Saving Money

January Update: 52 Week Savings Challenge

I’ve decided to put my money, or in this case keyboard, where my mouth is. I recently wrote a post describing how one could almost effortlessly save $668 in a year. My emergency fund could use a little boost, so I decided to print out the worksheet and take action using my very own post as motivation to a 52 week savings challenge.

Check out the previous post for the complete details as well as a worksheet you can download and print out for yourself, but the challenge is really fairly simple. Challengers save a small sum of money each day for an entire year, the amount being the number of cents equal to the day of the challenge. For example, on day one $0.01 is saved, on day two it’s $0.02, etc. At the end of the year, a person would have saved $667.95. The money should be placed into a container not to be touched until the challenge has been completed.

I’m a busy guy without a lot of patience. I don’t have time to count pennies each day to throw into a jar. I decided that I would just get January completely out of the way, and calculated the total amount needed for the first month of the challenge to be $4.96. I found a large 32oz mug, inserted an even $5 into it, and placed it on my closet shelf.

Being the first month of the challenge, January will be the easiest month. But I will continue to follow the same methodology in which I’ll calculate the amount needed for an entire month, or as the amounts get larger possibly on a weekly basis, and work with those amounts instead. In any case, I’m all in with this 52 week challenge!

How about you, Clever Friends, are you participating in any savings challenge this year? It’s still early, will you join me?

Brought to you courtesy of Brock

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Brock Kernin

Brock is a software engineer by day and personal finance blogger at night. He is a fitness junkie and enjoys grilling and smoking meat. Married with two children,  Brock strives to improve his skills as a husband and father, and is always on the lookout to stretch his family’s budget as far as he can.