A friend at work told me about the 52 Week Savings Challenge. She wasn’t really making sense so I googled and learned immediately what it is and that some people love it and some people hate it. Of course. *rolls eyes*
Basically it has you putting money aside every week and by the end of the year you will have saved $1378. Pretty crazy huh?
Whatever week of the year it is, that is how much money you put aside. So the first week of the year you put $1 in to savings, the second week of the year you put $2 in to saving, all the way up to the 52nd week of the year where you put $52 in to savings.
From my understanding, the weekly contributions are supposed to help teach you to always put money away, on a regular basis, and by gradually increasing the amount it is supposed to be less painful because it is just a dollar more than the week prior. Kind of like 30 Day Squat challenges where you think no way in hell can you do 85 squats but when you are doing your squats you realize it is only 5 more squats than you did yesterday and if you can do 80 than hell yeah you can do 85.
The challenge intrigued me so I started reading people’s blog posts about it.
Like I said earlier, some people love it, they think it is a great way to save money. Other people had quite the list of reasons to not like it…
- in the month of December, when you are already spending a crap tonne of money you have to manage to put aside $202
- most people will hit a point in the challenge where the numbers are too big to be putting that kind of money aside every week
- you can get the same amount saved by the end of the year if you put aside $26.50 a week, which would be easier to manage budget wise (my mom pointed this one out)
- most people will at some point have something unexpected happen that will throw their budget for a bit of a loop making it hard if not impossible to put aside the weekly amount
- the challenge says to put the money in a jar or piggy bank so you can watch it grow, it is good motivation to keep going, but this means you don’t earn any interest
- some people said you should do it in reverse, make the large payments in the first weeks of the year, so that you get the more painful months over with first
There were other reasons people didn’t like it but those were the ones that stuck with me. They do make a point, but the challenge still intrigued me and I kinda want to give it a try, but heaven forbid I do something exactly how it is laid out lol no no no, I have tweaked it to work better for me, cause why not? 😛
First I printed off one of the many printables you can find online to track the money you put aside. I picked one I liked the look of because then I would find it enjoyable to look at it, rather than finding the paper boring.
I found this one at http://www.100directions.com
Then I made the decision that instead of following the order the challenge puts forth, so $1 in week one, $2 dollars in week two and so forth I am going to play it more like bingo. Where, what amount of money I put aside each week is decided based on how my finances are doing that week. So if I’m having a particularly poor week I’ll put in one of the lower amounts, if I am having an ok week I’ll put in one of the higher amounts. This means each month will have a combo of larger deposits and smaller deposits, making it easier for me to manage financially. Oh and I’m not putting it all in a piggy bank. Some goes in a piggy bank (I have an adorable one) and some gets transferred to my savings account. I’ll make the decision based on if I have the cash on hand or not, which means more often than not I will be transferring money to my savings account because I almost never have cash on me, I prefer plastic lol This will give me the chance to watch the money grow in the piggy bank but also have some of the money earning me interest.
To keep track of where the money went (piggy’s tummy or my TFSA) I am writing a little note at the side of each deposit that I have completed with either P.B. or TFSA, fairly straight forward, shrug.
I don’t know if it will work, it would probably be better if I waited until after April to attempt this because that is when my car payments are finally done and I’ll have more money at my disposal but I’ll try and see how it goes. There is no rule saying I can’t re-start it later in the year if I have to stop at some point and have my money saved up in time for say, summer vacation (of 2017) rather than Christmas of 2016.
Ahhh the joys of making things work for you rather than conforming to the pre-existing template. 😀
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 