I don’t know if it’s the shiny, new calendar that does it, or maybe just looking at the bank account after the holidays, but this time of year, everyone wants to crack down on budgeting.
I’ve found some awesome New Year’s Savings plans and Budget Challenges, I wanted to share a few with you today so you can choose the one that works best for you.
The 365 penny a day challenge. You start with one cent on January 1st. Every day you add in pennies based on the day. Day 100 = $1 (100 pennies) and December 31st you put in $3.65! At the end of the year you will have saved $667.95!
The $5 method. Every time you come into contact with a $5 bill, save it! Every one will end up with a different amount, but this person saved over $3,000 doing it, so far!
Try the #dimechallenge, try to fill a 2 liter bottle with dimes in a year, if you do, you should have about $700 in dimes when you’re done.
$1000 emergency fund challenge, this is a weekly savings method, each month you are set to save a different amount each week. In January you save just $2 a week, while February asks for $5 a week. By the end of the year you’ll have saved $1,000 which is a great start to an emergency fund!
52 week money challenge – This is one of the more difficult year-long savings methods in my opinion. It starts off innocently enough, deposit $10 into savings the first week of January, and $20 the next. It keeps increasing through the year though and by March you’re expected to be depositing over $100 a week and it continues to increase. If I had that type of extra money lying around, I don’t think I’d need a special savings plan to build a nest egg, I would have already put it in savings!
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While some of these are do-able for the average person, a lot of these methods assume that you have extra money that you simply need to put somewhere else or not spend.
My family has definitely been in the position where there’s literally no extra money to save, so I’ve put together a list of ways to help you cut your budget in half at the grocery store and a HUGE master list of ways to decrease the amount of money going out each month. These are ways to help you find that extra $5 or $10 each week so that you have something to save. I’ve learned that even when I THINK there are simply no more budgeting corners to be cut, I can usually find more.
Here is a list of legit ways to make a little extra cash from home (without selling anything to your friends). I have personally used ALL of these at one time or another and can say they definitely helped us save money and even buy our house!
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