I struggle with saving money. There I’ve said it. I work in a minimum wage job and most of my wages go on the usual bills and necessities that we all have. This doesn’t always leave me with much but I’d like to be able to save during the year and maybe put the money towards a big holiday (when it’s safe to do so obviously). I’ve approached money-saving before and always backed away as I have grand plans in January but by April it never goes the way I expected. I’ve now set myself some achievable goals and ones that I feel I manage easily.
The 1p a day challenge
This is one of the challenges that you always see on Pinterest around the new year. It’s become a popular technique for savers but can be hard to achieve on a daily basis. It works on the principle that you save 1p on the 1st January, 2p on the 2nd and so on. By the end of the year you’ll have saved £667.95 which is a fab amount to be able to save in a year.
As I get paid on a four weekly basis I’ll be saving on each pay day and putting £55.67 (£667.95/12) into my savings account as I find this an easier method than the day by day one. Monzo have a great article on how to connect Monzo and IFTTT for the savings challenge if doing it day to day works for you. The other method is to work out what the value would be for each month and pay that into your savings but the largest amount is in December and this isn’t viable for a lot of people.
£1 a day challenge
The other savings challenge I’ve found is saving £1 a day which gives you a total of £365 by the end of the year. This is great if you’re trying to save a small amount or you don’t have a lot of your income available to be able to save. Whatever the reason, this is an easy way to ease into saving. I set this up with IFTTT at the start of the year but have found it easier to put the right amount into my savings on my payday. By doing this I work on the out of sight and out of mind approach. This means if I can’t see my money then I can’t spend it.
By putting both these amounts aside each pay day I’ll have saved a total of £1032 by the end of 2021. This will be a good start on the holiday saving that I need to do for our trip to France in 2022 (everything permitting). I want to know that I have the money there to be albe to start booking accommodation etc than be worrying about it in January next year.
PIN THIS FOR LATER
Hopefully this has given you some ideas on how you can save money this year and how not to be too hard on yourself to do it. I defintely find by saving smaller amounts more often it’s easier than trying to save larger amounts – but that’s just me.
