New Year, new savings: 6 challenges to help you save more in 2023.
Photo by Karolina Grabowska
Saving money and investing it can help you build wealth over time, providing you with more financial stability and opportunities. It can enable you to achieve long-term financial goals such as buying a house, paying for education, or planning retirement. Having savings will also provide you with a sense of security and reduce the stress caused by financial uncertainty.
Money challenges can provide you with a structure for saving money and can assist you in developing a savings habit over time. Challenges can help you break bad spending habits, set and achieve savings goals, provide motivation and accountability, and ultimately be a valuable learning experience.
Let’s look at a few easy money-saving challenges that can help you save more in 2023.
The “No Coffee Challenge”
The “No Coffee Challenge” is a money-saving challenge that involves committing to giving up your daily coffee or other small, regular expenses and saving the money instead. The challenge usually focuses on cutting down on minor, unnecessary costs such as buying coffee, snacks, cigarettes, and other non-essential items.
These small expenses may not seem significant on their own, but they can add up over time, and by giving them up, you can save a substantial amount of money.
For example, if you spend $5 daily on coffee, you could save $150 monthly. This money can be saved, invested, or put towards debt repayment.
The 52-week money challenge
This challenge is a savings plan that involves committing to saving a certain amount of money each week for a year.
The challenge typically starts with saving a small amount of money in the first week, such as $1, and then increasing the amount saved each week by $1. So, in the second week, you would save $2; in the third week, you would save $3, and so on. By the end of the challenge, you would have saved $1,378 if you followed through with the plan as intended.
The challenge’s goal is to help you build a savings habit and save a significant amount of money over the year. The idea is that by starting small and gradually increasing the amount saved each week, you will be less likely to become overwhelmed by the challenge and more likely to stick with it.
It’s a great way to start a saving habit and make saving a part of your daily life; it also allows you to start saving small and gradually increase the amount as you become more comfortable.
The one income challenge
The One Income Challenge is a personal finance challenge where a household commits to living on one income for some time, usually a month or more while saving the other. This means that if you have two or multiple sources of income, you will choose to live off one and save the others.
The challenge’s goal is to help you experience living on a budget and see how much money you could save by living on one income.
The challenge can be a good way to see if you can survive on one income; in case of an emergency, such as a job loss or unexpected expense, it could be helpful to know that you can live on one income if necessary.
And by saving the other income, you can build an emergency fund, pay off debt, or save for a big purchase.
It’s a good idea to plan out the budget for the duration of the challenge and make sure all necessary expenses are covered and prioritize the essential ones. And also to keep track of the costs, see where you could cut back, and identify the non-essential expenses.
It’s important to note that the challenge is meant to be a temporary way of life and is not necessarily easy. Still, it can be a valuable learning experience and a way to gain insight into your household spending habits and see if you could live on one income if necessary.
The 30-day no-spend challenge
The 30-day no-spend challenge is a personal finance challenge where you commit to not spending any money on non-essential items for 30 days. This typically includes things like luxury items, entertainment expenses, eating out at restaurants, and unnecessary shopping.
Essential expenses, such as bills, rent/mortgage, groceries, and transportation, are typically not included in the challenge.
The challenge’s goal is to help you identify and break bad spending habits and save money in the short term. The challenge can be a good way to take a step back, look at your spending habits, and understand where your money is going.
The snowball debt pay-off challenge
The Snowball Debt Pay-Off Challenge is a strategy you can use to tackle multiple debts. The approach is to focus on paying off the smallest debt first while only making the minimum payments on all your other debts.
Once you have paid off the smallest debt, you will then focus on the next smallest debt and so on, until all your debts are paid off. You can also combine multiple smaller debts to target them together. For example, you can consolidate your payday loans and make smaller payments until they are paid off before moving on to the next.
This strategy builds momentum and motivation as you pay off each debt. As you pay off one debt, it will give you the drive to tackle the next one, just like a snowball rolling down a hill, it will get bigger and move faster as it goes. The progress you see in paying off your debts will help you stay motivated and on track to becoming debt-free.
The envelope method
The “Envelope Method” Challenge is a money-saving challenge where you allocate cash for different expenses and only spend from designated envelopes.
The way it works is that you would set a budget for different categories of expenses, such as groceries, entertainment, and transportation. Then, you would withdraw cash for each category and place it in a physical envelope labeled with that category.
Throughout the month, you would only spend the cash in each designated envelope. Once the cash in an envelope is gone, you can’t spend any more on that category until the next budget cycle.
This method can be helpful because it helps you keep your spending in check by giving you a physical limit to the amount of money you can spend in a given category.
It also allows you to identify areas of overspending and make adjustments accordingly, and it can make it easier to stick to a budget since you can see how much money is left in each envelope.
Conclusion
Participating in a challenge with friends, family, or a partner can make saving more fun for you and help you to keep each other accountable. These challenges can assist you in setting and achieving savings goals and provide a better understanding of your spending habits, identify areas where you can cut back, and make adjustments to manage your finances better.
Author BIO
Attorney Loretta Kilday has more than 36 years of litigation and transactional experience, specializing in business, collection, and family law. She frequently writes on various financial and legal matters. She is a graduate of DePaul University with a Juris Doctor degree and a spokesperson for Debt Consolidation Care (DebtCC) online debt relief forum. Please connect with her on LinkedIn for further information.