This post was contributed by Hannah from Frugal Bride to Be, who is saving for a wedding and a house, so she is an expert saver! Whether you have a particular occasion coming up, want to be prepared for Christmas or are building up an emergency fund, there is always a good reason to put a little money into savings each month. Here Hannah outlines five of the best savings challenges to get you started.
Five of the best savings challenges to get you motivated
There are no end of different ways that you can save money. Not all of these will be perfect or achievable for everyone, but I am confident that at least one of these savings challenges will help you get motivated to put money aside on a regular basis.
365-day Penny Saver Challenge
This is a very simple savings method that starts with you saving a penny and slowly increasing this every day throughout the year. The simplest way to explain this challenge is that on day 1 you add 1p, day 2 you add 2p and so on until day 365 you add in £3.65. You can download a chart for this from google or if you check out my post here there’s a downloadable link.
If you follow this pattern for every day of the year you will accumulate a pot of £667.95
52-week challenge
A similar one here to the penny method but with this challenge you put aside a set amount of money each week. You start with £1 in week one, £2 week two, £3 in week three and so on, adding £52 in the final week of the year.
If you follow this challenge for the whole year you will accumulate a pot of £1,378.
You can now link both of these challenges with your Monzo bank account if you have one using IFTTT. Click here for the penny challenge or here for the 52-week challenge. Doing the challenges this way means that the money is automatically put into a pot for you every week of the year without you even having to think about it!
If you haven’t already got a Monzo account, then join here and you’ll get £5 completely free the first time you use your card!
The Smarties tube saving challenge
This is a fab challenge for the whole family to get involved in, especially the kids! Give every person in your family or group a tube of Smarties. They can eat the chocolate and then have to start to fill their tube up with loose change.
The amount that you can accumulate through this does depend on the coins that you fill the tube with, but as a rough guide if it’s full of 20ps you’ll have £12 and if you swap this to £1 coins you’ll get £37.
If you have a family of four, this will soon add up and it’s a lovely way to introduce children to saving. You could accumulate £148 if you each filled it with £1 coins.
No Spend Challenge
A very different challenge this time… the no spend challenge is exactly what it sounds like. Challenge yourself to spending nothing for a set number of days. Obviously bills and food shops will need to happen, etc. but if you currently do a daily shop and end up buying extras maybe change this to do a weekly shop and make a list first.
As with most challenges, you can cater this towards yourself and maybe set the challenge of not spending any money on a specific item or in a specific shop. For example, if you always pop to the coffee shop on your way to work in the morning, challenge yourself to stop spending here and instead take a coffee in a thermos mug from home.
(There are posts on doing a no spend challenge here and here.)
Money making challenge
This is one that I am currently taking part in. Set yourself a personalised challenge of earning a certain amount of extra money in a month. This can be any amount and through any method.
My most recent money making challenge was to earn £300 in May through surveys and apps. I’ve explained it in a bit more detail here but this one is pretty flexible and you can create it to suit whatever works for you.
£300 a month works out as £10 a day, which doesn’t seem quite so difficult!
Thanks so much to Hannah for this round up of the best savings challenges.
This post contains affiliate links.
Julia says
Sometimes switching accounts makes you money.
There are those banks that pay you to switch your current account, but the other week I switched a savings account to one with a better interest rate within my bank.
The only stipulation is it needs to have £50 deposited every month, but as it’s the account I use for annual bills (car/house insurance, Christmas etc) and for transferring the money I need to pay off the credit card I use for my groceries into it, that’s not a problem for me.