A weekly savings challenge that you can actually afford….

Are you up for an affordable weekly savings challenge in 2022?

It’s that time of year again where people are sharing various different weekly saving challenges for the year all over social media so I thought I’d share my own more affordable version with you again …

You’ve probably seen the posts I’m talking about – they’re all weekly savings challenge type posts which in theory are a really great idea.  The most popular one that I’ve seen requires you to save £1 in the first week, £2 the next week, week 3 would be £3 and so on until you reach week 52 where you would save £52.

The idea is that because you’re building up gradually then you don’t miss the money and by the end of the year you’ll have around £1300 saved which would be amazing, wouldn’t it?

But who could afford to save £49, £50, £51 and £52 a week in the last four weeks of the challenge?  I know I certainly couldn’t!

In fact, if I’m honest, I’d probably start struggling around week 10 as that’s when it starts to get to £40+ a month out of my usual budget which already includes money that we save for Christmas, Birthdays and holidays.

There are challenges where you start with the higher amounts in January and challenges where you put money away daily but personally, I know that I’d struggle and end up giving up and feeling like I’d failed.

I do love the idea though and I love a challenge (if only so I have an excuse for a list or a plan) so I thought I’d make my own version so I could join in and actually have a hope of not giving up a few weeks in.  My version is like the poor person’s version of the savings challenge as it’s much more achievable than the ones I’ve seen doing the rounds but it will still give me £164 at the end of the year which is a good chunk towards Christmas.

I’ve gone really easy on myself though and made it a much more gradual increase to the amount I’m saving each week – at it’s maximum it’s just £5 a week which is easily manageable to most of us in my opinion, unlike the £52 a week which is more than I spend on my shopping (usually).

I’ve made a little table that you can print off and stick to the front of whatever you’re going to be using to save up in, it tells you how much you need to save each week so you can tick it off as you go along.

I used a glass hot dog jar for mine as you can see in the picture above.  I just soaked it for five minutes so the label would come off easily and then sellotaped my printable to the front.  I’m not sure if it will do the whole year or if it will get that full that I’ll need to rethink my container but it’s definitely going to do me for a good while!

Could you manage £52 a week as part of a savings challenge? Nope, me neither!

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