The holidays can be stressful financially. I totally get it. In January of a few years ago, my husband and I started a simple cash savings plan which allowed us to increase our emergency fund, buy Christmas gifts for each other and our families and go on a vacation without any stress on our bank account. Save money this year using a super simple method, with cash you won’t even miss. Skip your morning latte, or don’t buy that bag of gummy worms in the checkout aisle. These super simple decisions will mean HUGE end of year cash for savings.
Skip Lattes, Save Money
That year we saved $2,756 (ok… so not exactly $3K, but close enough). The amazing thing is that because we saved in relatively small amounts at a time, we didn’t feel like we were missing any money, and we spent less on impulse purchases – like coffee from Starbucks. In addition to this, we also put our typical amount of money in our savings accounts. This plan absolutely helped us come up with “extra” cash that we would have needlessly spent on silly things like convenient store cokes.
The savings plan is simple:
There are 52 weeks in a year. Each week, you put money corresponding to the week in the savings account. If it’s week 45 in the year, you put $45 in savings that week.
As a twist, and to challenge ourselves to save more, we doubled the amount and we saved almost $3K the year we used this method. It was a challenge at times, but we made it priority and it was nice knowing the money was there if we needed it for emergencies.
To make it easier on ourselves, we only put money in once a month and we crossed the weeks off as we could. For example, if we had an influx of cash one month, we may cross off week 52, 51, 50, and 49 in a month instead of whatever “week” we were on. As long as at the end of the year all “weeks” are marked off, you’re good. Doing it this way helped because some months we were tighter on expendable money.
This is amazing! Congrats!!!
Thanks Christine!
This is awesome!! You go girl!!!
Thanks Lauren. It was a great way to save cash.
I don’t get it 52 weeks is $104 not 2700
Hi Olga.
You save the amount equal to the week of the year it is. So for instance, on the 52nd week, you’ll save $52. On the 34th week, you’ll save $34. You can double that (which is where the $2700) comes from. So, on the 52nd week, you’d save $104 on that week. and on week 34, you’d save $68. Hope this helps!
We are so doing this. Thanks for breaking it down! 🙂
Yay! I hope you love it as much as we did.
Congrats! Having a rainy day fund is SO important, and it just blows my mind that so many people don’t have one. Everyone needs at least 6 months of living expenses in cash, in case someone loses a job, there’s a medical emergency, etc. Good work, girl!
Thanks girl. I agree. Rainy day funds are so so so important… especially when one of you has to have unexpected surgery. 😛
Your calendar is so cool! We are usually really good at saving money but this year was super hard since we took out way more than we put in for my tuition. I like the weekly breakdown, though…maybe we will try something like that this year.
Thanks Tracy! This was truly super easy and we were still able to save our regular amounts to put in our savings accounts, too. Maybe you can figure out a way that something like this would work for you.
this is a fabulous idea. my husband and i don’t have a set savings plan, we just save whatever we don’t spend and because he is pretty frugal and naturally wants to save all the money, we normally do. we are taking a big trip next year in the summer so doubt we’ll be able to do this next year, but maybe leading up to it for spending money.. hmm.. the wheels are a turning. congrats on saving so much!
Thanks Kristen!
My husband is the same way, which causes our banking account to seem extremely scary to me (… because he throws it all in savings). 😛
Spending money is the primary reason we did this. You should totally see if something like this would work for you for that reason.
Great way to save Jaelan! We do something similar, but just have a set amount to put into savings, Little A’s college fund, etc. I think having an emergency fund and building savings is so important.
Thanks Tiffany. Planning for the future (and unknown) is incredibly important. I’m sure we will do something similar when we have kids.
Oh my goodness, I love this and I loved that you checked weeks off when you had an influx of cash so smart!!!
Thanks Sharlee! I hope you like it as much as we did.
This is such a smart idea!
Thanks Amanda!
Good for you guys to plan ahead! We made this year’s big financial goal to finish off our 6-month emergency fund. We’ll get pretty close by the end of this year, but we did have some set backs along the way. Progress is progress though… It’s amazing how all of those small purchases add up, huh? Amazing and nauseating once you realize where it’s been going… =)
That’s awesome! And it’s HARD to build a 6-12 month emergency fund. It’s doable, but it takes a huge commitment–so awesome for you!
You’re right–progress IS progress.
This is awesome! I think my husband and I want to try something like this. thanks for sharing!
Thanks Tiffany! Yay! I hope you love this plan. It was so easy and it was really satisfying to see our money grow.
Oh man I would love to do the first version of this! Maybe we could do it backwards and start with $52 dollars so that way the last weeks during the holidays are less… maybe.
That’s great! That’s pretty much what we did. Just makes it easier.
This sounds great! I think I’m definitely going to give this a try :]
Thanks Stacey. Let me know how you like it.
This is awesome! I don’t see any reason NOT to save extra money! I think we’ll have to start this!! x
Right?? Let me know how you like it!
Thank you for sharing this! I’ve seen similar things floating around Pinterest but have never know anyone to actually do it– hearing first hand definitely motivates me a little bit more to give it a try– and stick with it!
Sure thing, Carly! I’m glad this could shed a little light on it. You should totally try it if you’re at all interested. We plan to do it again this year!
This is great! You know I’m all about saving money!! Good job Jaelan!!
Oh yeah girl. Money saving all the way!
Thanks!
This is great! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Liz. I hope you enjoy it like we did.
We did the $1.3K one last year! And it was so great for the same reasons you mentioned – the amounts were so small each week that it didn’t really feel like we were “missing” money! I may try the other one this year 🙂
Ah! I’m glad you did this. I was really really pleased with how it turned out for us. I’m excited to do it again. 🙂
Very smart way to do this! I love that you didn’t stick to a particular week, but instead made sure everything was accounted for in a particular month.
Thanks! I think the flexibility makes it super easy.
What a great idea! Spreading it out in smaller increments I think makes it more manageable.
Absolutely! And some months we have a lot more money than others. The flexibility makes it easy.
Nice post! I’m currently trying to do a similar challenge to create an emergency fund.