Wednesday, January 1, 2014

52 Week Money Saving Challenge

Happy New Year and welcome to 2014.

I don't know if you've seen it or not but the 52 week Money Saving Challenge is all over the internet right now.  I have no idea how one would go about finding the original post for this idea because there are just too many of them.  Do a search and you'll see what I mean.
 
The concept for this plan is that if you make yourself a savings jar and put in $1 the first week you have started the plan. 
Each week you add one more dollar than the previous week. Week 1 deposit $1,  week 2 deposit $2, right up to week 52 depositing $52.   If you follow this plan at the end of the year you have saved almost $1,400.

I think it's a great idea and decided this would be my New Years Resolution.  There is one big drawback. I never have an extra $200 in December. I don't make a set amount of money each week because the number of children I care for fluctuates ...... and December is always the slowest month  because of  Christmas. I had to adjust the plan if it was going to work for me.
 
 52 week savings challenge
I found this chart  at www.savingadvice.com  and liked how it was more flexible with the deposit amounts. At the bottom of the chart it has the amounts from $1 to $52.   


Each week I put my deposit into my jar and cross off the amount I used from the bottom.   If I have a short work week I can deposit one of the lesser amounts and in the summer months when I  make larger paychecks I can make the larger deposits. In the end I will have the same total because all the deposits are in the jar. 

So that's my New Year's resolution... to work on my savings challenge for 2014.  Did you make a resolution? .. and if you did ,  did you come up with a plan to make it work?



No comments: