The 52 Week Savings Challenge!

So, it’s the time of year where we are all about spending money, whether it’s for gifts, visits to family, donations to charity, or for the fantastic meals that you’ve been dreaming about all year. It seems that everything around you is telling you to buy, buy, buy, so it may seem like a weird time to talk about saving your money, but we all have to start somewhere!

About a year ago, I found a cool savings challenge that I wanted to try. I’ve struggled for years to save enough money so that I would have a comfortable margin for error- if my car broke down, if an unexpected bill hit, etc- but nothing seemed to motivate me enough to actually start saving. Sure, when the problem was right in front of me, I would say that tomorrow I would start, but tomorrow is always just a little too late to help. The challenge I found seemed relatively easy, and since it was basically a competition, I was going to WIN.

For each week of the year, you put aside another dollar. So, the first week is one dollar, the second is two dollars, the third is three, etc. The most you ever have to do is $52, and that’s at the end of the challenge. By then, you’ve seen your money growing, and feel a sense of real pride. At the end of the year, you have an additional $1378!

If you started the challenge right now, this week, you would have enough saved next year to have a spectacular Christmas season, or perhaps something put aside to start paying for that new car, because the old one just keeps breaking. It’s also rather convenient to have a small fund to “borrow” from, something I’ve done at least three times this year. If I hadn’t been challenging myself, I wouldn’t have had enough to get my car repaired when the brakes went out, I wouldn’t have been able to purchase a new laptop when the old one refused to turn back on, and I wouldn’t have been able to pay my rent one month when the money from a paycheck was going to be a week later than I had anticipated.

And because I’m addicted to a challenge, I have two going on at the same time, about two months apart. When this is all done, I’ll have almost $3000 saved in just over a year, and that’s something I haven’t ever done before. It’s enough to replace the car that keeps breaking, or take a little vacation, or perhaps to save for another rainy day. I do know that I’ll be doing this again next year, and maybe this time I’ll put it in an Add-On CD, so that I won’t be able to touch it unless there’s an emergency. Maybe that will encourage some better fiscal planning on my part. This challenge certainly has. 

Post by: Liz R