The 365 Day Money Saving Challenge

Saving money is difficult, right? Well, yes it can be tricky but we think we have found a nifty way to make things a bit easier, following the little and often rule.  Unfortunately we can’t take the credit for inventing this great idea.  This amazing trick called the “365 Day Penny Challenge” which can save you £667.95 by the end of the year! And because 2016 is a Leap Year you could have £671.61! That’s Christmas and more all sorted for next year.

How it works

For every 365 days of the year you save pennies. Starting at 1p on day one and then each day you add on a penny to the previous day’s amount e.g. Day 2 = 2p, Day 3 = 3p, Day 4 = 4p etc. etc. By the end of the year you’ll be adding £3.66 (or £3.65 if you’re not doing this post in 2016) and you’ll have saved up about £670! The great thing is that it’s not about  cutting out your favourite things. It’s about putting money aside in the first place so that it’s not there in your purse to spend. The most you’ll ever put in the jar is £3.66 which is a manageable amount and by the end of the year you will be rolling in it. It’s a great way to getting a huge amount by saving just a little.

The reason we love this “challenge” so much is because it’s so flexible! If you’re worried about putting the bigger amounts away during December when you’re preparing for Christmas and you’re giving up those expensive Starbucks coffee’s for New Year’s why not do the challenge backwards? Save your coffee money in January to prevent temptation and put your pennies in during December ready for the festive spending.

Or why not just save when you can? We’ve found this amazing reminder chart on www.ohsoamelia.com. With this chart stuck up above your savings jar you can use it as a reminder for your daily amount or as a way to choose what you can afford that day. Who says you have to do your savings in order? Have some extra change one day then why not do your larger amounts then, so that on the days you really need to, you only have to put in pennies.

This Challenge is all about saving you money so it should be done around what you can save. Create a new morning ritual of popping your day’s savings in the jar and crossing it off the chart.

This is a fun way to teach the kids about saving money and the concept of a little and often! A concept we love over here at LittleBird. You could even adapt the idea and the kids could save a smaller amount of money every day, for example if they save 20p per day by the end of the year they will have a grand total of £73, not bad at all.

Happy Savings from LittleBird