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One of my favorite ways to save money is by trying new money-saving challenges.
Saving money can be hard, but these challenges are sure to bring out your competitive side.
Whether you’re saving money to pay off debt, put a deposit on a house or car, or for an emergency fund, these challenges will make it a little easier.
I’ve put together some of my favorite money challenges from amazing bloggers that’ll blow your mind and have you saving money in no time.
Also, don’t forget to check out this post about saving money for beginners.
I have some specific money habits to start in your 20s that will help you save money (especially if you’re dealing with a student loan).
How to Save Money
Before we get into my money-saving tips, let’s talk about how to save money.
This comes down to one thing:
Spend less than you earn.
The more you spend, the less you save. Reading that, you might be thinking “Okay, obviously…” but sometimes, it’s not that obvious.
If you’re making all of these little purchases without keeping track of it, you could end up spending a lot more than you think you are.
Ultimately, if you want to know how to save money, you just spend less money. But it’s not that easy. That’s why I’m going to give you some of the best money-saving challenges out there.
Money-Saving Tips
Use Cash Instead of a Card
I don’t know about you, but when I use a card to pay, I walk out to my car and I can’t even remember how much I just spent.
But when I use cash, it literally hurts to spend it. I start sweating after I hand them bill after bill and realize I probably shouldn’t have bought that.
This is why I’d suggest using cash instead of a card if you’re trying to save money. If you have to sit there and count it out, you’re much more aware of how much you’re actually spending.
Cash Envelope System
Going along with paying in cash, use Dave Ramsey’s cash envelope system. This is a way to track everything you’re paying for.
You create different categories like groceries, restaurants, gas, etc. and write it on envelopes. Then create and write the amount you want to spend in that category per month.
Here’s the tricky part. Whatever you do, you cannot go over the budget you set for that category.
Create a Budget
If you want to start saving money, one of the best money-saving tips is to create a budget.
You can start a budget to determine how much you want to spend on what. If you stay within your budget, you can have extra money to put into your savings.
Here are some more amazing money-saving tips.
Money-Saving Challenges
26 Paycheck Savings Challenge
This money saving challenge was created by Simple Money Mom.
This is the perfect challenge if you’re someone like me who has a small budget.
If you’re progressively adding more and more savings each month, eventually you won’t have enough money to put back that matches the amount in the challenge.
This is why Simple Money Mom created this challenge.
For this challenge, you will start saving $10 at each paycheck. When you get to your 6th paycheck, you’ll go back to saving $40 each paycheck. It plateaus for a while and the amount goes up and down, which makes it much easier for those of us with a smaller budget.
Here is what this savings challenge would look like. Each number represents a paycheck.
At the end of this challenge, you’ll have $1,000 saved!
52 Week Savings Challenge
This is one of the most common and simple challenges I’ve seen.
It starts off with saving a dollar the first day and gradually building up how much you save.
The first week, you put back $1 and each week you add a dollar.
- Week 1: $1
- Week 2: $2
- Week 3: $3
- Week 52: $52
I suggest writing down each week and checking it off to ensure you don’t forget to put money back.
By the end of this challenge, you’ll have $1,378!
52 Week Money Challenge Reverse
This challenge comes from The Savvy Couple. This challenge is the exact same as the challenge I just talked about, except you do it in reverse.
So instead of starting with $1 per day, you start with $52 and decrease by $1 every week.
You save the same amount in the same amount of time, but you get the hardest chunk of it over with in the beginning of the challenge.
$1,000 in 30 Days Challenge
This challenge is for those of you that want to save more money faster. This is a shorter term savings challenge that’ll get you the money faster.
This awesome challenge was created by Gathering Dreams.
Go to the $1,000 in 30 Days to get the printable to go along with this challenge!
No Spend Challenge
This challenge is just what it sounds like.
The aim of this challenge is to avoid spending money for a set amount of time.
Of course, this doesn’t count the necessary things like food and rent.
For this challenge, you need to stop spending money on things you don’t need, like extra dessert, expensive food, clothes, accessories, entertainment, etc.
No Fast Food
Another challenge I like to do to save money is stop eating fast food.
Sometimes one meal doesn’t seem like it costs a lot, but it adds up compared to the grocery store.
Start limited or completely cut out fast food. Set a specific time frame for you to complete this challenge is. If you’re eating fast food every day, cut it down to once a week. If you want to step it up a notch, only eat fast food once every 2 weeks or a month.
Let me know what money-saving challenges you’ve tried1
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