Find a Savings Challenge for the New Year

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savings challenge

The New Year is here and, as always, I’m thinking about finances. Specifically, how to save more money. Saving money can be a challenge, but it might be a tad bit easier if you make a game out of it. Or, the flipside to that is if you have a goal you’re trying to reach. So, why not try out a savings challenge?

I’ve scoured the internet and decided on four challenges that are super easy and only require a small amount of money saved per week (or in one case, per day). Take a look at these and maybe try one on for size this year!

52-Week Savings Challenge

The tried and true, and by that, I mean incredibly popular 52-Week Savings Challenge is a great way for you to save money. This savings challenge finds you putting away a dollar amount that coincides with the week number of the year. So for week one you’ll put away $1, for week two you’ll contribute $2 and week three you’ll add $3… all the way to week 52 when you deposit $52. At the end of the challenge, pending you follow it, you’ll have $1,378 saved.

You can make a slight variation on the challenge if you don’t think you can financially handle saving $49, $50, $51 and $52 all in December (and who can blame you, that’s the Christmas season). Instead of starting at $1 and working your way up, start at $52 and work your way down. That way your December amounts are $4, $3, $2 and $1.

$1,000 52-Week Savings Challenge

If you’re looking for a steadier challenge that’s easier to commit to, the $1,000 52-Week Savings Challenge might be for you. In a slight variation to the 52-Week Savings Challenge I mentioned earlier, this challenge requires to you save $10 each week for the first four weeks, then $20 each week for the next 48. At the end of the challenge, you’ll end up with $1,000.

What makes this savings challenge possibly a tad bit easier than the 52-week is the fact that you’re looking at depositing steady amounts and they are never over $20 a week. While you aren’t putting away $1, $2 or $3 for the first few weeks like the traditional challenge, you also don’t have to go through the $50, $51 and $52 weeks.

Want to save a tad bit more? Make all of your weeks $20 savings for a cool $1,040 at the end of the year!

The $10 Savings Challenge

Can’t muster up the $20 a week? No sweat! How about $10? The $10 savings challenge works virtually the same way as the $1,000 52-Week savings challenge only each week you save $10. That’s it. At the end of the $52 weeks, you’ll have $520 save. Which while, yes, it could be more, it could also be much less!

Realistically, you can try this same challenge with any amount of money. Only have $7 a week to save? That’s fine! You’ll end up with $364. Maybe you can only work with $5; if you do the same challenge, you’ll have $260. The name of the game is savings, so any amount you can save is worth it.

The Penny Challenge

Saving a penny a day… means you have $667.95 at the end of the year. Okay, so it doesn’t rhyme like “keeps the doctor away” but wouldn’t you like to have a cool $667.95 saved at the end of the year? The Penny Challenge calls for you to save every day the number of cents that the number of the day coincides with. By this I mean on day one you’ll save $0.01, on day two you’ll add $0.02 and day three you’ll drop in $0.03… all the way until the last day of the year, day 365, when you deposit $3.65.

The challenge with this savings challenge is two-fold. First, savings pennies is such a small amount that we definitely admit it can be forgotten or pushed aside because it’s just not worth it. And the second is that you have to remember to save every day which can be a challenge all on its own.

Are you going to try a savings challenge this year? Share which one in the comments below!

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