Are you looking for money-saving challenges so that you can start saving more money?
Money-saving challenges are a great way to may saving money more interesting and create a reason to think about saving money.
It can be difficult when you’re just starting to save money because you haven’t built the habit of doing it.
But, with a money-saving challenge, you have a game to help you save more money.
Even better, there are money-saving challenges for every level of income and time period.
Want to save $1,000 in 3 months? Great!
How about $25,000 in 12 months? Also awesome.
There are all kinds of pre-made savings challenges you can find on the internet.
We’ve set up this post so that you can create your own savings challenge based on your situation.
If you scroll down to the bottom, you’ll find 5 challenges that we’ve created.
You only have to do five things:
- Figure out your reason for saving
- Decide your frequency of saving
- Decide how much you want to save
- Decide how long you want to save
- Create your money-saving challenge sheet
But, before you do that. You should decide how you’re going to save money.
Where to Put Your Money Saving Challenge Money
One of the difficulties with savings challenges is that we don’t save physical cash anymore.
Moving a dollar from one bank account to another doesn’t really feel the same as putting cash in a piggy bank.
However, it’s not all bad.
You’re are not really saving money if you’re not investing that money.
A great way to still feel like you’re doing a money-saving challenge is to open a high-interest savings account.
This gives you a place to move small amounts of money if your frequency of saving is a week or daily.
Then you can simply move the money monthly to the proper investment based on why you’re saving.
With a bi-weekly or monthly saving frequency, you can probably move your money into whatever investment matches your saving reason.
If you’re looking for a place to open a high-interest savings account, bankrate.com is a good place to start.
Steps to Building a Money Saving Challenge
Now that you know where you’re going to put your money, it’s time to create your money-saving challenge.
It’s good to start by deciding what you’re saving money to buy.
1) Figure Out Your Reason for Saving
Most money-saving challenges don’t make you think about why you’re saving money.
We think that you should think about it.
Saving without a reason doesn’t make a ton of sense and knowing why you’re saving creates more incentive to stick to the challenge and reach your goal.
Think about what you need money for in the short-term and long-term.
Maybe you’re saving for holiday shopping or an upcoming vacation.
It could just be for retirement savings.
Whatever it is, write it down at the top of the page.
Call it the holiday shopping money saving challenge or the Hawaii vacation money saving challenge.
Putting a name on it will help you to stay focused on your goal.
2) Decide Your Frequency of Saving
Daily? Weekly? Bi-Weekly? Monthly?
How often do you want to move money from your checking account to a savings account?
The more often, the more you’ll be “in” the challenge of saving money.
However, moving a dollar every day can become quite tedious and inconvenient.
Our recommendation is that you set your frequency based on when you get paid.
That way, before you spend any of your paychecks, you are saving money.
It also seems a little strange that you would move money from one account to another every day when you could have done it once and for all of it last week.
You also lose out on interest which becomes more substantial the more you’re saving.
Still, choose a frequency that is going to keep you in the habit of paying attention to saving your money.
3) Decide How Much Money You Want to Save
You’re getting very close to having a money-saving challenge.
Just a few more steps and you’ll have a custom challenge just for you.
The next step is a big reason why you should decide why you’re saving money.
You have to decide how much money you want to save using this money-saving challenge.
The amount you save for a vacation and retirement is going to be very different.
Spend some time and think about how much you need to for what you want to buy or do.
Try to set a challenging but achievable goal.
You might also want to take the next step into account before you set your goal amount.
4) Decide How Long Want to Save
One month? Three months? A year?
How long do you want this challenge to last?
Revisiting what you’re for saving is also super helpful because it might create a deadline for saving.
If you’re planning a summer vacation you can only save until the summer.
It’s also another way goal when it comes to certain reasons to save.
For example, saving for a house down payment.
You know you can save the money in a year but you want to challenge yourself to do it in six months.
If you’re just starting to save money, we recommend that you keep things short. One to three months.
That way you can review your saving habits and make adjustments for future savings challenges.
5) Create Your Money Saving Challenge Worksheet
You have all of your information and goals, now it’s time to write it all down to keep track of your savings.
You want to make sure that you have this to keep track of your savings but also hold yourself accountable.
You’ll have to do some math.
Divide your savings goal by the number of times you’ll save in the time period.
For example, a daily savings challenge of $1,000 for a year.
You divide $1,000 by 365 days. If it was a weekly challenge you would divide $1,000 by 52 weeks.
Create a sheet that shows when you missed your mini-savings goals and when you achieved.
Once you finish the challenge, you can use this to help make a new challenge for your next savings goal.
Bonus: Keep It Interesting
Money-saving challenges are supposed to be an activity that brings some fun and excitement to an otherwise boring process.
And, while there is some increased awareness and the feeling of a challenge with the first five steps, you can also make it even more exciting.
This is done by having random amounts that you save each time you have to save money.
There are two ways that you can do this.
The first way involves writing out all of the different amounts you could save and then randomly drawing them for your savings days.
The other is randomly picking an amount each time you have to move money from your savings account to your checking account.
With the first way, you’ll still save your exact amount. The second way to create a range.
Let’s go through an example of each to help you decide if you want to do this.
Pre-Choose Amounts Randomly Drawn Example
You want to save $1,000 in 3 months bi-weekly.
So, you’ll save money 7 times.
That’s about $143 every other week.
But, instead of just doing that amount every week you’ll draw 7 amounts.
We came up with $125 twice, $145 twice, $150 once, and $155 twice.
Draw an amount each week or all at the beginning.
Random Amounts Example
This method is going to create a range of savings.
So, instead of saving $1,000 you’ll have a range of how much you might save.
An easy way to do this is by using a die or dice.
Assign an amount to each number and then roll the die or dice every week.
We did one die for amounts $130, $135, $140, $145, $150, and $155.
So, now our range is $910 (roll all $130s) to $1,085 (roll all $155)
This is a great way to keep things interesting and a little bit more excitement to your savings challenge.
5 Examples of Money Saving Challenges
Holiday Money Saving Challenge: $2,500 in 6 Months, Weekly
Save $97 each week.
Retirement Account Money Saving Challenge: $10,000 in 1 Year, Monthly
Save $834 each month.
Just Starting Money Saving Challenge: $1,000 in 3 Months, Weekly
Save $77 each week
Vacation Money Saving Challenge: $3,000 in 4 Months, Bi-Weekly
Save $375 ever other week.
Down Payment Money Saving Challenge: $20,000 in 6 Months, Monthly
Save $5,000 every month.
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