Are you ready for a 52 week savings challenge that will boost your savings in 2019? Each year, I tell myself that I’m going to enter a strict savings challenge for this exact reason. I want to increase my savings. But the problem that I often deal with is that I always forget and I find out about the challenges long after the year has started!
I’ve already started looking at the various challenges available. When these challenges first started several years ago, many of them seemed very difficult. There’s one in particular that increases by one dollar every week. So in week one you put in $1; in week 48, you put in $48; in week 52, you put in $52.
I’ll admit that I was not the most committed to this particular format of the challenge. So, I decided to look for alternative challenges with various ranges of difficulty. Not everyone uses the same techniques to save, neither do they save the exact amounts of money.
The most effective 52 week savings challenge is one that you can participate in without feeling stressed. Don’t put yourself in a position where you have to choose between putting money towards the challenge and settling your main expenses.
Here are some alternative formats of the 52 week savings challenge:
1. How to save $5,000 with the 52-week money challenge (Clark)
At the end of this challenge, you will have $5000 saved! This challenge is based on the savings snowball concept and follows a four week pattern. In the first week, the contribution is $20 and increases as the weeks progress until the fourth week. The fourth week is a much bigger contribution. The next four week block essentially adds $5 to each of the previous block contributions.
2. New Year’s Resolutions: Six Ways to Hack the 52-Week Money Challenge (The Simple Dollar)
The Simple Dollar takes one of the first 52 week savings challenges and suggests ways to ensure that you achieve the $1,378 savings goal. Some suggestions are to save the money in a bank account, use an app to make it a competition with your friends and create a monthly savings plan that helps you to save. If you’re able to make it to the end of the challenge, you will end up saving a cool $1,378.
3. 52 Week Money Saving Challenge (He and She Eat Clean)
In this particular money saving challenge, weekly contributions are $40, $50, $60 and $80. The creators of this challenge, He and She Eat Clean, mention that it was conceptualised after readers asked for another challenge after finding success with their 12 month money saving challenge. Successful savers will add a whopping $3,000 to their bank accounts, if they see the challenge through to the end.
4. 3 New 52 Week Savings Plans (4 Hats and Frugal)
4 Hats and Frugal brings 3 different savings challenges, but the one that caught my attention was the Save By Number challenge. If you are interested in teaching your children about personal finance and money, this is the perfect lesson. You have to save the same amount each week for an entire month and the amount decreases by $1 each month. At the end of the year, you should have $340 socked away.
5. Save Money by Skipping Your Morning Latte (Making Mrs. M)
Making Mrs. M shares a simple cash savings plan that will give your savings a boost. Instead of saving the equivalent money that corresponds to the week that you’re in, you save double that. For example, in week 1, you save $2; in week 32, you save $64 and in week 52, you save $104. However, Mrs. M mentions that if she received extra money, she would cross off a few weeks from the plan. This savings plan could net you an easy $2,700!
6. 52 Week Money Saving Challenge With a Twist (Frugal Mom Eh)
This 52 week savings challenge by Frugal Mom Eh is one of the simplest that I’ve seen to date. It allows you to avoid any stress about saving and to enjoy the process of putting your money away. All you have to do is to save $30 each week. The goal of the challenge is to make you so comfortable with saving that $30, you continue with it for years to come. By saving $30 each week, you can increase your savings by $1,560.
7. Finding Financial Peace: How I Plan on Saving an Extra $1000 (Hello Pretty Bird)
Here is another interesting saving challenge that will help you to build up your bank account. The plan from Hello Pretty Bird, takes timing of financial burdens into consideration by starting and ending the year with low amounts. This plan is an excellent savings strategy that will be easy to participate in because the amounts are small. If you can stick to this plan for the full 52 weeks, you will have $1,000 added to your savings.
Which of these challenges are you willing to try next year? If you think that you can create your own challenge, share it with us on Facebook and we’ll add it to this list!