So it's January and a lot of us are feeling the burn from a big Christmas money splurge. Every year we say that we will save throughout the year and every year some unexpected event or bill clears out any plans that we had to put money aside for Christmas.
What if I told you that you could pay for Christmas by putting aside a few pennies a day? At first I thought that there is no way that you could save a reasonable amount in this way, but the figures don't lie. The basics are on the 1st day of the year you save 1p, on the 2nd 2p, on the 3rd 3p, on the 4th 4p and so on. The most you will ever put away is £3.65, and at the end of the year you will have earned a cool £667.95 (£671.61 in 2016 as it's a leap year!). In fact it's only part way through April when you will need to start putting away more than £1 a day, plenty of time to recover from last years Christmas over-spend.
There are a few people out there that prefer to start the money challenge backwards and so put aside £3.65 on 1st January, £3.64 on 2nd January £3.63 on 3rd January, £3.62 on 4th January and so on. It depends on whether you feel you will be able to put a little more aside in January or December.
There are two main ways in which to do the challenge;
A physical jar means you have the added motivation of seeing the coins rising, you could also add any spare change you may have to make your total even higher. An ISA or savings account will also have an interest rate which means you should see a small return on all those pennies too.
If like me you have an appalling memory, the wonderful bloggers over at A Damn Good Life have created a printable sheet that you can tick off daily to ensure you don't lose track of where you are on your savings.
Be sure to head directly over to them and download a high quality version, their blog is a great read too!
For those of you that are using a template on a leap year, remember to add in £3.66 at some point to cover the extra day!
Why not let me know how you get on in the comments?
What if I told you that you could pay for Christmas by putting aside a few pennies a day? At first I thought that there is no way that you could save a reasonable amount in this way, but the figures don't lie. The basics are on the 1st day of the year you save 1p, on the 2nd 2p, on the 3rd 3p, on the 4th 4p and so on. The most you will ever put away is £3.65, and at the end of the year you will have earned a cool £667.95 (£671.61 in 2016 as it's a leap year!). In fact it's only part way through April when you will need to start putting away more than £1 a day, plenty of time to recover from last years Christmas over-spend.
There are a few people out there that prefer to start the money challenge backwards and so put aside £3.65 on 1st January, £3.64 on 2nd January £3.63 on 3rd January, £3.62 on 4th January and so on. It depends on whether you feel you will be able to put a little more aside in January or December.
There are two main ways in which to do the challenge;
- A physical jar that you fill with change
- If you have access to internet banking it is easy to transfer the required amount to an ISA or savings account.
A physical jar means you have the added motivation of seeing the coins rising, you could also add any spare change you may have to make your total even higher. An ISA or savings account will also have an interest rate which means you should see a small return on all those pennies too.
If like me you have an appalling memory, the wonderful bloggers over at A Damn Good Life have created a printable sheet that you can tick off daily to ensure you don't lose track of where you are on your savings.
For those of you that are using a template on a leap year, remember to add in £3.66 at some point to cover the extra day!
Why not let me know how you get on in the comments?
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