoid unnecessary buying. The best way of preventing these impromptu purchases is by listing down all the required items before visiting any store. Stick to your budget when you go shopping and only spend money by purchasing the items on your list. For instance, when you visit a fashion designer for a wedding suit and notice a classic and adorable handbag, don’t buy it. Just assume it since it’s not budgeted. The amount you save from these unnecessary purchases can boost your savings account.

Save Your Savings

When you purchase a particular item, it’s good to keep the receipt safely. There are times where most stores advertise and sell their products in promotions and discounts. Remember to check on them weekly to note the extra cash you have saved from the discounted items. Deposit that extra dollar into your savings account, and by the end of the month, you will have hundreds or even dollars in your savings account.

Make It a Competition

This guide, it’s all about money savings challenges. Therefore, it’s good to challenge your colleague, friend, family relative, or spouse is a great way to get your finances in gear. Let the competition be productive. For instance, you can start competing on monthly savings. The person who saves most in a week is considered a winner. You can also reach a particular goal by keeping a significant percentage. The plan will make every participant put more effort towards the set goal.

Conclusion

It will sound interesting to practice saving your pennies instead of spending them. You will have the money to buy the experiences and most things you want in no time. Also, following the saving path, it’s easy to become debt-free and build up a sizable nest egg in your savings account. Stop procrastinating! Work hard towards your goals.